Course co-directors: Tetiana Zemliakova (CEU Democracy Institute) and Guillaume Lancereau (European University Institute)
The course aims to problematize politics as a practice of contestation that engages with the meanings of modern historical events. Combining approaches from political theory, intellectual history, and social theory, it introduces students to various academic and public discussions on wars and revolutions and their political interpretations.
To do so, the course reconsiders uncertainty as the key quality of historical events, which manifests both in the course of their development and in later reinterpretations. It thus treats uncertainty as pivotal for politics past and present, by raising questions such as: how do modern politicians rely on uncertainty as a depoliticizing or politicizing tool? How do competing definition of the chronology of the Russo-Ukrainian War affect the war’s strategic meaning? When did the French Revolution begin and end, and why does answering this question make one a political subject? Eventually, this course intends to introduce students to critical work with historical sources while widening their repertoire of analytical strategies.