
- 222 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Explores the post-Enlightenment obsession with apocalyptic endings.
Applying Jean Baudrillard's question "What are you doing after the orgy?" to the postmillennial climate that informs our contemporary cultural moment, this book argues that the imagination of apocalyptic endings has been an obsessive theme in post-Enlightenment culture. Dominic Pettman identifies and examines the dynamic tensions of various apocalyptic discourses, from the fin-de-siècle decadents of the 1890s to the fin-de-millènnium cyberpunks of the 1990s, in order to highlight the complex constellation of exhaustion, anticipation, panic, and ecstasy in contemporary culture. Through analyses of rapturous cults, cyberpunk literature, post-apocalyptic cinema, techno-paganism, death fashion, and the Y2K prophecy, After the Orgy explores why the twentieth century swung so violently between the poles of anticipation and anticlimax. In the process, the book raises pressing questions concerning the relevance of such ideas in our new millennium and points out alternatives to the monotonous horror of traditional narratives.
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Information
Table of contents
- After the Orgy
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: After the Orgy
- 1. Panic Merchants: Prophecy and the Satyr
- 2. The Rapture of Rupture
- 3. The Virtual Apocalypse
- 4. Decaying Forward: Satiety and Society
- 5. Cosmic Architects
- 6. Playing at Catastrophe
- 7. Conclusion: The Revelation Will not be Televised
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index