Post-Cold War Historicism: Perceptions, Progress, and Praxis

Post-Cold War literature was a historicist effort to remake the international order and prolong American hegemony. Major works by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington describe a world of conflict and disorder while Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman showed that the world was headed toward unstoppable progress. Some were critical of these efforts. John Mearsheimer, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri saw the world as a product of power, albeit from different ontological standpoints: the state versus unseen forces, respectively. The first section defines historicism and highlights how literature can be considered historicist, what Karl Popper would deem pseudoscientific. One goal of historicism is the transformation of the world to fit a specific vision. Antonio Gramsci refers to this as praxis. The second section will summarize the Post-Cold War literature and highlight historicism.