The Future as Catastrophe - Imagining Disaster in the Modern Age (Paperback)

Why do we have the constant feeling that disaster is looming? Beyond the images of atomic apocalypse that have haunted us for decades, we are dazzled now by an array of possible catastrophe scenarios: climate change, financial crises, environmental disasters, technological meltdowns-perennial subjects of literature, film, popular culture, and political debate. Is this preoccupation with catastrophe questionable alarmism or complacent passivity? Or are there certain truths that can be revealed only in apocalypse? In The Future as Catastrophe, Eva Horn offers a novel critique of the modern fascination with disaster, which she treats as a symptom of our relationship to the future. Analyzing the catastrophic imaginary from its cultural and historical roots in Romanticism and the figure of the Last Man, through the narratives of climatic cataclysm and the Cold War's apocalyptic sublime, to the contemporary popularity of disaster fiction and end-of-the-world blockbusters, Horn argues that apocalypse always haunts the modern idea of a future that can be anticipated and planned. Considering works by Lord Byron, J. G. Ballard, and Cormac McCarthy and films such as 12 Monkeys and Minority Report alongside scientific scenarios and political metaphors, she analyzes catastrophic thought experiments and the question of survival, the choices legitimized by imagined states of exception, and the contradictions inherent in preventative measures taken in the name of technical safety or political security. What makes today's obsession different from previous epochs' is the sense of a "catastrophe without event," a stealthily creeping process of disintegration. Ultimately, Horn argues, imagined catastrophes offer us intellectual tools that can render a future shadowed with apocalyptic possibilities affectively, epistemologically, and politically accessible.

General

Imprint:	Columbia University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 2018
First published:	2018
Authors:	Eva Horn
Translators:	Valentine Pakis
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	296
ISBN-13:	978-0-231-18863-0
Languages:	English
Subtitles:	German
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Social impact of disasters > General
LSN:	0-231-18863-3
Barcode:	9780231188630

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