Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism

Milen G. Jissov

DOI:10.1080/10848770.2019.1621080

Corpus ID: 197707765

Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism

@article{Jissov2020AtavisticNQ,
  title={Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism},
  author={Milen G. Jissov},
  journal={The European Legacy},
  year={2020},
  volume={25},
  pages={38 - 61}
}

Milen G. Jissov

Published 2020

Philosophy

The European Legacy

ABSTRACT This article offers a critique of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of totalitarianism as formulated in her magnum opus—The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). It argues that, to comprehend totalitarianism, Arendt forged a heterodox method of historical analysis. Employing that method, she conceived totalitarianism as a form of transcendence of historical context. In doing so, however, she ignored crucial historical contexts that were in fact related to the history of totalitarianism… CONTINUE READING

View on Taylor & Francis