Lecture Manu Karuka

The Necessity of the Future

Abstract

This talk examines theoretical reactions to the turn in international politics between the years 1989 and 1992, a period that Eric Hobsbawm identified as the close of the short twentieth century. Marked perhaps most definitively by the dissolution of the USSR and of communist governments in Eastern and Central Europe, these years also saw the demise of military dictatorships in the Caribbean and Latin America; the end of apartheid in South Africa; European unification under the Maastricht Treaty; removal of barriers for the circulation of finance capital across national borders; the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro; the commemoration of 500 years since the voyages of Columbus; and the rise of far-right movements across the world. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously argued that the apparent demise of communism marked the “end of history,” proving that liberal democracy was in fact the endpoint of humanity’s social and political evolution. This talk examines the resonances of Fukuyama’s conservative position with influential turns within Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies during these years, when calls for “radical democracy” accepted Fukuyama’s premise and outlook. Rather than the “end of history,” I argue, these years instead teach us about the necessity of the future, the necessity of breaking with the legacies of 500 years of imperialism and bourgeois hegemony..