Memory and Social Suffering or How to Write the History of a Phantom

Description

In a small footnote at the end of the Dialectics of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno insisted on the need to develop a theory of phantoms. According to them, they are ominous signs of that which remains deformed and incomplete, the burden of life that emerges when we deny the violence of the past.  Along the same lines, Derrida wrote not long ago that “There has never been a scholar who really, and as a scholar, deals with ghosts. A traditional scholar does not believe in ghosts -nor in all that could be called the virtual space of spectrality.” What I proposed for this talk is that we return once again to the question of phantoms. What is the historical status of phantoms, what is the relationship between phantoms and history, and what challenges do phantoms pose for historical understanding? I will address these questions by examining late 15th century and early 16th century Native and Mestizo Andean chronicles. My point of departure will be Garcilaso´s Royal Commentaries (1609), particularly his treatment of Inca Huiracocha (at once a ruling Inca [1370-1430], a pan-Andean God, and a phantom that intervened in a crucial moment in the history of Inca expansion.

 

             OPEN TO ALL! NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED. 

 

image: Paul Klee´s Angelus Novus