Political fiction

In tackling "The Long Middle Ages of Ambrose of Milan", the previous year's lecture was aimed at that ancient period (the Middle Ages) when an even older memory (Ambrose of Milan) kept coming back to haunt the present, a past that never ceased to begin again, that transformed itself by beginning again, but which in return relaunched and transformed political time. This continually active, vivacious, energetic interplay of forms is, in short, the opposite of a tradition, which encumbers the present with an insistent, obstinate, inert past; the opposite of a past that doesn't pass, since the 2015-2016 year was all about passages, struggles, reminiscences, spectres, promises (everything Walter Benjamin dreamed of in, precisely, The Book of Passages). This interplay of forms is a political configuration, which is to say, the very presence of several political fictions. "Memories, fictions, beliefs" was the first part of last year's title. By targeting the middle term, at the articulation of the triptych, "fictions", we are perhaps seeking nothing more than an answer to this question: what do we believe to be true about what we remember?