BOOKS IN REVIEW of Argentina’s larger socioeconomic landscape . Mundane cruelty and selfishness infiltrate much of Dangers, particularly among the teenagers; the apathy that runs through stories about homelessness, mental illness, and wealth disparity is reconstructed as teenage disputes in “Our Lady of the Quarry” and “Back When We Talked to the Dead.” In “The Lookout,” a ghost in the guise of a young girl lures a depressed woman toward destruction. Dangers’s stress on girls and women expertly draws the profound connection between supernaturally tinged horror and the violent degradation of a culture’s most vulnerable. Most demonstrably, the protagonist of “Kids Who Come Back,” the book’s longest story, professionally records the disappearance of children, mostly girls. When they return changed, the city’s populace is forced to contend with their missing in a stirring reflection of the thousands disappeared during Argentina’s dictatorship. While Enriquez asserts a sharp political edge in her collection, many stories simply revel in the gruesome and weird: “Where Are You, Dear Heart?” features a woman’s erotic fetish for heart palpitations, and “Meat” takes the obsessive fan of a musician to cannibalistic ends. Each provocative tale elicits shudders and, often, repulsion. With The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Enriquez carves a space for uncomfortable literature, proving its necessity to an examination of daily horrors. Marisa Mercurio Michigan State University Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens & Gauthier Chapelle Another End of the World Is Possible: Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It) Trans. Geoffrey Samuel. Medford, Massachusetts. Polity Press. 2021. 250 pages. PABLO SERVIGNE AND Raphaël Stevens became household names in some circles with the concept of “collapsology” described in their book, How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for Our Times (Polity , 2020). In it, they sought to prove with statistics, observations, patterns, and models that the world as we know it is already in a state of environmental, economic, and consequently, political collapse. Now, together with coauthor Gauther Chapelle, they have published Another End of the World Is Possible: Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It). In this sequel, the goal is to develop a philosophical response to collapse, a “collapsosophy,” that will ostensibly help individuals and communities during the ever-worsening collapse. Although it is not explicitly stated, the most compelling reason for publishing a guide or “user’s manual” (mode d’emploi) for the collapse is because the historical responses to large-scale disasters, environmental , and economic collapses tend to have less than happy outcomes. The sudden loss of sustenance and the imminent end of the world to which everyone has become accustomed (if not wholly content with) trigger the highly manipulative use of apocalyptic narratives to hold “true believers” in thrall to ruthless yet charismatic leaders who promise survival in the here and now and utopia in an afterlife. Avoiding a world of competing doomsday cults that would further degrade life on earth with wars and mass suicides is one of the implicit goals of “collapsosophy” as developed by the authors. But, will it work? Collapsosophy is an amalgam of philosophical thinkers, who address ethics, ontology, and spiritual ideas. The assemblage is mediated by the 1960s notions of the social construction of reality and later notions of the social construction of science. Their integrative approach seeks to help people and communities identify and confront the end of the world, and then accept it with grace, dignity , and mutual support. It is an admirable goal, and perhaps the approach will work. However, there are some cracks in the structure, even in the beginning. For example, Part One: Recovery, recommends using the experiences of collapses such as the former Soviet Union, and evaluating the depression, substance abuse, intimate partner abuse, suicides, and more that resulted. The difference was that there was a “return to life” after those collapses, and in the predicted collapse, there is no natural rebound. Further, the authors suggest breaking the news of the world’s “terminal illness” by using the same techniques as the medical profession. There is a profound fallacy in the analogy, however. An individual can make arrangements to deal with the pain, and also think of legacies. If an entire society is...
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Nov 29, 2023
Lukas Birkenmaier + 2
Open Access