In the last decades, writers and directors have increasingly found the Book of Revelation a fitting cinematic muse for an age beset by possibilities of world destruction. Many apocalyptic films stay remarkably close to the idea of apocalypse as a revelation about the future, often quoting or using imagery from Revelation, as well as its Old Testament antecedents in Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The apocalyptic paradigm often instigates social criticism. Kim Paffenroth examines how zombie films deploy apocalyptic language and motifs to critique oppressive values within American culture. Lee Quinby shows how Richard Kelly's Southland Tales critiques not only social and economic crises in the USA but also Revelation's depictions of Good versus Evil as absolute oppositions. Frances Flannery points out how Josh Whedon's Serenity deconstructs the apocalypse precisely by using elements of it, depicting humans as their own created monsters. Jon Stone notes how apocalyptic fictions, while presenting nightmare scenarios, are invariably optimistic, with human ingenuity effectively responding to potential disasters. Mary Ann Beavis examines the device of invented scriptures (pseudapocrypha), deployed as a narrative trope for holding back the final cataclysm. John Walliss studies evangelical Christian films that depict how the endtime scenario will unfold, so articulating and even redefining a sense of evangelical identity. Richard Walsh analyses the surreptitious sanctification of empire that occurs in both Revelation and End of Days under the cover of a blatant struggle with another 'evil' empire. Greg Garrett examines how the eschatological figure of 'The Son of Man' is presented in the Matrix trilogy, the Terminator tetralogy, and Signs. Elizabeth Rosen shows how a postmodern apocalyptic trend has been working its way into children's fiction and film such as The Transformers, challenging the traditionally rigid depictions of good and evil found in many children's stories. This is the first volume in a forthcoming series of 6 titles on The Apocalypse and Popular Culture.

In a time when struggles over the place of women are paralleled by struggles over Good versus Evil, this volume exposes the often-veiled links between these two systems of meaning. The essays collected here highlight the intertwining desires of gender stability and apocalyptic truth even as they show that these desires are often internally combustible, a clearing out of the old to make way for new forms. Contributors explore both collusion and collisions between feminist and apocalyptic thought, the various ways in which apocalyptic belief functions as bodily discipline and cultural practice, and finally, the means by which some currents of apocalyptic desire can enable women's equality. Lee Quinby is Professor of English at Hobart and William Smith College. Brenda Brasher is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen.

In a time when struggles over the place of women are paralleled by struggles over Good versus Evil, this volume exposes the often-veiled links between these two systems of meaning. The essays collected here highlight the intertwining desires of gender stability and apocalyptic truth even as they show that these desires are often internally combustible, a clearing out of the old to make way for new forms. Contributors explore both collusion and collisions between feminist and apocalyptic thought, the various ways in which apocalyptic belief functions as bodily discipline and cultural practice, and finally, the means by which some currents of apocalyptic desire can enable women's equality. Lee Quinby is Professor of English at Hobart and William Smith College. Brenda Brasher is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen.

Although Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality, ideology, and power have established him as one of this century's most influential thinkers, the implications of his work for feminists continue to be the subject of heated debate. This book fosters an unprecedented dialogue between Foucault and the fertile ground of contemporary feminism and explores the many ways these disparate approaches to cultural analysis converge and interact.

The author investigates how anxiety about the arrival of the new century has cast everything from El Nino to sheep cloning in apocalyptic terms, simultaneously fuelling panic and fostering unfounded hope for a perfect world. Millennial rhetoric is both pervasive and persuasive, Quinby argues, because it operates with mutually reinforcing doses of fear and hope. Religious and secular anxiety erupts over charged issues such as sex education, the regulation of cyberspace and the Christian masculinity of the Promise Keepers. Quinby exposes the dangers of millennialist solutions, which link misogyny, homophobia and racism with absolutist claims about truth, morality, sexuality and technology. It is the absolutism of apocalyptic thought - not an impending apocalypse - that poses the more serious threat to society, Quinby maintains. Her work advocates a form of scepticism that challenges absolutism and encourages democratic participation.

Who among us still thinks the year 2000 is just an arbitrary turn of a calendar page? Why does its approach bring both fear of apocalyptic destruction and the promise of millennial salvation? Lee Quinby investigates how anxiety about the arrival of the new century casts everything from El Nino to sheep cloning in apocalyptic terms, simultaneously fueling panic and fostering unfounded hope for a perfect world. Millennial rhetoric is both pervasive and persuasive, Quinby argues, because it operates with mutually reinforcing doses of fear and hope. Religious and secular anxiety erupts over charged issues such as sex education, the regulation of cyberspace, and the Christian masculinity of the Promise Keepers. Quinby exposes the dangers of millennialist solutions, which link misogyny, homophobia, and racism with absolutist claims about truth, morality, sexuality, and technology. It is the absolutism of apocalyptic thought-not an impending apocalypse-that poses the more serious threat to our society, Quinby maintains. Millennial Seduction advocates a form of skepticism that challenges absolutism and encourages democratic participation.

"Anti-Apocalypse "was first published in 1994. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

As the year 2000 looms, heralding a new millennium, apocalyptic thought abounds-and not merely among religious radicals. In politics, science, philosophy, popular culture, and feminist discourse, apprehensions of the End appear in images of cultural decline and urban chaos, forecasts of the end of history and ecological devastation, and visions of a new age of triumphant technology or a gender-free utopia. There is, Lee Quinby contends, a threatening "regime of truth" prevailing in the United States-and this regime, with its enforcement of absolute truth and morality, imperils democracy. In Anti-Apocalypse, Quinby offers a powerful critique of the millenarian rhetoric that pervades American culture. In doing so, she develops strategies for resisting its tyrannies. Drawing on feminist and Foucauldian theory, Quinby explores the complex relationship between power, truth, ethics, and apocalypse. She exposes the ramifications of this relationship in areas as diverse as jeanswear magazine advertising, the Human Genome project, contemporary feminism and philosophy, texts by Henry Adams and Zora Neale Hurston, and radical democratic activism. By bringing together such a wide range of topics, Quinby shows how apocalypse weaves its way through a vast network of seemingly unrelated discourses and practices. Tracing the deployment of power through systems of alliance, sexuality, and technology, Quinby reveals how these power relationships produce conflicting modes of subjectivity that create possibilities for resistance. She promotes a variety of critical stances--genealogical feminism, an ethics of the flesh, and "pissed criticism"--as challenges to apocalyptic claims for absolute truth and universal morality. Far-reaching in its implications for social and cultural theory as well as for political activism, Anti-Apocalypse will engage readers across the cultural spectrum and challenge them to confront one of the most subtle and insidious orthodoxies of our day.

Lee Quinby is associate professor of English and American studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the author of "Freedom, Foucault, and the Subject of America " (1991) and coeditor (with Irene Diamond) of "Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance "(1988).