Is this the promised end? Low end theory, education and the illusion of survival

We inhabit end-times in which talk about the collapse of civilisation, history or humanity is everywhere, but we have been here before. This chapter builds on our previous analysis of the effects of the pandemic to explore further the ways in which current attempts to manipulate history and the rhetoric of apocalypse and survival offer an imperative for change. In order to assess our chances of survival, we reassess two previous “end-times” of revolution and upheaval: 1968 and 1989 and their effects on education in order to try to determine what we can learn from these events, particularly as actors in the field of education. The theoretical foundation for the analysis draws on the work of Benjamin, Baudrillard, Fisher, Nuttall and Jasen. Our concluding thoughts emphasise that education has an important role to play in understanding and unforgetting how what got to this position and how we can reconstitute and reactivate misplaced possibilities to try to ensure that survival is not an illusion.