Note sulla fine della storia

Tra presentismo, processualità e palingenesi

Abstract

This paper deals with the current political debate on the incapability of thinking of the future and tries to shed light on one of the features which is normally overlooked, namely the public nature of the concept of history. After a broad overview on the recent insights on the need of developing a hermeneutic reflection on historical experience, I will consider the work of Hannah Arendt and Pierre Bourdieu in order to retrace the disentanglement of modern rationality from the perception of history as a process. Finally, through the work of Nancy, I will suggest that the social atomisation fostered by the end of Fordism and Keynesian politics affected the gaze at the past, determining the fragmentation of history in multiple stories. This paper aims at showing that our impotence lays on the fact that the concept of history had more to do with that of community than that of time, and that is what is compromised.