Thanks for this. I would add only my surprise that you didn't at least mention Frank Kermode's 1967 book, The Sense of an Ending, which has become a classic in postmodernist lit crit circles.
Kermode is good and I should perhaps have mentioned it (although I wanted to develop a very direct line on inquiry) - perhaps I will write a follow up and include him.
In a sense that seems to be a definition of religion. Death has already occurred. The disaster has already happened; all that it is left to us to do is to investigate the disaster area. Investigate death, commit to its retrospective analysis, trying to fathom the sense. In Empire of the Sun Ballard writes a sentence near the end of the book that sums up much of the cognitive dissonance the post WWII years seemed to affect him with, in the strangeness they brought with them, something to the effect of: the war was not over, it had not ended, it was being continued by other means. I think Ballard was convinced of that idea absolutely. Also, where what interested him most were its means of continuation. In the post-war war’s use of peace. Since it manifested as a conflict of reality versus unreality, the two sides swapping technologies, lifestyles and meanings, perversions and petty allegiances in an endless fundamentally hostile confusion of inward revelations and outward visions. Reality versus unreality in all its chaotic discomposure on both sides so to speak, was the war’s continuation. What could be called the effervescence of Nazism, in its cult of technology, might be argued to be reality’s (or unreality’s) ultimate prize, whether realised or not. Russia does nothing but envy the life-style technology of the West, and pretend it is its own, Trump waves that same technology around like a eight iron, reading the green, lining up the shot, assessing the base, evaluating the lie. So here we are: “if it’s organised, it isn’t crime anymore, it’s business”. (Timothy Donnelly)
Thanks for this. I would add only my surprise that you didn't at least mention Frank Kermode's 1967 book, The Sense of an Ending, which has become a classic in postmodernist lit crit circles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_an_Ending:_Studies_in_the_Theory_of_Fiction
Kermode is good and I should perhaps have mentioned it (although I wanted to develop a very direct line on inquiry) - perhaps I will write a follow up and include him.
Was going to say this! Also more recently, Emile Torres's "Human Extinction" is an invaluable overview of various types of eschatological theory/history https://www.routledge.com/Human-Extinction-A-History-of-the-Science-and-Ethics-of-Annihilation/Torres/p/book/9781032159065?srsltid=AfmBOorUPPgyyrJNCYVhym2TpiV8E4Bt56sHJ9LKRgTXWJuWX6UCTP1F
In a sense that seems to be a definition of religion. Death has already occurred. The disaster has already happened; all that it is left to us to do is to investigate the disaster area. Investigate death, commit to its retrospective analysis, trying to fathom the sense. In Empire of the Sun Ballard writes a sentence near the end of the book that sums up much of the cognitive dissonance the post WWII years seemed to affect him with, in the strangeness they brought with them, something to the effect of: the war was not over, it had not ended, it was being continued by other means. I think Ballard was convinced of that idea absolutely. Also, where what interested him most were its means of continuation. In the post-war war’s use of peace. Since it manifested as a conflict of reality versus unreality, the two sides swapping technologies, lifestyles and meanings, perversions and petty allegiances in an endless fundamentally hostile confusion of inward revelations and outward visions. Reality versus unreality in all its chaotic discomposure on both sides so to speak, was the war’s continuation. What could be called the effervescence of Nazism, in its cult of technology, might be argued to be reality’s (or unreality’s) ultimate prize, whether realised or not. Russia does nothing but envy the life-style technology of the West, and pretend it is its own, Trump waves that same technology around like a eight iron, reading the green, lining up the shot, assessing the base, evaluating the lie. So here we are: “if it’s organised, it isn’t crime anymore, it’s business”. (Timothy Donnelly)