Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times | Are.na

linear narrative won’t do; what’s needed is something closer to the way that women in southern Africa discuss an important event in the life of their community. ‘They describe it and then circle around it,’ Ranger wrote, ‘constantly returning to it, widening it out and bringing into it past memories and future anticipations.’3 The Jewish text, the

A sense of belonging to what-has-been and to the yet-to-come is what distinguishes man from other animals. Yet to face History is to face the tragic. Which is why many prefer to look away. To decide to engage oneself in History requires, even when the decision is a desperate one, hope. An earring of hope.

Benjamin’s angel tells us history is what happens, but the Angel of Alternate History tells that our acts count, that we are making history all the time, because of what doesn’t happen as well as what does. Only that angel can see the atrocities not unfolding, but we could learn to study effects more closely. Instead we don’t look, and a radical ch