Apocalyptic Narratives Research Articles

Immanent Futures, Quotidian Spaces: A View from Yiwu

The contemporary ecological condition has understandably precipitated diverse apocalyptic narratives that present a monumentally dismal account of the future. Against the backdrop of these overwhelmingly bleak and dystopic narratives, I ask a foundational question: How and who may speak of the future? My practice-based research in documentary film is an exploration of practice methodologies that respond to this question. In this paper I turn to Yiwu, a relatively small but cosmopolitan trading city in China as a site of “future making” (Montfort, 2017). The paper contends that Yiwu, a space replete with low-cost goods, can offer us a quotidian image of the future and serve as a site from which we can think about the creation of liveable concepts for an entangled future that may already have arrived.

Overcoming the apocalypse in the pluralistic space of poetics and politics

In the shift toward the Early Modern era, the end-centric temporality of the Middle Ages underwent a critical reevaluation, which spawned four distinct historical paradigms in the interplay between eschatology and politics. This article delineates these paradigms as follows: the revolutionary, where political constructs undergo a metamorphosis toward the eschatological, culminating in their complete dissolution within it; the progressive, in which political elements evolve in the direction of eschatological thought while retaining their distinct existence; the conservative, where political structures act to curtail the influence of eschatological expectations; and the post-apocalyptic, wherein both political and eschatological spheres merge into the economic, exemplifying the cultural logic of late capitalism. Utilizing process tracing as a methodological tool within the framework of critical realism, the study investigates the dynamic processes through which societies confront and potentially overcome apocalyptic scenarios. It reveals that poetic and political pluralism serves as a transformative mechanism, facilitating the potential overcoming of apocalyptic threats. However, this overcoming is only achieved in the progressive model, which is marked by the adoption of a polytheistic political myth and a clear separation between the domains of politics and ethics. In contrast, the post-apocalyptic model is characterized by a radical proliferation of apocalyptic narratives, which leads to the normalization and institutionalization of a metaphorical ‘worldly hell.' In this context, the political and eschatological are reconstituted within the economic domain, signaling a shift to a new cultural and ideological paradigm dominated by capitalist ideology.

Collapse Studies in Archaeology from 2012 to 2023

AbstractThe study of collapse in archaeology and history has continued to grow and develop in the last decade and is a respectable target of investigation in and beyond these fields. Environmental determinism and apocalyptic narratives have become less acceptable and collapsology has matured into a more nuanced, self-critical, and sophisticated field. This review explores recent work on collapse in archaeology between 2012 and 2023. It demonstrates how collapse, and associated concepts such as resilience, fragility, and vulnerability, are studied in the light of present-day threats, how collapse studies are increasingly recognized to have application in the present day, where they can contribute to discourses of resilience and sustainable development, and shows the diversity present in collapse studies. It also discusses the language and concepts of collapse. I explore these areas with reference to general works on collapse and to six specific historical episodes of collapse: Old World collapse, eastern Mediterranean collapse, the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Classic Maya, Tiwanaku, and Rapa Nui.

Contemporary visions of the next apocalypse: Climate change and artificial intelligence

The ancient Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions are the main sources of the eschatological compositions of the apocalypse. Through the combination of various symbolic elements and a prefigured narrative, apocalyptic visions offer a script that can be applied in diverse historical situations to deal with the uncertainty of the present, to justify political action and to allocate resources. In contemporary society, the high complexity and significance of the socio-natural and socio-technical operations in the domains of climate change and artificial intelligence create a fertile ground for the proliferation of apocalyptic eschatologies. The analysis shows that while the use of the apocalyptic script indeed motivates action in the present to avoid a future posited as unavoidable, it also generates strong moral and political distinctions that emphasize a unilateral projection of the future and undervalue alternative possibilities. The article concludes that apocalyptic eschatology promotes a ritualistic action in the present that evades the explanation of the complex causalities underlying climate change and artificial intelligence. The magnetism of the apocalyptic narrative lies in its ability to motivate action based on a recognizable architecture, but in doing so, it precludes alternative future options.

Rising Notability of Post Apocalyptic Narratives in Topical Hollywood Movies

Objective: The following research, mapping the survival elements with reference to the survive of the characters in the identified adapted films through the lens of the post-apocalyptic genre. Method: The researcher has identified 17 films that suit the criteria for selection and study. According to the Darwin’s theory, it provides new insight into the role of Hollywood films in dealing with catastrophes, Darwinian concepts of survival of the fittest and rebuilding of civilization. Evolved properties of human survival behavior are also focused. Result: The research offers scope for wide responses to the theme of survival. A large number of books and films analyses the issues of survival. The protagonists are intelligent and capable men and women with leadership qualities. Survival in different complex situations is explored and can provide scope for further study. Rolf Frohlich’s views on survival instinct as a product of evolution is relevant for further study. Conclusion: The paper concludes in the light of due analysis how the concept of survival of the fittest portrayed in multiple films can offer guidelines to follow in future pandemic outbreaks. A brief descriptive account of the portrayal in pandemic fiction and adapted films. Evolutionary perspective explaining the survival mechanism and the fight against pandemics depicted in Hollywood pandemic films.

Jihad after the Fall of IS – Reframing the Apocalyptic Narrative

This study analyzes the use of apocalyptic frames by jihadist groups and how they have been developing after the fall of IS. It contextualizes these developments in the history of Muslim apocalyptic though and literature. After describing the apocalyptic narrative in the hadith literature and in the Quran, as well as the differences between classical and modern apocalyptic literature, the study analyzes differences in how jihadist groups have used apocalyptic framing of their fight. Finally, using interview data, the study analyzes how the Salafi-jihadist environment in Sweden has started to reframe the apocalyptic narrative after the military defeat of IS.

Rising Notability of Post Apocalyptic Narratives in Topical Hollywood Movies

Objective: The following research, mapping the survival elements with reference to the survive of the characters in the identified adapted films through the lens of the post-apocalyptic genre. Method: The researcher has identified 17 films that suit the criteria for selection and study. According to the Darwin’s theory, it provides new insight into the role of Hollywood films in dealing with catastrophes, Darwinian concepts of survival of the fittest and rebuilding of civilization. Evolved properties of human survival behavior are also focused. Result: The research offers scope for wide responses to the theme of survival. A large number of books and films analyses the issues of survival. The protagonists are intelligent and capable men and women with leadership qualities. Survival in different complex situations is explored and can provide scope for further study. Rolf Frohlich’s views on survival instinct as a product of evolution is relevant for further study. Conclusion: The paper concludes in the light of due analysis how the concept of survival of the fittest portrayed in multiple films can offer guidelines to follow in future pandemic outbreaks. A brief descriptive account of the portrayal in pandemic fiction and adapted films. Evolutionary perspective explaining the survival mechanism and the fight against pandemics depicted in Hollywood pandemic films.

Rainbows of Comfort in Rising Seas: How Literalist Bible Interpretations Impact Climate Change Communication in the Marshall Islands

Abstract The Republic of the Marshall Islands is beginning to feel the impacts of climate change. Its geography and low-lying landscape have put it at a disadvantage to fight the coming seas. National leadership and environmental groups continue to provide locals with communications about the challenges to come. While climate change is a concept of science, there may be local barriers to its public internalization. This study seeks to determine if there is a relationship between fundamentalist Christian views, climate change communication, and Marshallese perceptions of global environmental change. The Marshall Islands has a deeply religious population, the majority of whom are fundamentalist Christians. A mixed-methods survey is employed to assess the impact that the belief in biblical literalism, the Noahic Covenant, and apocalyptic narratives exert over Marshallese views of environmental change. Results demonstrate that nonelite Marshallese inhabitants do not see climate change as an existential threat but rather as a sign of the end times and the Second Coming of Christ. This has significant implications for human security and migration outcomes if current climate communication methods are ineffective with respect to urgency. If locals see climate impacts through a religious lens, climate change communication must incorporate biblical concepts and address contextual understandings. Significance Statement The purpose of this study is to investigate how biblical literalism impacts the way in which Marshall Islanders interpret information on climate change and its impacts. Religion is a strong factor in the development of cosmology and/or worldview of all peoples; it provides a lens through which people understand the events of their existence. Our results show that climate impacts are interpreted by the followers of some literalist sects to be signs of biblical apocalypse. Viewing climate impacts as divine will pose a challenge to the need for relocation planning, adaptation, and personal safety.

ON FUTURES AND ENDINGS: NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES*

ABSTRACTThe article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. In its first part, the article shows how the modern sense of crisis, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, sedimented into a powerful narrative template by knitting together the past, the present, and the future into a unified plot. The second part focuses on the resurgence of apocalyptic stories in the Western social imaginary and humanities discourse. The final part highlights the special contribution of aesthetics of precariousness to the Western imaginary of time and temporality. It argues that the “chronic crisis narrative” deflates the teleological narrative arc of the modern crisis paradigm while also shunning the end‐time discourse of the apocalyptic narrative.

Mitos Bukit Buung Batu Majalan di Desa Adat Pengosekan: Analisis Ekologi Sastra

This study is entitled "The Myth of Bukit Buung Batu Majalan in Pengosekan Traditional Village: Literary Ecological Analysis". This study aims to describe the literary ecology contained in it. This study uses the theory of literary eco-criticism. The listening method and the speaking method with recording techniques and note-taking techniques as well as using literal and idiomatic translation techniques are used in the data collection stage. The analytical descriptive method is used in the data analysis stage. Informal and formal methods are used in presenting the results of data analysis with deductive and inductive techniques. The results of this study are that this myth contains literary ecology which consists of 1) Pastoral narrative includes bucolic elements, arcadia construction elements, and elements of retreat and return discourse. 2) The apocalyptic narrative includes elements of the hero character, apocalyptic environmental elements, and elements of visions or predictions, and 3) Environmental wisdom values ??consisting of respect for nature, moral responsibility towards nature, solidarity towards nature, compassion and concern for nature, as well as the attitude of not disturbing natural life

The last of the living: Quarantine as a critique in two popular culture apocalyptic narratives

The last of the living: Quarantine as a critique in two popular culture apocalyptic narratives

“Why aren’t people terrified!” Analysing the efficacy of the apocalyptic narrative of climate change

“Why aren’t people terrified!” Analysing the efficacy of the apocalyptic narrative of climate change

Resistant Apocalyptic: Comparing Moltmann and Žižek and Its Relevance during the Pandemic

How to understand apocalyptic in the current COVID-19 pandemic? This is the question as well as the sig­ni­ficance of the problem to be answered. Is it based on Jürgen Moltmann’s theological opinion through his “adventus” and emphasizes divine transcendence, or based on Slavoj Žižek’s opinion, which is “Christian materialism,” which rejects divine trans­cendence? By using a comparative-analytical me­thod and qualitative research, this paper aims to find meaning that is found through the encounter between Moltmann’s idea of adventus and Zižek’s suggestion to build a new community through “resistance.” The result is that the COVID-19 pan­de­mic is a resistant apocalyptic narrative about “What is to Come” as an adventus that exceeds the normal and surprising, as well as resistance to finding a new cosmic community model in an effort to live a new life in the new normal era. The order of discussion is as follows. First, Moltmann's apocalyptic thinking will be presented. Second, Žižek’s apocalyptic thinking will be presented. Third, the meeting points and relevance for apo­ca­lyptic resistance will be presented in the context of the current pandemic.

Exploring the Postmodern Apocalyptic Narrative: A Jamesonian Reading of Etel Adnan’s Master of the Eclipse

The tale of the apocalypse is considered a current subject of debate that has captivated the attention of postmodern writers. Similarly, in a postmodern atmosphere, Etel Adnan’s masterpiece, Master of the Eclipse (2009), problematises the traditional apocalyptic narrative. Thus, this study sheds light on the postmodern deconstructive aspect of Adnan’s literary text, involving how the author challenges the traditional apocalyptic narrative by foregrounding postmodern apocalyptic subjects. This last includes constant violence, international terror, the downfall of communities, and the subjection of human beings to world crises. These themes subvert the traditional apocalyptic narrative that establishes order, linearity and harmony and calls for Utopia. This study also highlights the collapse of historical metanarrative by drawing upon Frederic Jameson’s notion of ‘historical deafness’ and its consequences on the postmodern subject, including ‘schizophrenia’ and the ‘waning of affect’. It also examines the role of art, a remedy presented as a counter-response to turbulent postmodern times. It transpired that the postmodern vision advocates historical authenticity and reflects a pessimistic society’s experiences of despair and the loss of reality.

Apocalypse When? Storytelling and Spiralic Time in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God

Contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi) frequently invokes the concept of apocalypse to explore the experience of living through the era of unprecedented climate change and environmental disaster that has been named the Anthropocene. Yet, as often as apocalyptic narratives are deployed to express those anxieties and experiences, they so often ignore the histories and presents of peoples who have already lived through multiple apocalypses—in particular, the ongoing violence of settler colonial exploitation of the land now called North America. Considering the role that settler colonialism has played in the development of the current crisis, we turn to two recent works by the Métis writer Cherie Dimaline and Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich to consider how the act of cultural storytelling challenges Western notions of linear temporalities. Our analysis of Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves will explore how the settler-colonial narratives of scientific progress is challenged through Indigenous storytelling and collective memory, and our analysis of Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God will examine how Indigenous modes of understanding operate through a cyclical timescape that allows for alternative methods of existing with and within the larger world.

New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory by Monika Kaup

Reviewed by: New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory by Monika Kaup Brent Ryan Bellamy Against the Linguistic Turn, Against New and Old Materialism, Ontology Now and Forever! Monika Kaup. New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory. Edinburgh UP, 2021. 346 pp. $29.95 pk & ebk, $130 hc. Monika Kaup's New Ecological Realisms builds on philosopher Markus Gabriel's claim that new realism is a periodizing term for what comes after postmodernity (196). Kaup launches an assault on the linguistic turn and offers admission to an exhibit on the "rehabilitation of ontology," conveying renewed interest in philosophical realism. Well worth the price of admission, Kaup's study provides a clarifying overview of the thinkers, their views, and their relationships, including but not limited to Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Kaup assembles four new realist theories to elaborate "realisms of organised wholes" (5) across her chapters: Bruno Latour's political ecology, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's autopoietic theory, Markus Gabriel's ontology of fields of sense, and Jean-Luc Marion's and Alphonso Lingis's return to phenomenology in the wake of poststructuralism. The book proceeds by way of comparative study to explore the suggestion that "grasping reality" requires "mapping worlds and exploring contexts" rather than "making a collection of everything that there is" (5). Kaup selects Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy (2003-2013), José Saramago's Blindness (1995), Octavia E. Butler's Parable books (1993-1998), and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) precisely for their specific deployment of post-apocalyptic narrative. New Ecological Realisms argues that post-apocalyptic novels are a singular art form that reformulates how apocalyptic narrative works. Kaup relies on Derek Attridge's affirmation of the singularity of the literary artwork. Kaup writes, "Apocalyptic thinking is inherently ontological: it is about the world as a whole" (6). Moreover, she highlights the inevitability of narrative's drive to a specific predetermined end: "Its overt orientation towards an overall purposive design makes apocalypse the epitome of narrative as such" (57). In the case of Kaup's chapters, the novels discussed each envision "new collectives" that set aside "competition and domination" for "cooperation and ecology": "a trans-species ecological collective of human survivors and artificial species (Atwood); an organised society of the blind (Saramago); a post-apocalyptic religion built on loss and uprootedness (Butler); and a postapocalyptic self founded on passionate commitment (McCarthy)" (78). This is not a book about sf, although it will be of interest to some sf critics. Kaup relies on Darko Suvin's formulation of cognitive estrangement and holds with a distinction between serious sf and futuristic fairy tales. Colson Whitehead's Zone One offers an example of the latter, as Kaup claims that "the fantastic device of a zombie apocalypse serves as a means to evoke horror and serial combat of the action-adventure type rather than the critical [End Page 568] extrapolation of real-world trends" (65). American studies scholar Priscilla Wald's work on outbreak narratives appears in the book (176), as does Tom Moylan's concept of the critical utopia (222-23). Given Kaup's critique of the linguistic turn, it is no wonder that Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (1974) is avoided here for its arch-postmodern inflections (despite its inarguable status as a singular text!), yet as Jessica Hurley reminds us in Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex (2020), Delany spent time in narratologist and fellow linguistic-turn traveler Frank Kermode's office writing Dhalgren. Kermode makes an appearance here as well, specifically for Kaup's theorization of postapocalyptic time. Though justified by Kaup's logic and methods, such selections remind me of film-studies scholar Rick Altman's observation of film genre writing: scholars can define genre precisely by how they select examples and which texts constitute edge cases. On my read, Kaup's decision about what information can count as meaningful given the discussion is discerning at best and idiosyncratic at worst. For instance, much care is given to narrate the intellectual history of Bruno Latour's oeuvre, yet Fredric Jameson, whose work presents serious challenges from a Marxist standpoint to the...

‘The Rain Coming Down in Drenching curtains’: Reading for the Pluvial in the Climate Change Fiction of Chang-Rae Lee and Jane Rawson

ABSTRACT Theorisations of climate change literature rethink realism, the status of human/nonhuman relations and the agency of the landscape. This paper uses Sarah Nuttall’s concept of the pluvial mode to examine how these theoretical prescriptions function in contemporary novels to create conditions of refuge in spaces that have become largely uninhabitable for the majority of a population through climate change. In Jane Rawson’s A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013) and Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (2014) rainstorms instigate conditions hospitable to refuge and immerse the text in a drawn-out connection between that concept and watery images, beings and spaces. The novels locate refuge in the realm of affect or condition, and in so doing, create a disruptive element of possibility in otherwise apocalyptic narratives in which there seems to be no escape from precarity and uncertainty.

AGI, apocalyptic narrative and state of exception

The artificial general intelligence (AGI) narrative, which posits that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to benefit all of humanity while threatening to destroy all of humanity, is an apocalyptic narrative that has become increasingly dominant in debates around AI ethics. This article (1) constructs an analogy between the transhumanist AGI narrative and Christian apocalypticism through which we can (2) constitute the transhumanist AGI narrative as a rhetorical strategy that invokes a state of exception to (3) endow AI with auctoritas, an intangible form of power that grants the legitimacy to decide on exceptional situations. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this rhetorical transfer of power’s coupling with transhumanist eugenic goals on human rights and AI ethics.

Historiography and apocalypse, an intimate relationship?

Abstract: The concept of “apocalypse”, often evoking images of fiery, final judgments and cataclysmic endings, seems firmly situated within theological, indeed Christian, tradition. Recent historiographical literature analyzing the ways in which apocalyptic narratives have been leveraged within religious contexts, especially stories of conquest, has emphasized facets of this role, both rhetorically and logically, in their construction and framing. I investigate several of these, canvassing both long past and more recent examples, in order to unpack the ways in which they highlight the centrality of apocalyptic “technologies” in order to be recognized as historical narratives. Specifically, the discursive and aesthetic constituents of these narratives appear importantly connected to certain teleologies, and their requisite ontologies, emplotted within a framework of prophecy-cum-apocalypse. In this paper, I argue that this relationship is instrumental in order to give meaning to these narratives, as histories. This is a result of an inherent mechanism within that history’s interpretive telos functioning prophetically in support of their methodological and theoretical vantage points. As a result, historical analysis is quite often normatively constrained by the range of possible teli permitted within the boundaries of the discursive spaces inscribed by both the historian and the historical actors in play.

‘Let us go out to the Field’: Apocalyptic Thinking in Christian Nationalism

ABSTRACT Christian nationalists attempt to save the United States from eternal damnation by forcefully confronting threats at home and abroad. This paper investigates how a selection of Christian nationalists in the US foreign policy-making ecosystem use the apocalypse to achieve their political aims. The ‘strategic social construction’ model demonstrates how and why the apocalyptic narrative is helpful to rally political action to halt the decline of the United States in the world order. It shows how it has justified their staunch criticism of domestic liberalism and can link them to extreme conspiratorial views while maintaining broad ties to mainstream politics. Through this overarching apocalyptic narrative, the working foreign policy objectives of Christian nationalism fit with the hegemonic orbit of liberal internationalism, which is flexible enough to encompass it. Thus, among elite US foreign policy-makers, the apocalypse has been a shared implicit and explicit frame of reference to interpret the US position in the world order in the twenty-first century.