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SUMMARY:Narrating the Fall of Empires in Weimar and National Socialist Rac
 ial Ideology - Dr. Helen Roche (University of Cambridge)\; Dr. Joachim Wha
 ley (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20131111T170000Z
DTEND:20131111T190000Z
UID:TALK47550@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:William Carruthers
DESCRIPTION:At the turn of the twentieth century\, the idea that the desti
 nies of races\, nations and empires were universal and biologically determ
 ined (wherever and whenever in human history they existed) was the preserv
 e of a minority of racial theorists and academics. However\, within a few 
 decades\, such ideas came to dominate National-Socialist thought\, and wer
 e propagated in ideological and educational material throughout the Third 
 Reich. Using a variety of examples drawn from these racial interpretations
  of history\, concerning both the ancient and the modern world\, Roche arg
 ues that this inculcation of a particular racial historical framework foll
 ows very closely the model of ‘schematic narrative templates’ devised 
 by the sociologist James Wertsch. Wertsch’s work has shown that a crucia
 l element in the formation of collective identity is provided by forcing h
 istorical occurrences to fit into a consistent\, immutable narrative frame
 work\, which can be used both to justify and to legitimise the actions of 
 the nation or ruling power in question. This paper explores the developmen
 t of this phenomenon\, and analyses the ways in which schematic narrative 
 templates of race came to dominate German intellectual and historical thou
 ght during the 1930s and 1940s.
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridg
 e CB3 9DT
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