A Sense of Apocalypse: Technology, Textuality, Identity (Literary and Cultural Theory)

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.