Enzo Traverso

A cultural and intellectual balance-sheet of the twentieth century's age of revolutions This book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of "dialectical images": Marx's "locomotives of history," Alexandra Kollontai's sexually liberated bodies, Lenin's mummified body, Auguste Blanqui's barricades and red flags, the Paris Commune's demolition of the Vendome Column, among several others. It connects theories with the existential trajectories of the thinkers who elaborated them, by sketching the diverse profiles of revolutionary intellectuals--from Marx and Bakunin to Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks, from Mao and Ho Chi Minh to José Carlos Mariátegui, C.L.R. James, and other rebellious spirits from the South--as outcasts and pariahs. And finally, it analyzes the entanglement between revolution and communism that so deeply shaped the history of the twentieth century. This book thus merges ideas and representations by devoting an equal importance to theoretical and iconographic sources, offering for our troubled present a new intellectual history of the revolutionary past.

An Intellectual History

Revolution

What is fascism in the twenty first century? What does Fascism mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century? When we pronounce this word, our memory goes back to the years between the two world wars and envisions a dark landscape of violence, dictatorships, and genocide. These images spontaneously surface in the face of the rise of radical right, racism, xenophobia, islamophobia and terrorism, the last of which is often depicted as a form of "Islamic fascism." Beyond some superficial analogies, however, all these contemporary tendencies reveal many differences from historical fascism, probably greater than their affinities. Paradoxically, the fear of terrorism nourishes the populist and racist rights, with Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the US claiming to be the most effective ramparts against "Jihadist fascism". But since fascism was a product of imperialism, can we define as fascist a terrorist movement whose main target is Western domination? Disentangling these contradictory threads, Enzo Traverso's historical gaze helps to decipher the enigmas of the present. He suggests the concept of post-fascism--a hybrid phenomenon, neither the reproduction of old fascism nor something completely different--to define a set of heterogeneous and transitional movements, suspended between an accomplished past still haunting our memories and an unknown future.

Populism and the Far Right

The New Faces of Fascism

Uncovering the melancholic tradition of the global left.

Marxism, History, and Memory

Left-wing Melancholia

historia, memoria, política

El Pasado, instrucciones de uso

Has Jewish modernity exhausted itself? Flourishing between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, the intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy of Jewish modernity continues to dazzle us, however, in this provocative new book, esteemed historian Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that this cultural epoch has come to an end.Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This is a compelling narrative, hinged upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics.With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present.

The End of Jewish Modernity

the European civil war 1914-1945

Fire and blood

In the half-century since the appearance of Hannah Arendt's seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism, innumerable historians have detailed the history of the Nazi years. Now, in a brilliant synthesis of this work, Enzo Traverso situates the extermination camps as the final, terrible moment in European modernity's industrialization of killing and dehumanization of death. Traverso upends the conventional presentation of the Holocaust as an inexplicable anomaly, navigating an excess of antecedents both technical and cultural. Deftly tracing a complex lineage - the guillotine and machine gun, the prison and assembly line, as well as widespread ideologies of racial supremacy and colonial expansion - Traverso reveals that the ideas that coalesced at Auschwitz came from Europe's mainstream and not its margins.

The Origins of Nazi Violence

Marksizm, Tarih ve Bellek

Solun Melankolisi

Enzo Traverso's Understanding the Nazi Genocide draws on the critical and heretical Marxism of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.

Marxism After Auschwitz

Understanding The Nazi Genocide

histoire d'un debat, 1843-1943

Les marxistes et la question juive

In this urgent, insightful essay, a respected historian places the Israeli-Palestinian war in context, challenging Western attitudes about the region. Is the destruction of Gaza only a consequence of the October 7, 2023 attack, or is it also the outcome of a long process of dispossession and eradication? Do Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation? Is talking about genocide anti-Semitism? Enzo Traverso goes to the root of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by calling history into question and offers a critical interpretation that overturns the one-sided perspective from which we have become accustomed to observing what is happening in Gaza. Israel is usually described as a democratic island in the middle of an obscurantist ocean, and Hamas as a movement inspired by bloodthirsty fanaticism. The destruction of Gaza is reminiscent of the golden age of colonialism, when the West perpetrated genocides in Asia and Africa in the name of its civilizing mission. Its essential assumptions remain the same: civilization versus barbarism, progress versus intolerance. Alongside the ritual statements about Israel’s right to defend itself, no one ever mentions the Palestinians’ right to resist decades-long aggression. But if a genocidal war is unleashed in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, it is our own ethical values and political norms that are tarnished: the assumptions of our moral conscience—the distinction between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrators and victims—risk being turned upside down. The October 7 attack was terrifying, but it must be analyzed and not just condemned. And we must do so by summoning all the critical tools of historical research. Should the war in Gaza end in a second Nakba, Israel’s legitimacy will be permanently compromised. In that case, neither American weapons nor Western media, nor the distorted and outraged memory of the Holocaust will be able to redeem it.

Gaza Faces History

In The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate, Enzo Traverso explores the causes and the forms of the encounter that took place, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the Holocaust, between the intelligentsia of a cosmopolitan minority and the most radical ideological current of Western modernity. From Karl Marx to the Frankfurt School, the 'Jewish Question' — to a set of problems related to emancipation and anti-Semitism, cultural assimilation and Zionism — raised significant controversies within Marxist theory. Enzo Traverso carefully reconstructs this intellectual debate that runs over more than a century, pointing out both its achievements and its blind alleys. This is the second edition, completely rewritten and updated, of a book already translated into many languages (originally published in French, then translated into English, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish).

History of a Marxist Debate

The Jewish Question

Has Jewish modernity exhausted itself? Flourishing between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, the intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy of Jewish modernity continues to dazzle us, however, in this provocative new book, esteemed historian Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that this cultural epoch has come to an end. Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This is a compelling narrative, hinged upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics. With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present.

'...this is a genuinely original contribution to our understanding. Students of the Holocaust sometimes worry that too much analysis may immunise us against its unbelievable horror. Traverso avoids that risk with great sensitivity and imagination.' Socialist Review In Understanding the Nazi Genocide Enzo Traverso sustains a dialogue with writings on the Shoah from Hannah Arendt to Daniel Goldhagen by drawing on the critical and heretical Marxism of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, which grasped late capitalism’s pent-up capacity for destructive upheavals exacerbated by bureaucratic organisation and advanced technology. After Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the gulag, the old warning slogan - socialism or barbarism - formulated by European Marxists at the beginning of twentieth century needs to be seriously ‘revised’. The choice we face today is no longer between the progress of civilisation and a fall into ancient savagery, but between socialism conceived as a new civilisation and the destruction of humankind. For Traverso the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is an image of what should impel us to rebel: not a sense of inevitable victory, but an ethical imperative.

Understanding the Nazi Genocide

La malinconia di sinistra è sempre esistita. Non è nostalgia del socialismo reale ma una “tradizione nascosta” che non appartiene alla narrazione canonica del socialismo e del comunismo, con la loro fede nel progresso e l’orgoglio di saper combattere lotte giuste e vittoriose. La malinconia di sinistra incarna lo spirito del dubbio, lontano dai miti e dalla propaganda. Sa che i totalitarismi possono tornare, che la storia è imprevedibile, che le lotte del presente devono tenere gli occhi aperti sulle sconfitte del passato, perché ogni tragedia custodisce una promessa di riscatto e lo sguardo dei vinti è più penetrante di quello dei vincitori. Le macerie delle battaglie perdute sono il cuore da cui nascono nuove idee e nuovi progetti. Con il crollo del Muro di Berlino non è finito soltanto il socialismo reale; si è anche esaurito il tempo delle utopie con le quali volevamo trasformare il mondo, obbligandoci a mettere in discussione le idee con cui avevamo cercato di interpretarlo. Enzo Traverso percorre le orme di una cultura di sinistra che, capace di guardare in faccia la sconfitta, può forse ripensarsi. Queste pagine tornano a interrogare le grandi figure che hanno costellato la storia di questa tradizione sotterranea: da Marx a Benjamin, fino a Daniel Bensaïd, passando attraverso la pittura di Gustave Courbet e i film di Chris Marker e Theo Angelopoulos. Un libro che spiega che cos’è la cultura di sinistra, rivelandone tutte le complessità e le interferenze.

Una tradizione nascosta

Malinconia di sinistra

In this collection of essays, Enzo Traverso examines the relationships between anti-Semitism, modernity and the Holocaust. The different parts of the book analyse multiple dimensions of the destruction of the European Jews, debates over historical memory and left-wing debates on the nature of anti-Semitism. Inspired by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the heterodox Marxism of a thinker like Walter Benjamin, Traverso argues that after Auschwitz, critical thought needs to reconsider the notion of progress as such. Enzo Traverso is the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University. His publications include: The New Faces of Fascism, Populism and the Far Right, Verso, 2019; Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory, Columbia University Press, 2017, The End of Jewish Modernity, Pluto Press, 2016; Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945, Verso, 2016; The Origins of Nazi Violence, New Press, 2003.

Essays on Fascism, Anti-semitism and the Use of History

Critique of Modern Barbarism

Today, history is increasingly written in the first person. A growing number of historical works include an autobiographical dimension, as if writing about the past required exploring the inner life of the author. Neither traditional history nor autobiography, this hybrid genre calls the norms of the historical profession into question. In search of new and creative paths, it transgresses a cardinal rule of the discipline: third-person narration, long considered necessary to the objective analysis of the past. Singular Pasts offers a critical account of the emergence of authorial subjectivity in historical writing, scrutinizing both its achievements and its shortcomings. Enzo Traverso considers a group of contemporary historians, including Ivan Jablonka, Sergio Luzzatto, and Mark Mazower, who reveal their emotional ties to their subjects and give their writing a literary flavor. He identifies a parallel trend in literature, in which authors such as W. G. Sebald, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Daniel Mendelsohn write their works as investigations based on archival sources. Traverso argues that first-person history mirrors contemporary ways of thinking: such writing is presentist and apolitical, perceiving and representing the past through an individual lens. Probing the limits of subjective historiography, he emphasizes that it is collective action that produces social change: “we” instead of “I.” In an epilogue, Traverso considers the first-person writing of Saidiya Hartman as a counterexample. A wide-ranging and illuminating critique of a key trend in humanistic inquiry, Singular Pasts reconsiders the notion of historical truth in a neoliberal age.

The "I" in Historiography

Singular Pasts

The Jews and Germany debunks a modern myth: that once upon a time there was a Judeo-German symbiosis, in which two cultures met and brought out the best in each other. Enzo Traverso argues that to the contrary, the attainments of Jews in the German-speaking world were due to the Jews aspiring to be German, with little help from and often against the open hostility of Germans. As the Holocaust proved in murder and theft, German Jews could never be German enough. Now the works of German Jews are being published and reprinted in Germany. It is a matter of enormous difference whether the German rediscovery of German Jews is another annexation of Jewish property or an act of rebuilding a link between traditions. Traverso shows how tenuous the link was in the first place. He resumes the queries of German Jews who asked throughout the twentieth century what it meant to be both Jewish and German. Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Kafka, and many more thinkers of genius found the problems unavoidable and full of paradoxes. In returning to them Traverso not only demolishes a sugary myth but also reasserts the responsibility of history to recover memory, even if bitter and full of pain. Enzo Traverso was born in Italy in 1957. He currently works at the Bibliothique de documentation internationale contemporaine in Nanterre, where he is in charge of the German section of documentary research. He is also the author of The Marxists and the Jewish Question: History of a Debate, 1843-1943. Daniel Weissbort is a professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Inscription and the editor ofTranslating Poetry and The Poetry of Survival. His translations include Claude Simon's The World about Us.

Enzo Traverso

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