Remember, Remember ...

摘要

When Marx wrote in his Eighteenth Brumaire that 'Tradition from all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living', he was referring to the absurd baggage of pretensions by which the French bourgeoisie pursued its revolution, enacting 'new scenes in history' by means of a 'borrowed language' (Marx 2002, pp. 19-20). But rummaging through past traditions, acting out new scenes in the vocabularies of the past and, doubtless, bearing the consequences, is what political theorists seek to do by profession. The question is, what can reasonably be achieved with the traditions of the dead generations, and will the consequences end up a nightmare?