On the ends of universalism

: Starting with the times of Napoleon Bonaparte and the nexus between European universalism and imperialism, ending with the 1989 scenario and its global implications, this essay analyses the ends of European universalism. It does so in a double sense by addressing its interests and objectives, as well as the end of its legitimation in the times we live in. Through a montage of historical and philosophical constellations from 1769 to 2019, ranging from Goethe and Champollion to Max Lingner and Frantz Fanon, Alain Mabanckou and Camille de Toledo, it seeks to understand the promises and hopes that universalism was carrying, as well as the deceptions and losses that were caused by its epistemic implication in power relations. The history of universal progress entails a dialectics of contesta-tion and provincialisation, both in a European and in a global perspective. If 1989 has left us with an end of utopia, then we need to understand this history to draw hope for a minor universality. From the beginning, the most serious and systematic attempts to write Universal Histories saw the centralissuein history as the development of Freedom. History wasnot a blindcon-catenation of events, but a meaningful whole in which human ideas concerning the nature of a just political and social order developed and played themselves out. And if we are now at a point where we cannot imagine a world substantially different from our own, in which there is no apparent or obvious way in which the future will represent a fundamental im-provement over our current order, then we must also take into consideration the possibility that History itself might be at an end (Fukuyama 1992, 51).