Haunting History

Ethan Kleinberg is Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University and the author of Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961 (2005).

"Ethan Kleinberg's book is the first deconstructive treatment of the recent debate over the nature of historical time, the presence of the past in the present, and the nature of historicity characteristic of modernity. It's also a healthy response to all of those critics of deconstruction who never bothered reading Derrida sufficiently deeply. It is serious. It is stimulating. It is original."—Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz "In this eagerly awaited and important book, Ethan Kleinberg makes an impassioned and convincing plea for historians to reflect on the theory and practice of their discipline. Inspired by Derrida and deeply immersed in the traditions of historical scholarship, he argues that a rigorous understanding of the past shows why it is necessarily open to continual revision."—Edward Baring, Drew University "[I]f we want to continue engaging in the project of history, then we need to appreciate how, beyond the enlightenment project of knowing it, the nineteenth century project of progressively realizing it, and the twentieth century's fragmentation of it, we are in effect haunted by the past....It is to the young historian that this book will be of most value, the historian in the making, preparing to devote herself to exploring the past with intelligence and imagination, a decision she made very likely out of this sense of a haunting past"—Réal Fillion, INTH Book Review

• Introduction1. Haunting History2. Presence in Absentia3. Chladenius, Droysen, Dilthey: Back to Where We've Never Been4. The Analog Ceiling5. Past Possible and Possible Pasts