Derrida and the End of History

by Stuart Sim

In the POSTMODERN ENCOUNTER series, the author places Derrida's rejection of Fukuyama's claim within a wider tradition of endist thought. The Frenchman's critique of endism is highlighted as one of his most valuable contributions to the post-modern cultural debate as well as the most accessible entry to deconstruction.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics

80 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 1995

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"How can one be late to the end of history? A question for today."--Jacques Derrida.

Joke about Derrida: What is the difference between the Mafia and deconstruction? Answer: The Mafia makes you an offer you can't refuse and deconstruction makes you an offer you can't understand.

Jean-Francois Lyotard: "While we talk, the sun is getting older. It will explode in 4.5 billion years. It's just a little beyond the halfway point of its expected lifetime. . . . That in my view is the sole serious question facing humanity today."

I can't imagine how Lyotard would deal with the climate catastrophe on our doorstep.

The main problem of the book is that the term "end of history" is never explained clearly enough, not that anyone can explain that.

[Jeroen Vandenbossche · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pfffff

[Nikola Š · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Series: I found this on my shelf, where did it come from?)

I've never read Derrida, but what I've read of him here I found annoying to no end. Actually, I found this entire book annoying - a lot of generic "discussion" about a complete non-issue (Has history ended 30 years ago? Well sure, if you want to define history in a certain very specific way that suits your argument and gives you a catchy book title). A bunch of works and philosophers are quoted with no reason but to fill in several pages and show the author's "breadth". And finally there are a few banal lines from Derrida, gushed over and overanalyzed. The only reason I finished the book is because it's 50 pages long, and I still found it a chore.

There's no humanity here. Just words for words' sake.

[H Wesselius · Rating 4 out of 5]

read after reading the end of history just to straighten yourself out

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuart Sim's very short (75-page) 1995 exploration of Jacques Derrida's politics as we moved towards the Millennium is still well worth reading for its clarity of exposition (which is a lot more than can be said about Derrida himself).

It is about a riposte to Fukyama's neo-Hegelian notion that history was coming to an end (in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union), a thesis that was ridiculous if fashionable then and looks even more so as we survey the world of 2025.

There is not much point any more in engaging with Fukuyama any more than one might engage with 'Mein Kampf' - except as an historical curiosity that helped fuel an unbalanced ideology (in his case the variants of liberal internationalism and neo-conservatism that have plagued us ever since).

However, such interventions at least have the virtue of provoking a reaction. Sim's account of Derrida's response is not merely lucid. It managed to trigger in this reader a degree of respect for Derrida who I had pigeon-holed previously as a rather useless and obscure navel-gazer.

In 'Specters of Marx' (1994), Derrida comes down from his ivory tower long enough to apply his insights about how language operates to the political sphere. It seems, thirty years on, that he was more right than not.

It is also a lesson that Marx still has something to say to us about power relations in the world even if there is no cause to 'believe in him'. When Fukuyama is long forgotten, the spectre that is Marx will continue to haunt our world.

Unfortunately Derrida's use of his deconstructionist form of thinking is not something that can affect more than a very few people active in the world. Sartre perhaps was the only philosopher capable of creating a potentially mass level activist philosophy after Marx and even that was never truly mass.

Derrida's Marx is also a shorn of the simplicities of any ideology that can mobilise humanity. His considerations tend to descend into word play and the game. Marx has 'right' things to say (though not to be wholly 'right) but it is left to us to decide how to say these things on our own terms.

It is an excellent and lucid little pamphlet that captures the atmosphere of the intellectual life of the 1990s as left-inclined thinkers fought against the pessimism that had emerged as a Sovietism that they never really liked in any case no longer offered a counterweight to neo-liberalism and empire.

Most intellectuals simply went with the flow and became what we would now call 'liberal-left', a sad travesty of the liberatory thought of the bulk of the twentieth century, but we get a hint in this book that there was a baby to be saved from going out with the bath water.

[Galatea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely brief, but a good essay covering exactly what the title says: Derrida, Deconstruction, and Endism (particularly as espoused by Fukuyama's book The End of History)

My main impressions from this is that Derrida constantly strives to play the role of the devil's advocate, constantly reminding us of the subjective grounds that language and discourse are based on. Personally, I vehemently agree with the stance of "all interpretations being equally valid", as this conflates the (theoretical) arbitrariness of linguistic utterances with the (supposed) arbitrariness of the conceptual systems built up around us.

Language is not completely, absolutely objective as it is an artificial construct, but it is something that, from the perspective of the individual, is so large and abstract in scope that for all intents and purposes, it might as well be.

Derrida's Hauntology is an interesting tool in the history of ideas, looking at how boundaries can be rendered blurred, if not entirely arbitrary, as well as showing how sentiments of this or that ending having a family resemblance to various things that came before.

A rejection of the total arbitrariness of intellectual discourse, especially towards those radical statements that seem to diminish the importance of politics, philosophy, or any other intellectual discipline, can be in my view remedied by grounding the human subject within the framework of embodied philosophy. We are all situated within a particular culture, society, history, and body, and to ignore the specific contigencies of that is to be blind to the world outside the text.

[Aprianti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derrida benar jika mengingatkan kita bahwa sejarah tidak berakhir, atau tidak bisa dianggap telah berakhir dengan sekadar sabda dari seorang ideolog yang memiliki kepentingan personal atas propagandanya. Bahwa akhir sejarah itu tidak ada. Saya menyetujui apa yang Derrida sebut dalam tulisan Stuart Sim; yang berakhir itu konsep sejarahnya.

[helsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want an hour's worth of reading that briefly outlines Derrida's position in the post-Fukuyama discourse landscape this is it. Yes, it's oversimplified, but it's also what, 73 pages long? I don't think it ever promised to be a deep dive, it does what it's set out to do and it does it well.

[Jue Chhakchhuak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derrida, from obscurity to clarity. Enlightening and informative. Stuart Sim has done an excellent job.

[I am he as You are me · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dont think that Derrida was right about marxism but rest of the book was quiet helpful to understand modern world

[Nav · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the crisp little book I was hoping for, and instead somewhat oversimplified. Still, some useful sections in this and it can be read in a day or two.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review, and the end of history, are deferred.

[Hermione Laake · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to read look at Derrida, who is a notoriously difficult theorist. Discusses 'endism', and also reviews The Inhuman which sounds an interesting text, since it predicts that technoscience wishes to preserve life past the end of the universe without humans, which is what Baudrillard discusses in Art and Artifact. Interesting snapshot of various theorists.

[Amyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting

[Daymian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshingly simple take for Derrida's works, which have been described charitably as 'purposely obscure'. Don't miss this book if you are trying to wrap your head around Derrida.

[Michael Brady · Rating 2 out of 5]

WTF?!!