While Arendt doesn’t refer explicitly to the cluster of concepts around memory very often, it emerges as a crucial ‘unthought’ idea in her work, from her dissertation to her last, unfinished, book. This talk focuses on the uses of memory in Arendt’s work and suggests that by using the idea of memory, we are able to draw out conclusions about key issues of ethics and political theory.

Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. He works on contemporary literature and literary theory, contemporary philosophy and on Holocaust and Genocide studies. He’s the author of eight books, including The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature (Oxford UP, 2017) and the editor or co-editor of ten more, including Brexit and Literature (London: Routledge, 2018).