As a dissident under communism, Václav Havel insisted on the imperative “to live in truth.” Ukrainian novelist Vladimir Rafeenko has invoked as a literary refrain of taking responsibility zdes’ i seichas. Here and now. One must be a human being—he insists—here and now.”
Marci Shore on being responsible and atoning on behalf of those who lived before us, seeing the past with eyes wide open: “We are responsible for facing the truth. The source of responsibility is not personal guilt; the source of responsibility is being-in-the-world. Responsibility transcends the division between guilt and innocence; there is no escape from it.”
Bio of Marci Shore:
Marci Shore, award-winning author and professor of modern European cultural and intellectual history at Yale University.
Her research focuses on the intellectual history of twentieth and twenty-first century Central and Eastern Europe. She is the translator of Michał Głowiński’s The Black Seasons and the author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, and The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution.
An open lecture organized with the support and friendship of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Belarus
NB! The lecture will be held on July 12, at 16:00 in the aud. 303. To participate, please, register via the link.