Aleida Assmann
A Zeitenwende That Has Yet to Come About
In a time of anxiety concerning a proliferation of crises and ruptures, I am interested in a Zeitenwende that has not yet come about (and perhaps may never materialize). I am thinking of the future of the colonial past in Germany and its acknowledgement as part of a more diverse society’s active memory and shared concept of self.
Aleida Assmann held the chair of English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Konstanz, Germany from 1993 to 2014, and has taught as a guest professor at various international universities. The main areas of her research are history of media, history and theory of reading, and cultural memory, with a special emphasis on Holocaust and trauma. Together with her husband Jan Assmann she received the Peace Price of the German Book Trade in 2018. Currently she is directing a research group at the University of Konstanz on the topic of civic strength. Her publications in English include Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices, and Trajectories (ed. with Sebastian Conrad, 2010), Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (2012), Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (2016), and Is the Time Out of Joint? On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime (2020).