After the Orgy

Dominic Pettman is Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam.

• Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: After the Orgy The Dating GameThe Coming of the LordTechnological RevelationA Note on Methodology 1. Panic Merchants: Prophecy and the Satyr The Goat in the Machine 2. The Rapture of Rupture Sade and the Death of GodAvoiding the VoidEroticism and the Thanatic AsymptoteNietzsche's DionysusNihilism and the Thirst for Annihilation 3. The Virtual Apocalypse Virilio's AccidentBacchanical Man and Ballard's CrashTechnol-orgy: From Autogeddon to InfocalypseSnow Crash and ScopophiliaCyborgies in the Dionysian LandscapeCarmageddon 4. Decaying Forward: Satiety and Society De-fragging the SelfTechnologies of the Flesh 5. Cosmic Architects Immaculate ContraceptionSexless Hydrogen: The Frisson of FissionDionysus in ‘69The Politics of Play 6. Playing at Catastrophe Prêt-à-Mort: Necrophilia and Death FashionClose Encounters of the Third Kind: The Joachite Structure of Baudrillard’s Philosophy"A Biocybernetic Self-Fulfilling Prophecy World Orgy I": or Surviving the NecropolisTemporary Autonomous Zones and the Archaic RevivalCivilization and Its DiscothequesAfter the Orgy (But Before the Test Results)Conclusion: The Revelation Will not be TelevisedY2Care: Debugging the MillenniumThe Owl of Minerva Versus the Millennium FalconMeans to an End Notes Works Cited Index

"Thoughtful, wide-ranging, and eloquently written... After the Orgy cannot be reduced to any single simplistic thesis, and this is one of its major strengths. It acknowledges and affirms complexity, and yet it presents this complexity in a compellingly clear manner. In short, Pettman is a fine critic, both in terms of breadth of reference and understanding, and in terms of subtlety and thought." — Steven Shaviro, author of Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism"The range of cultural and textual readings offered here are complemented by Pettman's talent for telling a 'story.' Instead of laboring through a dry interpretation of millennial practices, I listened to a fine storyteller interpret and draw attention to important practices taking place at the present." — Todd F. Davis, coeditor of Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory