Victoria Fareld Professor
Contact
Name and title: Victoria FareldProfessor
Phone: +468163490
Workplace: Department of Culture and Aesthetics Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Room A 458Frescativägen 22B-26
Postal address Institutionen för kultur och estetik106 91 Stockholm
About me
I am Professor of Intellectual history/History of Ideas.
I am co-founder of Stockholm University Network of Cultural Memory Studies and member of the coordinating team of the national Doctoral School of the History of Political Thought. The school is funded by the Swedish National Research Council and runs during the doctoral cycle 2023-2027. I am also a member of Mnemonics Network for Memory Studies.
I have worked at Stockholm University since 2012, and received my PhD at the University of Gothenburg in 2007. I have been a Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Philosophie at Potsdam Universität, at Sophiapol Research Centre at Université Paris-X Nanterre and at New School for Social Research in New York City.
I teach the history of ideas at all levels. Examples of courses related to my research include ‘Traditions of Critical Thinking’, and ‘History, Memory, Forgetfulness’. I supervise undergraduates and PhD students.
My current research focuses on history of philosophy, history of political thought, theory of history, historical time, memory and historical justice.
Ongoing project Justice Beyond the Present: Restitution and the Temporalization of Historical Responsibility 1960-1985, is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2026-2028).
The project examines debates on the restitution of African cultural artefacts between 1965 and 1985 in France, West Germany and international organisations such as the UN, against the backdrop of parallel debates on how to deal with Nazi crimes. The study explores how the legal principle that certain crimes are not subject to a statute of limitations – introduced as an ethical and legal response to the Holocaust – not only shaped discussions on retroactive prosecutions of Nazi perpetrators but also influenced ideas regarding the restitution of cultural heritage looted during colonialism.
By studying both debates together, I hope to gain new insights into previously unexplored connections between the histories of Nazism and colonialism. I am also interested in understanding the conceptions of time that shaped post-war views on responsibility and justice. It is widely known that justice and responsibility developed into global issues after the war as they spread geographically to encompass more and more countries around the world. In my project, I investigate the temporal expansion of issues of responsibility and justice that occurred simultaneously, that is, how, in the aftermath of both Nazism and colonialism, they came to be perceived as legal and ethical issues extending beyond the present, and how this shift paved the way for the long-term perspectives we use today to discuss historical responsibility and intergenerational justice.
2023. "Vulnerability, Violence and Nonviolence", Interpreting Violence: Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics (eds. Cassandra Falke, Victoria Fareld and Hanna Meretoja), New York: Routledge
2022. "Framing the Polychronic Present", Historical Understanding: Past, Present, and Future (eds. Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Lars Deile), London: Bloomsbury, 25-34.
2021. “Time”, The Routledge Companion to Historical Theory, (ed. Chiel van den Akker), London: Routledge, 558-572.
2021. “Entangled Memories of Violence. Jean Améry and Frantz Fanon”, Memory Studies, 14:1, 58-67.
2020. From Marx to Hegel and Back: Capitalism, Critique and Utopia, (eds. Victoria Fareld, Hannes Kuch), London: Bloomsbury.
2020. ”From Marx to Hegel and Back: Toward a Helical Approach”, From Marx to Hegel and Back: Capitalism, Critique and Utopia, (eds. Victoria Fareld, Hannes Kuch), London: Bloomsbury, 1-34.
2019. “Coming to Terms with the Present: Exploring the Chrononormativity of Historical Time”, Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism, (eds. Marek Tamm, Laurent Olivier) London: Bloomsbury, 57-70.
2018. ”History, Justice and the Time of the Imprescriptible, Ethos of History: Time and Responsibility (eds. Stefan Helgesson, Jayne Svenungsson), New York: Berghahn Books.