Event overview
GLITS (Goldsmiths Literature Seminar)
If apocalypse in its most radical form were to actually occur, we would have no way to recognise it, much less record it.[1]
Haunted by both the possibility and impossibility of total annihilation, alongside the aftermath of the post-apocalyptic, future-writers such as Cormack McCarthy, Margaret Atwood and John Wyndham imagine the (im)possibilities of humanity’s endeavour in these times, after the end.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that humanity has had to endure a multitude of atrocities and events that have signified the end of historical and cultural epochs. Our world is one littered with the markers of catastrophe and memorial, as James Berger posits, “trauma really happens, it can eventually be addressed, remembered, retold, and different futures can be imagined and lived.”[2]
Apocalyptic narrative and representation often takes place before or after the the end of the apocalyptic event; that is to say, often a prophecy or an account told in the post-apocalyptic landscape. Therefore, at the end we may realise that the apocalypse is over and “there is no more hope for meaning.”[3]
The apocalypse is embedded in the literary – after all the end comes at the end of a book – and the apocalypse is situated in the horrors of history. Throughout the course of this study there will be an investigation on representations of the apocalypse – in both popular and literary culture – and how the shift of eschatology from a Christian-Judeo perspective to a secular postmodern capitalist society attempts to invoke revelation but remains haunted by futures lost to the traumas of history: Evoking John Gray’s statement, “History is a nightmare from which we must awake, and when we do we will find that human possibilities are limitless.”[4]
[1] James Berger, After The End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse. p.13.
[2] Ibid. p.29.
[3] Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra. p.164.
[4] John Gray, Black Mass. p.29
David Cross-Kane is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 17 Nov 2016 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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