Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? - Softcover

Niethammer, Lutz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0860916979 ISBN 13: 9780860916970

Publisher: Verso Books, 1994

Synopsis

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 been ignored, for the conception of posthitoire is far from new. Here, Lutz Niethammer, Germany's leading practitioner of 'history from below', explores in fascinating detail the forms the conception has taken in the twentieth century and assembles what amounts to an intellectual history of disillusion and resignation. In his survey of thinkers as diverse as Kojeve, Heidegger and Junger, he finds adherents to the idea of the end of history on the Right and Left. But whether they pinned all 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.

About this title

Review:

..". a fascinating, provocative and timely piece of intellectual history."--Malcolm Bull, London Review of Books

"Niethammer's book ... tells a much more interesting story than Fukuyama's and deserves to have a more lasting impact."--Stephen Howe, New Statesman and Society.

About the Author:

Lutz Niethammer is Director of the Institute of Cultural Sciences at the Nordrhein-Westfalen Wissenschaftszentrum in Essen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0860916979
• ISBN 13: 9780860916970
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158