Whenever something like the end of history is evoked, two images come to mind: either that of the perpetuity of a state of sameness, in which there is no ‘story’ to tell in as far as the social transformations are merely superficial, at best enacted in step-by-step improvements, or that of a complete dispersion, where each present, never quite lasting, stands in no connection with its past or its future. The first points negatively to a concept of history as a series of profound changes, in which each metamorphosis stands in a certain connection to the previous ones, maybe rippling back to furthest antiquity, or even to the birth of humankind. The second negatively points to history as a great contraction of the entirety of human life, as a singular entity or intention incorporating all of humanity, where the present is like the tip of a cone in which all significant actions, meaning: those that somehow point to the now, are reunited. Once it ends, history then either gives way to a complete lack of orientation, where the now is constantly thrown back to itself and thus unable to relate to its past and to learn from its lessons, or a tamed iteration of progress that overcomes the need to enact painful essential changes, like it was the case in the rushed industrialisation of the 19th century.
The latter, the ideal of tamed progress, is the utopia of liberalism, characterised by the gradual improvements of a fundamentally just and stable social body; it shows its dreadful visage whenever the state aiming at perpetuating itself is revealed as what it truly is: a state of exploitation. As the gradual—and partial—nature of this seemingly tamed progress is built on a structure of violence which silences the suffering voices of those demanding more radical changes and excludes those who are deemed unworthy of relishing its fruits, it fails to fulfil its promise of perpetuity, as whenever the expressions of frustration become too extreme, the exuberant efforts of conserving the state as it is through State violence will themselves transform the present by introducing new means of control and suppression. And, thereby, undoing the ostensible improvements we made along the way.
In reaction to this, a claim for the reclamation of history, understood as a series of profound transformations, where each emerging present reverberates in the deepest past, is made vocal. Critical voices start searching the past for the Achimedian points where authentic emancipation was deemed to be graspable. The same reaction applies to the second conception of the end of history, understood as complete dispersion, in which the present, unable to connect to either past or future, hovers in a schizophrenic state where nothing remains and nothing makes sense. Here, the end of history is experienced as a petrifying state in which something is constantly happening, a new catastrophe, a new war or scandal, states of emergency which never quite make sense, even though we constantly have the faint feeling of a déjà-vu. In trying to make sense of whatever is happening, we dig into the past in the hope of finding some useful tool to resist whatever event befalls us.
Benjamin painted a picture of history as a triumphal march of the ruling classes—those dominating the various stages of class war—in which the cultural artefacts of the vanquished are carried along as spoils. The crucial point here is that the dominated—that is, we who do not belong to the ruling class—must, contrary to custom, identify with all those who have been dominated thus far rather than with the victors, and reappropriate the cultural goods paraded before us, turn them to weapons that will bring the triumphal march to an end. The ‘aestheticization’ of culture as exposition is thus resisted by its ‘politicization’, bringing forth universal emancipation. But resistance, for Benjamin, is not dependent on some Archimedian point in the past, which would indicate the auspicious time for change, but merely on “Vernunft und Übung,” on good habit and exercise. History could thus furnish us with ideas and strategies, which, turned to habits, could help us build our resistance.
We might ask ourselves whether, for example, the very concept of progress cannot be turned against its conventional usage. In opposition to the ideal of a ‘tamed’ progress, which perpetuates a supposedly just state—while in reality merely driving the triumphant march forward—we could hold fast to the ideals that progress promises to effectuate in the first place. The aim would be to free the idea of improvement—which has so far been used only partially to enrich the ruling classes at the expense of everyone else—from its limitations, and thereby to actualise what arguably every human being intuitively perceives as an improvement of its life: an increase in comfort and freedom, a reduction in coercion and control. Progress, then, no longer at the expense of others—no matter how small a minority—but as the universal human experience of: things are getting better. Freedom not negatively and partially as being unconstrained from exploiting others, but positively and universally as the capacity to choose one’s way of life; lack of coercion not merely in being allowed to choose what brand of cereal one consumes, but in being unconstrained from doing as one pleases as long as one doesn’t harm others (which itself, ironically, is a liberal idea, the promise of universality that it constantly betrays).
Once history is understood as a tool box, furnishing us with ideas and promises, the present could expand once more to encompass not only our closest fellow human beings, our tribe, but all those with whom we share a present, and even all those for whom this world has ever been a present—but reunited not through some abstract principle of humanity, and rather through the common experience of suffering under domination, of being trampled under the triumphant march of the victors, and hoping to escape this dreadful state. The present could expand in space and time; it could become historical, saddled with the mission of emancipation. What we would then need to ask is whether such a thing would even be desirable, and if so, where we would need to dig to uncover its conditions of possibility. Where should we look to inspire the habits which will help us to interrupt the triumphal procession that marches over our lifeless bodies and exhibits our cultural goods in mocking glee? And what kind of world would expect us there, beyond the antagonist state, if we were to will it, and where we would be, as Benjamin insists, expected?