The Logic of the Apocalypse
A Clerical Rejoinder
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12786285 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Titlestad (0000-0002-3167-7028, Middlesex University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 93-110 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Safundi (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1543-1304 • E-ISSN: 1753-3171 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17533171.2012.760835 |
| OpenAlex | W2009719187 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 4 |
Apocalyptic and millennial rhetoric is recycled in countless contemporary literary and cinematic works and is central in versions of progressive political critique. The first part of this essay describes Cormac McCarthy's The Road as a dystopian allegory mired in Judeo-Christian temporality and which, as a consequence, promotes a sentimental version of human salvation. The second considers the ways in which analogous renditions of catastrophism permeate (new) new left social and political critique. It argues that apocalyptic imagery and discursive structures stunt analysis by indulging simplistic patterns of history and event. The final section of the essay documents a project by Johannesburg-based artist, Jacki McInnes, and the photographer, John Hodgkiss, concerning the lives of the city's informal recyclers. Their daily journeys are presented in (discursive and visual) counterpoint to the epic southward trek of the father and son in The Road. "Recycling" is presented as a trope of a contrary temporality, which suggests some of the ways in which apocalyptic logic is too teleological to capture the complexities of the lived realities of late-capitalism. I would like to thank Jacki McInnes for allowing me to interview her and for permission to use pictures from her and Hodgkiss' project. Notes 1Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 47. 2Ibid., 7. 3Ibid., 3. 4Ibid., 45. 5Ibid., 28. 6Ibid., 28. 7Ibid., 14. 8Ibid., 76–7. 9Ibid., 167. 10Ibid., 93. 11Ibid., 19, 68. 12Ibid., 20. 13Ibid., 24. 14Ibid., 6–7. 15Ibid., 4. 16Ibid., 4. 17See Jay Ellis's "Another Sense of Ending: The Keynote Address to the Knoxville Conference of the Cormac McCarthy Society," 24–9. 18Ibid., 5. 19Ibid., 65, 109. 20Ibid., 24. 21Ibid., 63. 22Ibid., 187. 23Ibid., 187. 24Ibid., 189. 25Ibid., 192. 26Ibid., 207. 27Janet Maslin, "The Road through hell, Paved with Desperation," The New York Times. 28Ron Charles, "Apocalypse Now," The Washington Post. 29Frank Kermode, Sense of an Ending, 8. 30Ibid., 16. 31Ibid., 26. 32Ibid., 26. 33Ibid., 39. 34Ibid., 109. 35From E.M. Forster's novel The Machine Stops (1909), to John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids (1951), Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963), Walter M. Miller Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), Russell Hoban Riddley Walker (1980), José Saramago Blindness (1995), Maggie Gee The Flood (2004), Jim Crace The Pesthouse (2007), and so on. 36John Hillcoat, "The Making of The Road." 37Thomas Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, 308. 38Ibid., 5. 39Ibid., 308. 40"Dr Phil" is Dr Phillip Calvin McGraw, who rose to fame through appearances on Oprah in the late-1990s, but achieved superstardom when his own show premiered in 2002. Many established psychologists consider his media-therapy to be simplistic and ineffective, if not actually dangerous. 41Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine, 8. 42Ibid., 6. 43Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, and How to Save It, 6. 44Ibid., 7. 45Ibid., 7. 46Allen Dwight Callahan, "The Language of Apocalypse," 460. 47Evan Calder Williams Combined and Uneven Apocalypse, 149. 48Ibid., 150. 49Ibid., 166. 50Ibid., 34. 51Ibid., 31. 52Ibid., 31. 53Ibid., 11. 54Ibid., 32. 55Pascal Bruckner, "Apocalypse Daze,", City Journal, 3. 56Robert Thornton, "South Africa: Countries, Boundaries, Enemies and Friends," Anthropology Today, 11. 57Ibid., 11. 58Ibid., 11. 59Ibid., 14. 60Perhaps the two most obvious novels in this vein are Karel Schoeman's "post-revolutionary" Na die Geliefde Land (1972), translated by Marion V. Friedmann as Promised Land (1978), and Eben Venter's Horrelpoort (2006), translated by Luke Stubbs as Trencherman (2008). Both concern men returning from exile to family farms, now owned by black South Africans, to confront the unsettling relation between their memories and disjunctive presents. Horrelpoort recasts Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Marlouw is on a quest to bring his nephew, Koert, back to Australia. Koert is a bloated, Nintendo-playing, bed-ridden teenager, who has monopolized the meat trade in the devastated South African hinterland. There are too many examples of apocalyptic South African visual art to list, but the installation work of Michael MacGarry (see End Game) and Pieter Hugo's photographs of life on the Agbogbloshie electronic dump in Accra, Ghana (see Permanent Error) are as fascinating as they are troubling.Recently, the South African film, District 9 (2009), represents a community of aliens ("prawns") who are being subjected to forced removal to a more distant settlement. According to Stefan Helgesson, they are "'living the apocalypse' (from the perspective of a once-dominant West), but even so, life goes on in a pragmatic, patchwork fashion" (Safundi "District 9: A Roundtable")
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Theology and Philosophy of Evil
| Citations per year | 0.56 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |