Maastricht 1989: The End of Ideologies? Post-Cold War Utopias and Literary Realities

The 1989 International PEN Congress in Maastricht marked a decisive moment in the cultural and political transformations preceding the end of the Cold War. Held only months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the congress became a forum for negotiating ideological narratives, literary responsibility, and changing patterns of international cultural exchange. Participants debated the decline of collective political projects and the rise of individualism, asking how writers might respond to global challenges in a supposedly post-ideological age. The discussions revealed that the notion of an “end of ideology” was itself deeply ideological, often obscuring existing power relations. This tension became particularly visible in debates surrounding the Salman Rushdie affair, which exposed the limits of post-ideological neutrality and reaffirmed freedom of expression as a fundamental principle of PEN. Further controversies concerning world literature, the admission of the Soviet-Russian PEN Centre, and the election of the organisation’s president highlighted enduring asymmetries within the international literary sphere. Rather than inaugurating a neutral cultural order, the Maastricht Congress demonstrated that the collapse of Cold War ideologies generated new arenas of contestation centred on epistemic authority, representational justice, and the conditions under which literary freedom can be exercised.