Apocalyptic Narcissism and the Difficulty of Mourning

Abstract

In this article I examine how death and loss feature in recent apocalypse fiction and suggest that, in a genre mostly concerned with finitude, there appears to be paradoxically little room for expressions of mourning. I assess contemporary attitudes towards mortality through the writings of Philippe Aries, Zygmunt Bauman, Simon Critchley and others, and propose a psychoanalytic reading of solitary survivor narrative, inspired by the work of Martin Jay. In the final part of the article, I turn to Sigmund Freud and Rene Girard to explore the relation between apocalyptic teleology, melancholy, and the expectation of global catastrophe.