Abstract

This article proposes a revision of the idea of the End of History as pictured by Francis Fukuyama regarding its categorization as both a utopia and a dystopia. After revisiting Fukuyama’s original proposal and its amendments by the author in the following years, we use François Hartog’s regimes of historicity as a theoretical tool for understanding the End of History as part of a larger phenomenon. To argue Fukuyama essentially proposes the re-spatialization of utopia, we use Reinhard Koselleck’s “Temporalization of Utopia” and Fredric Jameson’s “End of Temporality” as guidelines. Finally, mobilizing debates on the utopian as a background, we reflect on the political nature of ruptures of temporality to claim that the End of History, though originally a utopian text, has been temporalized as a dystopia following its implementation as a political program.

Keywords:
Theory of History; Presentism; Utopia; End of History; Dystopia