Not quite the
end
Francis Fukuyama has been strident, since 11 September, in re-asserting,
in the Wall Street Journal, that history is indeed
foreclosed, terminally in suspense, on a drip feed, but nonetheless
‘we remain at the end of history’. There was surely a
distinct feeling in late September as the bombing escalated, that
this was not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning.
For Fukuyama, who must certainly be close to delivery of the sequel
volume to the End of History, there is surely an overweening
imperative to remain in the non-fiction best-seller league. The
new volume is keenly awaited. Why in a postmodern global culture
must modernity continue to be the assumed ideal state? Fukuyama
persists that, ‘I remain right. Modernity is a very powerful
freight train that will not be derailed by recent events, however
painful’. Fukuyama does admit, ‘there does seem to be
something about Islam, or at least fundamentalist Islam, that makes
Muslim societies particularly resistant to modernity’. Roll
on 2002, and bring back the shutters on history. But actually, post-Foucault,
post-Lacan, post-Jameson (let alone Derrida) some of us also feel
modernity is not the endgame.
