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Postlude

The Nightmare of History

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Abstract

This Postlude is intended to bring “down to earth” an at times esoteric discourse around society and the imaginary capacity. It literally concerns the earth itself as the common habitat for the world of human societies. For us there is no other world. Two threshold events of recent memory, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, have changed the world of human societies forever. Today, these two names of two specific events stand as social symbols (the “social images” of Chapter 11) and articulate the historical possibility and the concrete reality of the total annihilation of this world.

There has never been a document of culture which was not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Walter Benjamin, quoted in F. Jameson, Marxism and Form (1971, p. 281)

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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Furth, H.G. (1996). Postlude. In: Desire for Society. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9987-3_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9987-3_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9989-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9987-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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