The book's argument revolves around the notion of apocalypse as metaphor, narrating a paradigmatic change in the discourse of postmodern identity. Drawing from science fiction studies, literary and cultural theory as well as popular cinema, it proposes a post-apocalyptic reading of late-capitalist culture.

Reaching into the depths of the collective unconscious, A Sense of Apocalypse explores and re-interprets one of the West's primordial fears, namely that of the apocalyptic closure of both cultural praxis and individual experience. Yet, in contrast to popular connotations of the term, apocalypse is viewed here in terms of a transitional narrative locating the subject at the intersection of technological determinism, pop-cultural imagination, postmodern urbanism and digital textuality. All these form the components of a new post-apocalyptic landscape, which not only produces a new identity informed by dissolving post-Enlightenment paradigms, but also conjures up hints at a large number of existential possibilities triggered by late-capitalist technologies and their cultural consequences.

Autorentext

Marcin Mazurek is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia (Poland). His research focuses on postmodern theory, culture-technology relationship and visual culture. He is the author of a number of articles in the above-mentioned fields.

Inhalt

Contents: Apocalypse Technology Science Fiction Cultural Studies Literary Theory Postmodernism Rene Descartes Jean Baudrillard Guy Debord Scott Bukatman Postindustrialism Popular Cinema Terminal Culture Cyberspace Posthumanism Textual Spaces and Spatial Textualities Identity and Its Discontents.