Credits: 3 (3-0-0)
Description
The course will study major concepts of historicality and revolution in order to examine the role played by revolution in bringing or blocking historical change, in breaking with certain social and intellectual patterns. It will respond to questions about the nature of the pre- revolutionary moment emergent within existing historical situations and yet departing from them; the designation of selective historical moments as revolutionary; the variety of domains beyond the narrowly defined domain of politics that have seen revolution, for instance, in science, technology, social relations, and philosophy. With respect to political revolutions, how is a revolution in history analysed, and what happens to sovereignty? What is the role of violence in revolution as compared to other categories of history (period, epoch), and how does it affect language itself, both of literary representations of revolution and of historiography?