e-flux Journal #56

<p>In the summer of 1989, Francis Fukuyama published his infamous essay declaring the global triumph of free-market liberal democracy over communism as the end of ideology as such. Not only that, but he also claimed the world was on the cusp of realizing what Fukuyama’s mentor Alexandre Kojève called the “universal homogenous state,” which would be the climax of a particular Western idealist tradition stretching back to Hegel. It would be the endpoint of a human consciousness based in accumulative historical progress that also grounded the thinking of Marx himself, who pegged his own philosophy to a conception of time and human advancement as a constant moving towards a projected endpoint. But seriously, regardless of whether this endpoint has been reached, how advanced do you really feel? How many artworks have you seen in recent years that even struck you as being relevant as art? And the insane proliferation of regressive ultranationalist and ethnic or sectarian violence hardly points to historical progress either. This phenomenon is spreading nearly everywhere, from the EU parliament elections, to India, Iraq, Hungary, Russia, Japan, and so forth. The list is endless…</p> <p><b>Editorial—“The End of the End of History?” Issue One</b><br /> Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle</p> <p><b>The Nationalist Thing Which Thinks: Notes on a Genealogy of Ultranationalism</b><br /> James T. Hong</p> <p><b>Rainy Fascism Island</b><br /> Nina Power</p> <p><b>Running Along the Disaster: A Conversation with Franco “Bifo” Berardi</b><br /> LaborinArt</p> <p><b>Mutation of the Triad: Totalitarianism, Fascism, and Nationalism in Japan</b><br /> Sabu Kohso</p> <p><b>Maidan and Beyond, Part II: The Cacophony of Donbas</b><br /> Oleksiy Radynski</p> <p><b>The End of the World: From Apocalypse to the End of History and Back</b><br /> Oxana Timofeeva</p> <p><b>Appendix XVIII: Plates 22-257</b><br /> Walid Raad</p> <p><b>On Art Activism</b><br /> Boris Groys</p> <p><b>Ultranationalism: A Proposal for a Quiet Withdrawal</b><br /> Lawrence Liang</p> <p><b>Is the World Sleeping, Sleepless, or Awake or Dreaming?</b><br /> Raqs Media Collective</p> <p><b>The Rise of a Fallen Feather: The Symbolism of the Turul Bird in Contemporary Hungary</b><br /> Szabolcs KissPál</p> <p><b>From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: The Echoes of Socialist Realism, Part II</b><br /> Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu</p> <p><b>Obituary for Sturtevant </b><br /> Daniel Birnbaum</p> <p><b>A Text That Should Never Have Been Written? </b><br /> Ekaterina Degot</p>