Maria Falina: Upanje ali kriza? Časovnost demokracije v povojni »novi Evropi«

Zgodovina na Špici / History on the Edge

You are kindly invited to the new event of the History on the Edge series, which will take place on Wednesday, 28. 5. 2025 at 13:00, at the INZ premises or at the ZOOM link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86949706378 The lecture titled Hope or crisis? Temporalities of democracy in the post-WWI ‘New Europe’ by dr. Maria Falina will be held in English.

Hope or crisis? Temporalities of democracy in the post-WWI ‘New Europe’

In 1919 Paul Valery wrote: “An extraordinary shudder ran through the marrow of Europe. She felt in every nucleus of her mind that she was no longer the same, that she was no longer herself […] we see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all […] Everything has not been lost, but everything has sensed that it might perish.” The war and its end made European particularly sensitive to the themes of time, death, and renewal. The tensions between the past and the future played out differently in various national and political cultures. They created divergent temporalities, which coexisted, overlapped and replaced one another. This interplay is most evident in the contexts where old imperial political structures were being replaced by newly established or heavily rethought nation-states. In this talk, I reflect on different temporalities of politics in the ‘New Europe’ in the immediate postwar period and pay particular attention to the role of democracy.

Lecturer bio:

Dr Maria Falina is a historian of modern and contemporary Eastern Europe specializing in intellectual and political history; memory and political uses of the past; expressions and legacy of political violence; history of religion, nationalism, and modernity; categories of inclusion and exclusion.