scholarly journals Recycled Dystopias: Cyberpunk and the End of History

Arts ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elana Gomel

While cyberpunk is often described as a dystopian genre, the paper argues that it should be seen rather as a post-utopian one. The crucial difference between the two resides in the nature of the historical imagination reflected in their respective narrative and thematic conventions. While dystopia and utopia (structurally the same genre) reflect a teleological vision of history, in which the future is radically different from the present, post-utopia corresponds to what many scholars, from Fredric Jameson and Francis Fukuyama to David Bell, have diagnosed as the “end of history” or rather, the end of historical teleology. Post-utopia reflects the vision of the “broad present”, in which the future and the past bleed into, and contaminate, the experience of “now”. From its emergence in the 1980s and until today, cyberpunk has progressively succumbed to the post-utopian sensibility, as its earlier utopian/dystopian potential has been diluted by nostalgia, repetition and recycling. By analyzing the chronotope of cyberpunk, the paper argues that the genre’s articulation of time and space is inflected by the general post-utopian mood of global capitalism. The texts addressed include both novels (William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Matthew Mather’s Atopia) and movies (Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 and Ex Machina).

Science ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 339 (6115) ◽  
pp. 96-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Quoidbach ◽  
Daniel T. Gilbert ◽  
Timothy D. Wilson

We measured the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people who ranged in age from 18 to 68 and asked them to report how much they had changed in the past decade and/or to predict how much they would change in the next decade. Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This “end of history illusion” had practical consequences, leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110368
Author(s):  
Brian W. Haas ◽  
Kazufumi Omura

The End of History Illusion (EoHI) is the tendency to report that a greater amount of change occurred in the past than is predicted to occur in the future. We investigated if cultural differences exist in the magnitude of the EoHI for self-reported life satisfaction and personality traits. We found an effect of culture such that the difference between reported past and predicted future change was greater for U.S. Americans than Japanese, and that individual differences in two aspects of the self (self-esteem and self-concept clarity) mediated the link between culture and the magnitude of the EoHI. We also found a robust cultural difference in perceptions of past change; U.S. Americans tended to think about the past more negatively than their Japanese counterparts. These findings yield new insight onto the link between cultural context and the way people remember the past and imagine the future.


Author(s):  
Jozef Novak-Marcincin ◽  
Daniela Gîfu ◽  
Mirela Teodorescu

“Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks” (2013) published by Shaker Verlag, by Professor Ştefan Vlăduţescu from University of Craiova and Professor Ella Magdalena Ciuperca from National Academy of Intelligence “Mihai Viteazul” Bucuresti, is a book of intellectual elevation and high expression of ideas. The authors’ hypothesis and the nuclear idea of their book is that by their amplitude, by their performance, and by their self-generating, self-organization and self-improvement capabilities, social networks are the next flood level of communication. “The observational-wave of hypothesis is reinforced by an interrogative wave: what is next after next? If "End of Metaphysics" in Martin Heidegger is perfection of metaphysics, if the "End of History" in Francis Fukuyama is perfection of history, we believe that "next flood level" is neither the last level, nor the perfect level of communication” asserts the authors. Social network is not quite the perfection it is only the configured direction to untouchable perfection. Social network is the path to perfection in constant concern itself, in self-knowledge, and in self-superior capitalization of humanity as a whole, of humanity as a global, integrated and homogeneous and with obvious nuclei of heterogeneity macro-social network. However, next of the next is something, at the same time apparent and hidden, from the actual potential of the current concrete. The future always has its seeds in the past and the present.


2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Blecher

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.


2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson

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.


Xihmai ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Ignacio Panedas Galindo

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.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan

Abstract: In 1989 Francis Fukuyama with his article The End of History? In the journal The National Interest revolves a speculative thesis that after the West conquered its ideological rival, hereditary monarchy, fascism and communism, the constellation of the world of international politics reached a remarkable consensus to liberal democracy. A few years later, Samuel P. Huntington came up with a more provocative thesis that ideological-based war would be a civilization-based war in his article, The Clash of Civilizations? In the journal Foreign Affairs. It reveals that in the future the world will be shaped by interactions among the seven or eight major civilizations of Western civilization: Confucius, Japan, Islam, Hinduism, Orthodox Slavs, Latin America and possibly Africa. Huntington directed the West to pay particular attention to Islam, for Islam is the only civilization with great potential to shake Western civilization. Departing from the above hypotheses, this paper will specifically discuss the bias of Fukuyama and Huntington's thesis on Islam, and how its solution to build a dialogue of civilization by taking the paradigm of dialogue from Ibn Rushd and Raghib As-Sirjani. Abstrak: Pada tahun 1989 Francis Fukuyama dengan artikelnya The End of History? Dalam jurnal The National Interest revolusioner tesis spekulatif bahwa setelah Barat telah menaklukkan lawan-lawan ideologisnya, monarki herediter, fasisme dan komunisme, konstelasi politik internasional mencapai konsensus yang luar biasa untuk demokrasi liberal. Beberapa tahun kemudian, Samuel P. Huntington muncul dengan tesis yang lebih provokatif bahwa perang berbasis ideologis akan menjadi perang berbasis peradaban dalam artikelnya, The Clash of Civilisations? Dalam jurnal Luar Negeri. Ini mengungkapkan bahwa di masa depan akan dibentuk oleh interaksi antara tujuh atau delapan peradaban utama peradaban Barat: Konfusius, Jepang, Islam, Hindu, Slavia Ortodoks, Amerika Latin dan mungkin Afrika. Perhatian Huntington pada Islam adalah potensi terpenting untuk mengguncang peradaban Barat. Berangkat dari hipotesis di atas, makalah ini akan secara khusus membahas bias tesis Fukuyama dan Huntington tentang Islam, dan bagaimana mereka akan mengambil paradigma dialog dari Ibn Rushd dan Raghib As-Sirjani.


Co-herencia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (34) ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Francis Fukuyama

Hello, my name is Francis Fukuyama and I am delighted to be able to participate in this symposium at EAFIT, on The End of History? I am a Senior fellow at Stanford University and in the summer of 1989, I published an article in the journal The National Interest titled The End of History? 30 years have passed since the publication of this article and this was a good opportunity to reflect on what has happened to the state of global democracy and global politics in those three decades.


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