Persistence

How can we persevere in a time when progress has stalled, when the ghosts of the past weigh heavily upon us, and when no resolution is in sight? To persist – not as a moral stance or a capitalist imperative, but rather as a way of opening the possibility of a new temporality from which it may become possible to rethink our own Zeitgeist.

The new book On Persistence by Canadian philosopher and comparatist Rebecca Comay bears witness to such persistence in the face of the ruins of the past, which keep us in a state of perpetual mourning – a deadlock that may perhaps be broken not through action, but through the concept itself. Rebecca Comay is the author of several exceptional monographs, most notably Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Dash – The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (co-authored with Frank Ruda; MIT Press, 2018).

Dr Mirt Komel, philosopher and writer at the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, will be in conversation with the guest. The event is organised in collaboration with the Aufhebung International Hegelian Association.

Rebecca Comay is professor of philosophy and comparative literature, a core member of the Literature and Critical Theory Program (Victoria College), and an associate member of the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department and the Centre for Jewish Studies. Her research interests include Hegel and 19th century German philosophy; theatricality; Marx and Marxism (including Frankfurt school); psychoanalysis; contemporary French philosophy; trauma and memory; iconoclasm and destruction of art; contemporary art and art criticism; Proust and Beckett. She is currently working on a book on the temporality of deadlines, as well as a project on dramaturgy and dialectic.