The 'end of history' revisited : Christa Wolf's 'Kassandra' and Jeanette Winterson's 'Sexing the cherry'

  • In his article "The End of History?", originally published in the journal "The National Interest" in Summer 1989, Frances Fukuyama argued that 'the triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives to Western liberalism.' It was in this respect that history had reached its 'end': the course of history in the sense of 'mankind's logical evolution' had arrived at 'the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government'. [...] A look at some of the historical fiction written in the 1980s might suggest ways out of this potential imaginative impasse, offering up alternative possibilities, or 'Gegenwelten', in place of the dispiriting spectacle of history-on-repeat. Fukuyama himself does not mention literature. In fact, the historical fiction of the 1980s reveals a space in which the meaning of 'history' is still very much contested and where the threat of the 'end of history' in its more obvious sense - in the form of nuclear war or climate apocalypse - emerges as a force that speaks powerfully to the anxiety of our present moment. Two evocative novels that have much to tell us in these respects are Christa Wolf's "Kassandra" and Jeanette Winterson's "Sexing the Cherry". Published in 1984 and 1989, these two texts challenged the idea of rational progress and 'mankind's logical evolution' by raising the prospect of a distinctive feminist poetics - of 'écriture féminine' and 'what it will do' as Hélène Cixous had put it in her 1975 essay "The Laugh of the Medusa". The 'Gegenwelten' they propose suggest ways out of the macho strait jacket of violence, destruction and impending nuclear war.

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Metadaten
Author:David AndersonGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-689600
URL:https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2022/08/01/david-anderson-the-end-of-history-revisited-christa-wolfs-kassandra-and-jeanette-wintersons-sexing-the-cherry/
DOI:https://doi.org/10.13151/zfl-blog/20220801-01
ISSN:2748-5072
Parent Title (German):ZfL Blog : Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Series (Serial Number):ZfL Blog : Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin (01.08.2022)
Publisher:Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of Periodical
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2022/08/04
Date of first Publication:2022/08/01
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2022/09/22
Tag:Gegenwelten
GND Keyword:Wolf, Christa; Kassandra; Winterson, Jeannette; Sexing the cherry; Fukuyama, Francis; The end of history and the last man; Geschichtsphilosophie
Volume:2022
Issue:01.08.2022
Page Number:6
First Page:1
Last Page:6
Dewey Decimal Classification:8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik
8 Literatur / 82 Englische, altenglische Literaturen / 820 Englische, altenglische Literaturen
8 Literatur / 83 Deutsche und verwandte Literaturen / 830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
Sammlungen:Germanistik / GiNDok
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
BDSL-Klassifikation:18.00.00 20. Jahrhundert (1945-1989) / BDSL-Klassifikation: 18.00.00 20. Jahrhundert (1945-1989) > 18.14.00 Zu einzelnen Autoren
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZfL Blog : Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0