Title: Posthistoire : has history come to an end? /
Authors: Niethammer, Lutz, 1939-; Laak, Dirk van
Publisher: Verso,
Year: 1992
Subjects: Civilization, Modern; History Philosophy
Abstract: "Whether its ultimate resting-place is deemed to be Fukuyama's liberal democracy or Baudrillard's hyperreality, history, according to a number of pundits, has reached the end of the line. In the inflated debates that have ensued, it is precisely history which has often been ignored, for the conception of posthistoire is far from new. Here, Lutz Niethammer, Germany's leading practitioner of 'history from below', explores in revealing detail the forms the conception has taken in the twentieth century, and assembles what amounts to an intellectual history of disillusion and resignation." "Niethammer finds adherents to the idea of the end of history among thinkers of the Right and Left. But whether they pinned their hopes on the nation or the proletariat, in different ways they have all conflated the apparent collapse of a particular historical project with the collapse of history itself. Niethammer gives a fascinating analysis of the jaundiced reaction of intellectual elites during the interwar years to the rise of mass culture and the crises of mass movements. And he offers a fruitful contrast through an evocative reading of Walter Benjamin's work as a historian. Benjamin, too, saw ominous signs in technological mass civilization, but refused to deny the fact that people make and transform history. It is a similar approach which this remarkable book advocates, and exemplifies. For all those who still doubt that human history has ground to a halt, Posthistoire will be stimulating reading."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: 1. Invitation to a Tracking of the Zeitgeist -- 2. Retrogression: Loss Or Overcoming of History? I. The End of the History of Bourgeois Society? II. Posthistorical Modernization -- 3. From 'End State' to 'Exterminism': On Some Sceptical Tropes Used in Diagnosing the Twentieth Century. I. Dialogue of Spirits. II. The Megamachine. III. Nature and Death -- 4. Recapitulation -- 5. History, Destinies and the Resurrection of the Lord: Metaphors of the Impact of History. I. Hegel's Man on Horseback. II. Junger's Forest Way. The Adventure of Power and the Myth of Nature. The Roulette Wheel of History. The Age of the Titanic. Land and Sea. Passage de la ligne. Excursus: Leading the Leader. Decline into Profundity. Postscript on Forest and Reality. III. De Man's Current. Biographical Note (1). Disappearance of the Dinosaurs. Biographical Note (2). The 'Social Protectorate' -- 6. The Blown-Away Angel: On the Posthistory of a Historical Epistemology of Danger. At the Moment of Danger. The Chess Automaton. The Angel. Excursus on Recent Consideration of the Gender of Angels. Thinking History in Danger. Reason Unfit to Fly -- 7. The Dissolution of History. I. The Legacy of Salvationist History. II. The Will to Powerlessness. III. History and Posthistoire.