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Oxana Timofeeva

The End of theWorld: From

Apocalypse tothe End ofHistory andBack

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. ButI warn you, if you donÕt tell me that thismeans war, if you still try to defend theinfamies and horrors perpetrated by thatAntichrist Ð I really believe he is AntichristÐ I will have nothing more to do with youand you are no longer my friend, no longer

my Òfaithful slave,Ó as you call yourself!Ð Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace1

Both the history of the present andpsychoanalysis teach us that at the beginningthere was a traumatic event, or a series oftraumatic events, to which our experience neverstops referring. There is something missing,however, in this post-traumatic approach. Thereis some insufficiency here. What do historianssay where collective traumas such as wars, theHolocaust, or genocide are concerned? Normally,

they express their belief that these traumas canbe worked out, that the function of memory is toshed light on these events, to make us aware andconscious of them, and thus to prevent theirrepetition in the future. In its turn,psychoanalysis, at least in its obvious, clinicalform, addresses an individual traumaticexperience, which declares itself through aseries of symptoms, and which can potentially becured. This is of course a simplification, but I justwant to be clear that there is something thesescientific practices have in common Ð namely, acertain idea of the present, which can be cured,and of the future, which by this remedy can besaved. In both cases, however, a reference to thetraumatic past is necessary Ð without this,recovery or redemption is impossible. I propose, instead of trauma, to talk aboutcatastrophe. The difference between the two isthat one cannot really recover after acatastrophe, as one normally recovers after atrauma. Catastrophe is meta-traumatic. Ithappens absolutely: at the beginning there is Ðthere was Ð always already the end. Catastrophedefines the borders of a collective and the true

sense of what we call history. By catastrophe Imean, of course, what people do to other peopleor to nature, and what nature or gods do topeople: wars, genocide, bomb explosions,hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, butalso certain legendary events, like the expulsionof humans from Paradise, the Flood, and ofcourse, the Apocalypse. Above all, I am thinkingabout the catastrophe of oneÕs own existence,this apocalypse of the now Ð the irredeemablenature of a single present moment. You cannotchange anything; the worst is what just

happened: your beloved just died, your child justdied, a giraffe in the zoo just died, god died, too,

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Film still from Sharknado, 2013.

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you yourself just died or woke up in your bed inthe body of an uncanny insect, like KafkaÕsGregor Samsa. As opposed to what is usually said,catastropheÕs time is not in the future, but in thepresent, which we can only grasp as the past,because it flows, just as the waters of the Flood:time itself is catastrophic. Catastrophe is whatalready happened, no matter how long ago Ð it

happened in prehistory, or itÕs happening rightnow, although people are still expecting somebigger, ultimate catastrophe in the future, as ifthe previous ones did not really count. I want tomake this point as clear as possible. Ourcollective imagination, overwhelmed by all kindsof pictures and scenarios of a future finalcollapse Ð be it another world war, Armageddon,an alien invasion, an epidemic or a pandemic, azombie virus, a robot uprising, an ecological ornatural catastrophe Ð is nothing but projectionsof this past-present. We project onto the future

what we cannot endure as something whichalready occurred, or which is happening now. Westill believe that the worst is yet to come Ð it is aperspective, but not a reality, and therefore ourreality is still not that bad. A fear of the futureand anxiety about some indefinite event (Òwe willall dieÓ) is easier to suffer than a certain,irreparable, and irreversible horror that has justhappened (Òwe are all already deadÓ). There is, however, a difference betweenreality (which is still not that bad) and the real.There are two times: the time of so-called reality,and real, or catastrophic, time, which flows,irreversibly, like music. The time of so-calledreality gives us a delusion of the present and thefuture, to which we are dedicated and where webelieve there is salvation. We look to the futureand for the future; we have visions of futurecatastrophes, and these visions prevent us fromgrasping the catastrophe of the real, or the realcatastrophe, which just happens. Only WalterBenjaminÕs angel, Angelus Novus from KleeÕspainting, sees history as Òone singlecatastrophe,Ó at which he looks back with horror:ÒThe angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,

and make whole what has been smashed. But astorm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caughtin his wings with such violence that the angel canno longer close them.Ó2

An early and well-known version of the finalworldwide catastrophe is presented in chapters6Ð8 of Genesis. You all know the story: at acertain moment, God regretted what he hadcreated, because people committed too muchsin. He decided to destroy everything, to erase allflesh from the face of the earth in order to givehumanity another chance. Although animals

didnÕt commit any sins, they too had to share thisdestiny. Along with his family, Noah was obliged

by God to take along animals of all species Ð ofevery clean animal by sevens, male and female,and of every unclean animal by couples, maleand female. In some paintings dedicated to this story,we see the ark, NoahÕs family, and an enormouscrowd of animals queuing to get in. Perhapsthere was panic, like in our apocalyptic movieswhere there is a very limited transport vessel and

an unlimited number of people trying to board it.It is the only way to be saved from the virus, fromthe zombie attack, or, just like in NoahÕs case,from some global natural disaster: two, four, six,seven Ð ÒNo, sorry,Ó Noah may say to the last inline, Òwe have enough of your kind.Ó The last ofeach species enters, the doors of the ship areclosed, the abyss of the sky opens, and coldwaters cover the earth. In the recent American film version of thisstory by Darren Aronofsky, the eponymous Noah(Russell Crowe) doesnÕt really get any direct

instructions from God. He only gets signs, whichhe decodes in his own way, and perhapsincorrectly. From the very beginning, when hestarts to build the ship, until the end, when hedesperately goes on drinking upon arrival, he isconstantly doubting his interpretation of GodÕswill. At a certain point, all of the preselectedanimals, already in order, simply come to the arkand occupy their respective places. Of course,God cannot talk directly to this Noah, as he did tothe other Noah of Genesis, because this newNoah is supposed to be a man of free choice Ð atrue American who will save the world. What isinteresting about the film is one of NoahÕsdream-like visions: a water column full of deadand dying, drowning bodies of humans and otheranimals. ThatÕs how a catastrophe might reallylook from inside, from the point of view of theone who is there in the water Ð here is a girl,hands up, here is a small elephant, a snake, amess of beasts of all sizes, all slightly losingtheir power of resistance and going to thebottom, together with plants, fragments ofthings, and debris. Most often we tend to identify ourselves

with those who will be saved. We think ofourselves as one of those chosen seven of ourspecies who were taken onboard Ð one of thosewho managed to go through the holy policecordon, behind which the damned, the sinners,the infected, the losers, and all the others wereleft. In our reality-time imagination we all belongto NoahÕs family; we look at the disaster fromoutside, from the ark, so that only the waterÕssurface can be seen, and not what is going on inits depths Ð in the real-time of the catastrophe.It still did not happen to us, it happened to

someone else, and for those in the water, itÕsreally happening Ð thatÕs why I say that they are

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Saint Beatus of LiŽbana, The Apocalypse of Saint Sever, 1150.

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living through, or rather dying through, a real, orcatastrophic, time. In reality-time, in turn, thewaters are still coming closer and closer, thecatastrophe can and will happen, and we need tobe prepared for it Ð at least thatÕs what popularChristian culture teaches us, constantly bringingus new material for daydreaming about ourdisastrous future (in which, if we are goodenough, we will be finally saved).

Some people are still trying to search forsigns of a forthcoming apocalypse in the Book ofRevelation, the final book of the New Testament,as if ignoring the fact that someone named John,the author of this book, dating approximatelyfrom the first century AD, proclaimed that Òthetime is at hand, all this will happen shortly.ÓAlthough all the relevant data are encodedaccording to an opaque biblical numerology,most researchers who address this questionseem to agree that the number of the beast ofthe Apocalypse Ð a numerical version of the

Antichrist Ð points to the name of Nero theEmperor of Rome, who, together with Domitian,was known as a very cruel dictator, massacringand persecuting early Christian communities. AsEngels indicates in his short essay on the Book ofRevelation (1883), with a reference to ErnstRenan, these communities in that era Òwererather like local sections of the InternationalWorking MenÕs Association.Ó3 The author of thebook was himself most likely one of the victimsof this mass repression, and he wrote this bookon Patmos Island, to which he was exiled by theRomans for believing in Òthe word of God and forthe testimony of Jesus Christ.Ó4

The very word Apokalypsis, from the KoineGreek, means ÒunveilingÓ or Òrevelation.Ó Itunveils and reveals the truth about a certainreality. As far as it unveils (i.e., unveils what is),etymologically, the apocalypse is always now.ÒHow Christianity looked in 68 [AD] we can heresee as in a mirror,Ó Engels says about the Book ofRevelation, thus perfectly grasping a mirroringrelationship between reality and the real,revealed through this peculiar numerology.5 Inthis sense, Revelation is a book on history, which

depicts the religious and class struggle of thattime, and addresses Christians with a call forsolidarity: note that John does not address justanyone; his book contains messages for theseven churches of Asia, i.e., the existingChristian communities of his day. ÒTheapocalypse is now, donÕt give upÓ Ð thatÕs howone would now translate JohnÕs message. If we believe that JohnÕs apocalypse wasalready at hand, doesnÕt this mean that, for now,the catastrophe he revealed has alreadyhappened, the world is over, and we are now all

living in the post-apocalypse? And if the world isover, how is it possible, then, not to give up?

Alexander Men, a Russian Orthodox priest,theologian, and biblical scholar, who wasmurdered in 1990 by an axe-wielding assailant,replies to this question in his lecture dedicatedto The Book of the Revelation (1989): ÒThe end ofthe world is a permanent reality; it constantlyrepeats.Ó6 Men interprets it in a very Christianway: there is a catastrophe, and there is asalvation; all turning points in history are

apocalyptic, the struggle between good and evilrepeats again and again, and the good may evenwin each time a believer opens the door of hisheart to Jesus, who knocks there. But isnÕt it true that, if there is no god, acatastrophe should happen alone, without thenecessary supplement of salvation? In this case,one can still say that the end of the world is apermanent reality. This will just mean that thetime of the real sometimes simply catchesreality-time by its tail, or breaks its screen,behind which there is neither future, nor even

present. The catastrophe of the real makes thereality of the catastrophe permanent. ThatÕs howone would explain (although there are variouspossible explanations Ð since the story is true,its interpretation is infinite) the fact that theevent of the apocalypse constantly repeats. One of the relatively secular, modernversions of the apocalypse is the idea of the endof history, presented by Alexander Koj•ve, basedon his (mis)reading of Hegel. While for Hegel themovement of spirit is both historical and eternal,and the end can be understood in terms of thegoal of history, which coincides with thedialectical development of reason, knowledge,and so forth, Koj•ve simply declares that historyis over Ð that nothing really new can ever happenon earth. It seems that there is nothingcatastrophic about this version, except for itsassertion that there is no more future. To make a long story short, the beginning oftime, according to Koj•ve, coincides with theappearance of man. Before this moment, there isno time. There is only natural being, or space,and animals that inhabit this space. Historystarts when, at a certain point, one of those

animals turns into a man. The appearance ofman as an active, suffering, fighting, and workingnothingness will introduce history and time, andin the process, will negate the naturally givenmultitude of beings for the benefit of hissupernatural, ideal goals. Human beings openhistory, which will be the history of struggles,wars, and revolutions through which theyactively change the world. The point is that the end of history shouldcoincide with its beginning, and at the end ofHistory, human beings should turn back into

animals. Koj•vian history goes around only once,with no repetition, and this is the history of

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Film still from Kevin Costner's Waterworld, 1995.

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becoming human, which is already over. Tofinalize history, man has to create a universalhomogeneous state of mutual recognition Ð astate of the total satisfaction of all desires. Atthe end of history, man does not need to changethe world, to work and to fight any longer;satisfaction is possible here and now. Following Koj•veÕs logic, this point wastheoretically already achieved Ð after the battle

of Jena, since even Hegel saw Napoleon as aworld spirit riding on horseback:

In and by this battle the vanguard ofhumanity virtually attained the limit andthe aim, that is, the end, of ManÕs historicalevolution. What has happened since thenwas but an extension in space of theuniversal revolutionary force actualized inFrance by Robespierre-Napoleon. From theauthentically historical point of view, thetwo world wars with their retinue of large

and small revolutions had only the effect ofbringing the backward civilizations of theperipheral provinces into line with the mostadvanced (real or virtual) Europeanhistorical positions.7

I must note that, even before Koj•ve, apocalypticexpectations of Napoleon were prominent,especially in Russian literature and particularlyin TolstoyÕs War and Peace and GogolÕs Dead

Souls. Thus, one of TolstoyÕs characters, PierreBezukhov, is obsessed with the idea thatNapoleon is the true Antichrist, whose name,when written in French and decipheredaccording to an ancient numerical plate, is thesame 666 as the beast of the Apocalypse. Themain character of GogolÕs novel, Chichikov,travels across rural Russia and literally collectsdead souls. People spread various rumors abouthim,

among them a theory that Chichikov wasNapoleon, escaped from St. Helena andtravelling about the world in disguise. And ifit should be supposed that no such notion

could possibly have been broached, let thereader remember that these events tookplace not many years after the French hadbeen driven out of Russia, and that variousprophets had since declared that Napoleonwas Antichrist, and would one day escapefrom his island prison to exercise universalsway on earth. Nay, some good folk hadeven declared the letters of NapoleonÕsname to constitute the Apocalyptic cipher!8

From HegelÕs Phenomenology of Spirit, which was

finished in 1807, to GogolÕs Dead Souls, publishedin 1842, the Emperor-horseman of the

Apocalypse took a long journey through Europeto Russia and back, in order to end up, after onecentury, celebrated in a secular apocalypse byKoj•ve. The battle of Jena was a kind of Koj•vianArmageddon, where ÒEuropean historicalpositionsÓ finally won, with a universal state nowon the way Ð there was nothing left for it to dobut fit a certain social reality, find a good-enoughstate that could serve as a model for further

posthistorical unfolding.

A form of crystalized water recently found at 600 km below the earth'scrust has lead scientist to believe a larger reserve of subterraneanwater is still to be explored at these depths.

Of course, such a state was soon indicatedÐ first in Koj•veÕs own, rather ironic note aboutthe American way of life, with its expandingconsumption as a perfect example of humanbeings turning back into animals (althoughKoj•ve himself in fact proposed several otherexemplars of this, including Russia and Japan).Then followed the more popular and officialversion by Francis Fukuyama, who literally andpositively identified the end of history withAmerican liberal democracy and contemporarycapitalism. A very clear and simple objection to this canbe raised from the point of view of communisteschatology. ÒThe history of all hitherto existingsociety is the history of class struggles,Ó writeMarx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. As

long as the struggle continues, history goes on.While for a capitalist ideologist like Fukuyama,the final battle has already been won (and thusthe winner makes history his property, which isnow commodified, carefully stored, or justthrown off, but never freely distributed), for acommunist, Armageddon is still to come (unlessitÕs going on right now). A communist cannot letthe enemy have history. Just like the earlyChristians, he doesnÕt want to give up: for thisreason, he needs to believe that historycontinues. This makes sense. Imagine if

someone stole all the drinkable water on earth. Athirsty crowd is knocking on the thiefÕs door and

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Mermaid-clad swimmers perform in Florida's Mermaid theme park, Weeki Watches.

asking for water. The water is gone, he says tothem, but they know that the water is not gone,that it was just stolen. Capitalism is like this: itsteals water. But imagine if there is really nomore water, if the enemy really won and hasalready devastated and dehydrated the land.This is a catastrophe, somehow opposite to theFlood Ð the Thirst. There are, however, some versions of the

end of history which, I must say, come quiteclose to the Koj•vian version, although theyexplicitly belong to the field of anticapitalistthought. Thus, the theory of the multitudeproposed by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardtimplies that we are now living in a world of globalempire. In this world, the traditional industrialproletariat does not exist anymore Ð it hasalready disappeared, and instead of classstruggle, a creative multitude of singularitiesdevelops out of its own life an immanentresistance to capitalism (thus we have the

totality of global capital and its immanentresistance). Traditional national states are dyingtoo, giving way to transnational capital, whichdoes not know borders. If we try to apply these theses to our realityand read them through our reality-time, theyimmediately lose any sense (although a lot of

Western people take them literally and trulybelieve that immaterial labor has now replacedmaterial labor, and the global has replaced thenational). Of course, material workers are stillhere, they still create all that we have in our dailylives Ð all those dresses, cars, Coca-Colas. Thisworld of commodities we live in is a result of thehighly exploited and totally noncreative materiallabor of the people in the third world, of

migrants, of the poor. Though they are not socially represented,material laborers are here, and their existencemust not be ignored. The nation-state is stillhere too Ð capitalism and the nation-state stillgo hand in hand, and the imperialist tendenciesof capital only increase the role of the nation-state, when itÕs needed (look at Russia andUkraine, at Israel, at Syria, at the new debatesabout migration policy in Europe, at the newdiscussion on identity/integration, sovereignty,and so forth). The multitude and capital are not

just two entities existing in front of each other:the undead nation-state stands in betweenthem, and when needed, prevents the multitudefrom acquiring a class consciousness (thatÕshow, for example, political protests in non-Western countries, where the working classnever ceased to exist, easily transform into

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national/ethnic conflicts). In short, such leftistversions of the end of history seem to be refutedby history itself, which goes on and on.

Film still from Michael Curtiz's Noah's Ark, 1928.

To this reasonable objection to thepostmodern anticapitalist form of the end ofhistory, one could reply that these ideas canactually make sense, but from an apocalypticperspective: they can be read as a newapocalypse for the left. Another evil empire wins,and another community doesnÕt give up. Andagain, like any apocalypse, this one gives way tofuturist and messianic visions of a forthcomingcatastrophe, followed by salvation. Thus,contemporary accelerationists seem to seriouslycare about the future; it should be snatched fromthe enemyÕs claws. The future should be pushedforward to the very brink of capitalistcatastrophe: capitalism will destroy itself andthe world around it sooner or later, but our task isto outrun its catastrophic sprint, to pass ahead.(In a way, the ÒAccelerationist ManifestoÓ soundslike the plot of an old Soviet science fiction story,where scientists from a faraway communistfuture go back to the past with a time machine to

prevent a catastrophe.9) But isnÕt capitalismitself a catastrophe? Does it not kill workers?IsnÕt, finally, the number of the capitalist beastinscribed into the barcode of every commodity,as some crazy Christians never stop warning? Finally, I will mention yet another thinkerwho raised an objection to both the capitalistand the communist end of history. In his ÒLetterto X, Lecturer on Hegel,Ó written in 1937, Bataillefamously says:

If action (doing) is Ð as Hegel says Ð

negativity, the question arises as towhether the negativity of one who has

Ònothing more to doÓ disappears or remainsin a state of Òunemployed negativity.ÓPersonally, I can only decide in one way,being myself precisely this ÒunemployednegativityÓ (I would not be able to definemyself more precisely). I donÕt mind HegelÕshaving foreseen this possibility; at least hedidnÕt situate it at the conclusion of theprocess he described. I imagine that my life

Ð or, better yet, its aborting, the openwound that is my life Ð constitutes all byitself the refutation of HegelÕs closedsystem.10

This looks like a very personal objection, even aspectacular one (Òwhat about me?Ó). Bataillecontinued to develop this argument, particularlyin his The Accursed Share, where he links it to hisversion of political economy. Quite simply, theend of history would mean the end of socialinequalities (which is a final goal of communism),

and as far as these inequalities continue to exist,history cannot be ended. But even communismcannot really, according to Bataille, effectivelyachieve its goal Ð it wants to eliminatedifferences for the sake of a universal humanity,but humanity itself is divided between thehuman, the nonhuman, and the more or lesshuman. Humanity itself is distributed unequallyÐ as far as we negate ourselves as animals,history doesnÕt have an end, at least a happy end.And, unlike Koj•ve, Bataille insists that wecannot transform into animals again Ð becominghuman is irreversible (an open wound isproduced by humansÕ separation from animality,and this is what it means to be a human being). This appears to be a true deadlock, forwhich only a yet bigger deadlock can provide akind of solution. What really eliminatesdifferences is catastrophe: in the waters of theFlood, everyone is equal. I am arguing not for amessianic, but a catastrophic communism, i.e.,the end of the world taken in its real-time. In thistime, the end of the end of history doesnÕt meanthat we still have a future, and that it will getbetter or worse. It will not get worse, itÕs already

worse. All of these phenomena that areassociated with reality and that are supposed toreemerge after the new beginning of history Ðwars, repression, butchery, and so forth Ð arereally visions of our present zombie apocalypse.The end of the end as the real end would meanan encounter between reality-time and real-time. It would force us to accept the fact of ourreal-time apocalypse, and to take it over as theonly true revolutionary situation Ð a situationwhere there is no hope, but only despair. In thissituation, we cannot keep waiting for a future

catastrophe (with a happy end); a messianicmoment of hope, of believing in the future and in

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the idea that we are still full of life, puts us tosleep, lost in dreams. Only when already dead,and facing no future, do we really have nothing tolose. !

Oxana Timofeeva is a Senior Research Fellow at theInstitute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Scienceand currently a Humboldtian Fellow at HumboldtUniversity in Berlin. She is a member of the Russiancollective "Chto Delat?" ("What is to be Done?"), andthe author of Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of

Georges Bataille (Moscow, 2009, in Russian) and The

History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence

and Freedom(Maastricht, 2012).

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1Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace,trans. Louise and AylmerMaude http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2600/2600-h/2600-h.htm

2Walter Benjamin, ÒTheses on thePhilosophy of History,Óin Illuminations: Essays andReflections, ed. Hannah Arendt,trans. Harry Zohn (New York:Schocken, 1969).

3Frederick Engels, ÒThe Book ofRevelationÓ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/book-revelations.htm

4Revelation (The Apocalypse ofJohn)1 http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/revelation-kjv.html

5Engels, ÒThe Book of RevelationÓ

6

Alexander Men, ÒApocalypseÓ (inRussian) http://www.alexandrmen.ru/books/apokal/apokal24.html

7Alexander Koj•ve, Introductionto the Reading of Hegel: Lectureson the Phenomenology of Spirit,ed. Allan Bloom, trans. James H.Nichols, Jr. (New York: BasicBooks, 1969), 160.

8Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, Part5 http://www.fullbooks.com/Dead-Souls5.html

9

Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek,Ò#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO foran AccelerationistPoliticsÓ http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics/

10Georges Bataille, The BatailleReader , eds. Fred Botting andScott Wilson (Oxford: BlackwellPublishing, 1997), 296.

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