scholarly journals Spectacular malaise: Art and the end of history

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Martin Lang
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
History Narratives ◽  
Art Collectives

Abstract This article makes two main claims: that Debord's concept of the 'integrated spectacle' is related to end of History narratives and that the related concept of 'disinformation' is manifested in new forms of media-driven warfare. These claims are substantiated through a comparative analysis between Debord's texts and contemporary politics, primarily as described by Adam Curtis and by the RETORT collective. The resulting understanding of our contemporary politics is a situation where subjects who appear to be free, are in fact only free to choose between competing brands of neo-liberalism that manipulate and baffle to obfuscate their true agendas. This situation is termed a 'spectacular malaise'. The article then critiques post-Marxist claims to a re-birth of History and therefore a potential end to the spectacular malaise. It argues that the Arab Spring and Occupy movement did not signal an end to the end of History, as they were unable to articulate an alternative vision. This situation is compared to the last days of the Soviet Union, when change also seemed unimaginable. It identifies Mark Fisher's call for activists to demonstrate alternative possibilities and reveal contingency in apparently natural orders to counter the spectacular malaise. Three art collectives are considered as potential candidates to take up this challenge: Women on Waves, Voina and SUPERFLEX. The article concludes that while making actual social and political change is useful for demonstrating alternative possibilities, it is art's symbolic value that reveals contingency and strikes at the heart of the spectacular malaise.

Valentin Silvestrov and the Echoes of Music History

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-271
Author(s):  
Peter Schmelz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Music History ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The End Of History

In 1980 Soviet Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov began a series of “postludes,” a genre representing, in his words, a “collecting of echoes, a form opening not to the end, as is more usual, but to the beginning.” This article examines Silvestrov’s Symphony no. 5 (1980–82), and the theory, practice, and reception of his evolving “post” style. The symphony represents a unique congruence of modernism and postmodernism, nostalgia and continuity, expressed at the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the twentieth century, and what many believed to be the end of history. Completed near the conclusion of the Brezhnev period of stagnation, the symphony was intended to assuage the public’s acute dissatisfaction with life in the USSR. Yet when it was first heard in the mid-1980s, it offered a comforting familiarity amid the bewildering acceleration of perestroika. Examining Silvestrov’s “post” style requires considering the sociocultural impact of his sense of ending by treating his eschatology as a useful fiction that illuminates the conflicting sensations of stasis and acceleration during the last decades of the USSR. This article draws on interviews with Silvestrov and his close associates, as well as the Silvestrov Collection at the Paul Sacher Stiftung.

Fukuyama, Liberal Democracy and the New World Order: Back to the End of History

Itinerario ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Us Hegemony ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Political Realities

Fukuyama's thesis of the end of history evoked a great deal of attention because it seemed to provide the ideological foundation for a new round of US hegemony, the ideological gloss for a new American assertiveness. The mood in US debates at the time had been pessimistic, while global political realities, in particular the weakening of the Soviet Union, provided opportunities for a new American assertiveness. Setting forth an ideological stance for the post-Cold War political dispensation, Fukuyama's essay filled the ideology gap.

Citizens without Sovereignty: Transfer and Ethnic Cleansing in Israel

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Blecher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Francis Fukuyama ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
The End Of History

The term “ethnic cleansing” vaulted to international prominence in 1992, shortly after Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history. Popularized during the narrow window of optimism between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Ussama Bin Ladin, the phrase was used to describe events in the recalcitrant states that had not gotten the message that liberal democracy was the way of the future. The product of a particular time and place—Yugoslavia in the contemporary era—ethnic cleansing was generalized into an analytic category, stretched across the globe and the twentieth century, and, on occasion, transformed into a transhistorical characteristic of humanity. In this sense, the category of ethnic cleansing is too large: scholars and journalists have vitiated the term's explanatory power by grouping together sundry events.

A Critique of Neo-Malthusian Marxism: Society, Nature, and Population

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Burkett
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
New Left ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Marxist Ideology

AbstractRecent decades have seen a rethinking and renewal of Marxism on various levels, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s when New-Left movements in the developed capitalist countries combined with Maoist, Guevarist, and other Third-World liberation struggles to challenge the ossified theory and practice of Soviet-style communism and traditional social democracy. More recently, the rethinking of Marxism has been driven largely by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its official Marxist ideology, and by the movement toward neoliberal ‘free market’ policies on a global scale, which together have brought forth a tidal wave of frankly pro-capitalist as well as ‘postmodern’ left varieties of ‘end of history'-type thinking. The contemporary challenge to Marxism, however, also has a positive side in the form of popular revolts against the neoliberalisation of the global economy – the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, the December 1995 public sector upheavals in France, and many others, not to mention the heroic struggle of the Cuban people against the threat of recolonisation by US and global capital. Here the challenge is to incorporate the changing forms of working-class movement, and their new prefigurations of post-capitalist society, into the theory and practice of Marxian communism.

Der große Wahn

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bargatzky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
End Of History ◽  
American Century ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World

In these days, we live in a new Cold War. On the side of Western elites, the disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union was seen as representing the End of History and a permanent triumph of democratic values. American triumphalism, an expression of the idea of Manifest Destiny, believed that America was capable of reshaping the world in its image. According to this concept, the world was entering a New World Order in which international norms and transnational principles of human rights would prevail over the traditional prerogatives of sovereign governments. Promoting regime change was considered a legitimate act of foreign policy. In reality, all of this turned out to be illusionary. Instead of promoting peace, the attempt to usher in a New American Century resulted in international terrorism and endless wars in Afghanistan and the Near East. The eastward enlargement of NATO entails the risk of nuclear war. The New World Order turns out to be a big delusion, endangering the survival of humankind.

scholarly journals Islam and the End of History

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-535
Author(s):  
Ali A. Mazrui
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Seminal Article ◽  
The Cold War

IntroductionThe debate about the end of history raises issues that sometimestouch almost upon the philosophy of history, insofar as they relate to thesignificance of not only a particular century but of the human species.Francis Fukuyama provoked this debate in his seminal article entitled,"The End of History?" in the journal The National Interest. 'At the end ofthe twentieth century, Fukuyama saw "an unabashed Victory of economicand political liberalism."' His central argument was that the whole worldwas moving towards a liberal democratic capitalist system that was destinedto be the final sociopolitical paradigm of all human evolution. AsFukuyama put it:What we may be witnessing is just not the end of the Cold War,or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but theend of history as such that is, the end point of mankind's ideologicalevolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracyas the final form of human govemment.For Fukuyama, at the time of writing the original article (in 1989),the momentous changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, ...

Political Development

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Bates
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Newly Industrialized Countries ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Historical Developments

This article traces the trajectory of scholarship in the field of political development, beginning with the rise of what became known as “modernization theory” in the 1960s, which saw political development gain recognition as a subfield of political science. The article cites the works of prominent scholars within the modernization school and associates the birth of the subfield with historical developments spanning World War II and the war in Vietnam. It also discusses the transition from modernization theory to neoclassical political economy, made possible by the emergence of the newly industrialized countries and the fall of the Soviet Union. Finally, it considers the rise of democracy following the demise of communism, along with the study of political geography and the study of the historical determinants of contemporary politics.

The Material Constitution: Ordoliberalism, Neoliberalism, and the Deradicalization of Political Opposition

2021 ◽  
pp. 118-138
Author(s):  
Michael A. Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Constitution ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social Market

<Online Only>This chapter considers how societal changes contributed to the reconstitution of post-war Europe in such a way as to restrain sovereignty, depoliticize the economy, and deradicalize politics. The chapter traces the re-foundation of an economic liberalism that had collapsed in the interwar period, attending to the influence of ordoliberalism and neo-liberalism in the constitutional imagination. It examines how economic liberalism was tempered in practice, as a result of social democratic and Christian democratic influences, the realpolitik of a programme of social market economy, and the process of European economic integration itself. It goes on to consider how the economic constitution was entrenched along with the ‘end of ideology’ in Europe, as even notionally communist parties turned towards the political mainstream and rescinded any revolutionary ambitions, long before the ‘end of history’ was proclaimed in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. The chapter concludes that the economic constitution does not signify the triumph of liberal democracy, but of technocratic managerialism, establishing a path that would be deepened, but also contested, after Maastricht.</Online Only>

Racism and Nationalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Peter Rutland
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
East Europe ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article reviews the current scholarship around racism and nationalism, two of the mostly hotly debated issues in contemporary politics. Both racism and nationalism involve dividing humanity into groups and setting up some groups as innately superior to others. Until recently, racism and nationalism were both widely seen as unpleasant relics of times past, destined to disappear as the principles of equality and human rights become universally embraced. But both concepts have proved their resilience in recent years. Scholars have been devoting new attention to the “racialization” of ethnic and national identities in the former Soviet Union and East Europe, the regions that are the main focus of this journal. The article examines the prevailing approaches to understanding the terms “racism” and “nationalism,” which are distinct but overlapping categories of analysis and vehicles of political mobilization. Developments in genomics have complicated the relationship between perceptions of race as a purely social phenomenon. The essay explores the way racism and nationalism play out in two self-proclaimed “exceptional” political systems – the Soviet Union and the United States – which have played a prominent role in global debates about race and nation. It briefly discusses developments in other regions, such as the debate over multiculturalism in Europe.

Under the Weight of the Soviet Legacy and Political Repressions: The Radical Left in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Sergey Sergeev ◽  
Alexandra Kuznetsova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
Radical Left

Abstract Mass protest movements of the early 2010s, particularly the Occupy movement, stimulated the rise of radical left organizations globally. In Southern Europe, radical left parties celebrated their first electoral successes. In Russia, radical left organizations were also influenced by this upsurge of social protest movements and participated in the Bolotnaya protests in 2011–2012 but were marginalized and disintegrated shortly after, resuming their activities only by 2019. This article explores the radical left movements and groups in Russia and offers projections for their future. The Russian radical left is divided into three sub-groups: fundamentalist communists who identify with Stalin and the Soviet Union, libertarian socialists and communists (subdivided into neo-anarchists, autonomists, and neo-Trotskyists), and hybrid organizations (e.g., the Left Front). These organizations face two major constraints unknown to their Western counterparts. First, Russia’s authoritarian regime blocks opportunities for independent, particularly electoral, politics. This reveals itself in targeted repressions against left radicals and anarchists. Second, the dominance of the CPRF blocks any potential of strong left opposition. Unless these restrictions are lifted, radical left organizations in Russia will not be able to overcome their current crisis.

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