Conceptualizing the End: its Temporality, Dialectics, and Affective Dimension

Since roughly the time of the global financial crisis of 2008, it seems that “the end of history,” famously proclaimed and argued by Francis Fukuyama in the 1990s, has itself come to an end and history has begun to run again. This has coincided with some dramatic changes that started taking place in what is called the capitalist order, which is not surprising, since Fukuyama's thesis was largely tied to the triumph of the then prevailing form of capitalism. However, this end of the end of history predominantly takes the form of human history heading toward all kinds of catastrophes: social, political, environmental, epidemiological – all of them largely interconnected. This is why, much more than was the case during the proclaimed end of history, the figure of the end is forcefully (re)entering our imagination, our thinking, and our social interactions. It also comes accompanied by disbelief, denial, and the hope for a “return” to a previous state, usually referred to as the state of “normalcy”. The proposed research will approach the figure of the end from a philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives by examining its conceptual history and dialectics. This will include an examination of the logical and temporal paradoxes of the end and of ending, as well as their affective and/or ideological undercurrents. The objective of this research is to better understand the current debates and difficulties surrounding the question of the end and of ending, to place these debates in a broader historical and conceptual perspective, and to make significant new conceptual contributions to the notion of the end. We also anticipate that these conceptual contributions will be of significant relevance to many pressing social issues that are part of our current approach to various types of crises.

The complex figure of the end will be approached from three different – albeit connected – angles. The first angle will bring into focus cosmological debates surrounding the issues of finitude and infinity, modern ontologies of temporality, and the question of historicity. The second angle will focus on ways in which various practices, not directly philosophical (art, psychoanalysis), think of the end and its paradoxes. The third angle will focus on the affective, ideological, existential modalities of the end.