Posthistoire

"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.