The enduring stuff of narrative

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Toon Staes
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Postindustrial Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Individual

The reevaluation of the past in Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Cosmopolis can be seen as a valuable counterargument to Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalistic claim that contemporary society heralds the end of history. The sublime multiplicity of history in both novels illustrates how time eventually collapses in the eternal present of capital and technology. Consequently, it appears that postindustrial society draws in the individual to create a system with no outside. DeLillo’s historiographic metafiction nonetheless shows how rewriting the past can prevent history from being conclusive and teleological. Narrative therefore provides an alternative to established History — in which all events connect in light of the inevitable — but it also resists the solipsistic void of speculation and hearsay.

The Novel as History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Brannigan
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
The End Of History

This chapter discusses the historiographic nature of postmodern novels. The predominance of the historiographic in postmodern fiction is in marked contrast to modernism. Here, postmodernism is distinguished in fiction by its preoccupation with the past. The most striking feature of postmodern fiction is its reinvention of the historical novel. The postmodern historical novel prefers narratives of catastrophe and exhaustion to revolutionary progress or national awakening. Yet as much as it seemed to coincide with the currency of a facile notion of ‘the end of history’, the emergence of ‘historiographic metafiction’ signalled instead the revival of a critical sense of historicity, in which the fabulous and the unbelievable could make ‘history’ credible again.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

scholarly journals Capí­tulo Segundo: Mundo Reo.

Xihmai ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Ignacio Panedas Galindo
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Human Race ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Future ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Individual

Resumen Cuando se empezaron a conocer los testimonios de los supervivientes de los campos de exterminio nazis, la humanidad se consternó. El sufrimiento provocado y la aplicación sistemática y consciente de la técnica a la destrucción de la persona, fueron descubrimientos que pusieron en alerta al hombre sobre la naturaleza del hombre mismo.   Tanto fue el horror que se alcanzó a entrever a través de las narraciones que el  tiempo  se  congeló.  El  reclamo  silencioso  de  las  auténticas  ví­ctimas, quienes murieron, se suspendió en el aire de la memoria hasta que los responsables reconocieran sus culpas. El olvido no podí­a abrazar tan profundos crí­menes.   Por este motivo no puede realizarse el fin de la historia. Los sufrimientos del hombre provocados hasta este grado por el mismo hombre fuerzan un pendiente que ya no puede borrarse. El grito de dolor recuerda a las generaciones futuras la necesidad de una reparación, del perdón, del reconocimiento.   Palabras Clave: Testimonio, memoria, campos de exterminio, fenomenologí­a, hermenéutica, sufrimiento, herencia.   Abstract When testimony from the survivors from Nazi extermination fields were first known, the human race filled with dismay. The suffering provoked and the systematic conscious application of the technique of destruction of the individual, were discoveries that alerted the individual on the nature of the individual itself.   Such a horror was seen through the narrations that time froze.     The silent demand from the authentic victims, who died, was suspended on the air of memory until the responsible recognized their  guilt. Obscurity could not hold such deep crimes.   For this reason the end of history cannot be made. The suffering of the individual provoked up to this point by the individual itself, force an unresolved point that cannot be erased.   The scream of pain reminds the future generations the need to repair, forgive and recognize it.   Key words: Testimony, memory, extermination fields, phenomenology, hermeneutics, suffering, inheritance.

The Necessity of Historicism

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Tinder
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
End Of History ◽  
American Students ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Living Person

American students of society and politics for the most part view “historicism”—the ascription to history of an overall direction and goal—with attitudes ranging from skepticism to overt hostility. In the general view, no valid propositions can be framed concerning matters so shrouded in darkness as the course and the end of history. Indeed it may well be asked, when we use such terms, whether we are referring to realities or merely to inventions of the imagination. Historicist theories are also said to tend to undermine concern for the individual; the needs of the present, living person are likely to shrink into apparent insignificance before the imagined events of a future age. On the part of those who in recent years have seen the bloody trails left by pretended ministers of historical missions, such misgivings are understandable.Are social scientists and political thinkers at liberty, however, dogmatically to reject historicism? It is the purpose of this article to argue that they are not. For if history is without meaning, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that social and political affairs, which make up a large part of what we treat as history, are also without meaning. Why then should one study, or take part in, these affairs? What is at stake, in the last analysis, is our right—or duty—to regard the world we inhabit, not merely as alien material to be used or ignored as we please, but as a realm of being with which we are fundamentally united and in which, consequently, we are properly participants.

Recognition, Deference, and Respect: Generalizing the Lessons of an Asymmetric Asian Order

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brantly Womack
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAs many distinguished academics and officials have pointed out, the current rise of China is not a completely new phenomenon, but rather the return of China to a position of regional centrality and world economic share that were considered normal less than two hundred years ago.1 This fact underlines the importance of history in putting the present into perspective, and at the same time, to the extent that all history is history of the present, it requires a reevaluation of the structure of China's traditional relationships. Hitherto, China's place in modern social science has been in an exotic corner, a failed oriental despotism. To be sure, traditional China did collapse, and today's China is a different China rising in a different world. We might assume that China is rising now precisely because of its differences from traditional China, that it is the last step toward the end of history rather than a resonance with the past. However, the convenience of such an assumption makes it suspect. If China is simply the latest avatar of Western modernity, then it requires of the West some readjustment, but not rethinking. However, the only certainty about China's rise is that it is a complex phenomenon, and the convenience of constructions such as China-as-Prussia or China-as-Meiji Japan derives from their preemption of open-ended study rather than from their insight into complexity. To the extent that China is China, both past and present require reconsideration.

HISTORY AND ITS ENDS IN CHARTIST EPIC

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela K. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Long Poems

In the mid-1800s, two significant and widelyread Chartist poems appeared, both written in prison by Chartist organizers, and both using the epic form to interrogate the present, body forth a utopian future, and rewrite a history conceived both as broadly human and specifically national. These long poems, Thomas Cooper'sPurgatory of Suicides(1845) and Ernest Jones'sThe New World, first published in 1851 and then republished after 1857 as theRevolt of Hindostan, have much to tell us about how radicals envisioned the history of Britain, its relationship with empire, and the fulfillment of the ends of history. Cooper's poem proceeds in ten books, written in Spenserian stanzas, in which he dreams of visiting a purgatory of suicides: mythical and historical personages who have committed suicide debate the reasons for their condition and the condition of the world. Jones's poem was written in couplets, supposedly on the torn pages of a prayer book, in his own blood. The poem surveys the rise and fall of multiple empires, and also surveys recent political history closer to home. The two poems look to the past and the future, to universal history and its end. They thus participate in utopian political discourse, with its emphasis on the end of history, as well as the epic tradition. Both utopian and epic discourse in this period were affiliated with specifically national narratives, and the internationalist and universal elements of the poems sometimes inhabit these genres uneasily. Additionally, both poets attend to the religious tradition of eschatological discourse that underlies the secular notion of the end of history, and work to reconcile it with the political vision they are promoting. These writers use unique combinations of spatial and temporal frames to achieve the reconciliation of their diverse goals with the genres and discourses that they claim and transform.

Generation fables and the ‘end of history’

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Jennie Bristow
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Outside The Box

This chapter examines ‘generationalism’ — using the language of generations to narrate the social and political. It argues that generationalism means that we are in danger of taking historical stories way too personally. The chapter shows that the generationalism of the Sixties was as much about the failure of established institutions and ideologies to grasp what was happening as it was about the experience of the kids and the counterculture. Moving on half a century, the generationalism of the early twenty-first century tells us as much about our present anxieties as it does about the Sixties as a historical period. Whereas the Sixties Boomer was, until fairly recently, a source of wistful fascination, often bringing with it a romanticised nostalgia for a time when people felt they could think and live outside the box, the Boomer-blaming of the present day mobilises the stereotype as an example of everything that is seen to be wrong with the past.

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