Europe’s Legacy of Ruptures—As Reflected in Late 20th-Century Literary Discourse

Shortly after the collapse of the USSR, in The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukuyama encircled a spiritual condition pointing “toward establishing capitalist liberal democracies as the end state of the historical process”, while leaving the possibility open for a fall back “into the chaos and bloodshed of history”. In Historien er ikke slut (History has not ended, 2000), Thomas Thurah, a Dane, converses with 36 European writers, most of whom implicitly dispute Fukuyama’s notion of an uplifting end of history. Rather, the common denominator for many of these interlocutors is their emphasis on “the contradiction-filled state of mind being an important part of the historical, social and creative processes that form both us and our world” (p. 454). Thurah concludes that “the contradictory, the paradoxical, the incommensurable or the unstable truths … are characteristics of this reality, which every work of art seeks to give expression”. I investigate 2/3 of these interviews and lay bare their notions of Europe around 2000 and how the interviewees envision their continent’s legacy as informed by a variety of ruptures, some of which they predict will prevail. Simultaneously, I reflect on the conditions of possibility that underlie the authorial discourses and determine their outcomes.

Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. New York: The Free Press.

Jay, M. (1996). From modernism to post-modernism. In T. C. W. Blanning (Ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of modern Europe (pp. 255-278). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.