Professor David Peimer
The End of the Past: Is the Enlightenment a Mirage?
Summary
Professor David Peimer embarks on a nuanced discussion of the Enlightenment, both historically and in the present day and questions how its perception has shifted overtime. Part 1 of 2.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Well, if I had that answer, I’d have millions of bucks and I’d be living in a beach in Hawaii, I think, I don’t know, it could be human nature, it could be society. But the thing is that these ideas are certainly worth fighting for, thank you.
I don’t think it’s only the media. I think that they are what was the radio in the time of, you know in the 1930s which Goebbels used and manipulated. I don’t think it’s only the media because the media’s also about freedom of thought, freedom of expression, which the radio was and far more people have access cause it’s cheap, you can certain you can discuss ideas, et cetera through the radio and the same with the media today, social media. But that’s always a blessing and a curse with everything. There’s always the dark side, what Adorno called, you know, Freud’s understood the dark side of the enlightenment.
The definition of something appears real or possible, but not so in fact, enlightenment was real. It is indeed under erosion. Yeah, I mean I’m using these words because I’m part of literature and theatre, so I’m using slightly poetic words as well. But I think for me erosion is less. But I do believe that these things are being eroded to a degree. And you know, there’s a call to be pretty vigilant.