NeMLA 2027 - Apocalypse or Utopia: Whose End of the World? (NeMLA)
Newport, Rhode Island
Event: NeMLA
Hybrid: The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included.
Primary Areas of interest: Global Anglophone / Cultural Studies and Media Studies
Abstract:
Since at least the middle of the 20th century, we have seen few, if any, utopian texts speculating about positive potential worlds. Instead, we have seen a deluge of dystopian, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic texts foretelling the end of the world. This begs the question, why have utopian texts become such a scarce literary genre? What is it about our time that makes speculative literature turn away from the utopic and instead toward its more nihilistic counterparts? Our societal fascination with apocalyptic literature has not gone unnoticed. Writing in 1979, H. Bruce Franklin identifies this cultural anxiety in his essay, “What Are We to Make of J. G. Ballard’s Apocalypse,” where he claims that the post-World War II decolonial liberation movements and the collapse of the European empires were the source of this apocalyptic obsession. On the other hand, the utopian genre is often acknowledged as beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), written within the burgeoning rise of capitalism and the colonial expansion of early 16th century Europe. Hythloday, More’s fictional narrator, finds Utopia within the New World, where the undiscovered territories and peoples outside of Europe became the catalysts that made the early utopian imagination possible. That the European utopian genre came at the expense of the existing worlds of indigenous peoples might also prompt us to think about how apocalypse factors into the utopian imagination. Since Franklin’s essay, this fixation with the end of the world has only intensified, driven to new heights by the overwhelming evidence of climate change’s devastation, global pandemics, and catastrophic geopolitical conflicts. Franklin concludes that Ballard’s novels are unable to make a distinction between the end of capitalism and the end of the world itself. This prompts us ask: whose “world” is ending and how might it make way for a new one?
Abstracts should be 200-300 words in length, and abstract titles should not exceed 100 characters.
All abstracts must be submitted via NeMLA's portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22729
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22729
Genesis Perez