A Sense of Apocalypse: Technology, Textuality, Identity (Literary and Cultural Theory)

Reaching into the depths of the collective unconscious, A Sense of Apocalypse explores and re-interprets one of the West’s primordial fears, namely that of the apocalyptic closure of both cultural praxis and individual experience. Yet, in contrast to popular connotations of the term, apocalypse is viewed here in terms of a transitional narrative locating the subject at the intersection of technological determinism, pop-cultural imagination, postmodern urbanism and digital textuality. All these form the components of a new post-apocalyptic landscape, which not only produces a new identity informed by dissolving post-Enlightenment paradigms, but also conjures up hints at a large number of existential possibilities triggered by late-capitalist technologies and their cultural consequences. Cover Contents Introduction: The Argument Chapter One: From Pre-Apocalyptic Tropesto Post-Apocalyptic Metaphors 1. Representing the Non-Representable 2. Domesticating the Threat 3. 9/11 4. Theorising the End 5. Science Fiction, Technology, Identity Chapter Two: The Violence of Revelation 1. Violence 2. Revelation 3. Theory of Apocalypse vs. Apocalypse of Theory Chapter Three: Technology Unbound 1. Technology and the Social 2. From the Industrial to the Postindustrial 3. Visions and Identities 4. Maps and Territories Chapter Four: Textual Spaces and Spatial Textualities 1. The Ontology of Terminal Space 2. Hypertext: Poststructuralist Theory into Terminal Practice 3. Cityscapes and Cyber-Realms Chapter Five: Identity and Its Discontents 1. Posthumanism Revisited: Identity on the Move 2. Posthumanist into Posthuman 3. Snow Crash: Split Presence and Translucent Bodies 4. Terminal Identity as the Third Conclusion: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Bibliography The book's argument revolves around the notion of apocalypse as metaphor, narrating a paradigmatic change in the discourse of postmodern identity. Drawing from science fiction studies, literary and cultural theory as well as popular cinema, it proposes a post-apocalyptic reading of late-capitalist culture.