Rivers of Babylon – postmoderný Bildungsroman, román konca dejín
Rivers of Babylon – a Postmodern Bildungsroman, the End of History Novel

Summary/Abstract: The paper interprets the novel Rivers of Babylon (1991) by Peter Pišťanek in the contextanalysis of postmodernism by Frederick Jameson and the statements on the End ofHistory by F. Fukuyama. It does not only reconstruct the reception of the novel but alsothe period discussions about the stratification of the genres of contemporary Slovakprose, which was conditioned by challenging historicity as well as historical awareness.The novel by P. Pišťanek is here characterized as a text which in the context ofperiod Slovak literature manifested the attributes of postmodernism in the way theywere defined by F. Jameson in his book Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism (1991) – these include „historical deafness“, „depthlessness“, „waning ofeffect“, as well as postmodern irony manifested in the form of pastiche. At the sametime it also thematizes the situation of Slovak society at the moment of the politicaltransformation when the structures of the old system are collapsing and a new oneis being established. This is the moment which defines the modification of the genrestructures of the novel which control the central narative line of the novel linked to theprotagonist, Rácz. Pišťanek´s text can be regarded as a travesty of Bildungsroman, basedon a story of integrating in society, on accepting the state of the world. In this case theintegration of the protagonist takes place in the era of „the End of History“, the loss oftrustworthiness of any norms. In the novel there are parallels in Fukuyama´s reflectionson society after the End of History, especially in those points that do not soundso triumphant or optimistic as their fundamental proposition, saying that what willstir the social process is the human need for recognition. In these moments the centraltheme of the novel can be interpreted in the context of Hegel´s master-slave dialectic.

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