E. Traverso: Rethinking Primo Levi

Simon Wiesenthal Lecture Enzo Traverso: Rethinking Primo Levi Datum: Donnerstag, 12. Dezember 2019 Ort: Dachfoyer des Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs, 1010 Wien One century after the birth and more than three decades after the death of Primo Levi, the time has come to go beyond his posthumous canonisation, and to historicise his life and work by considering the distance that separates us from his age. This means carefully distinguishing between his own present and the current uses of his writings. Whereas the destiny of a classic author is to be permanently reinterpreted, this reassessment sometimes results in significant misunderstandings, which are the topics of Enzo Traverso’s lecture. He will analyse respectively Primo Levi’s position in Italian culture, his definition as a Jewish writer and his role as a literary witness of the Holocaust. Enzo Traverso is the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. His work deals with modern European intellectual history. His books, all translated into many languages, include The New Faces of Fascism (2019); Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory (2017); and Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914-1945 (2016).