Del 0 - SUNY series in Postmodern Culture

After the Orgy

Toward a Politics of Exhaustion

Inbunden, Engelska, 2002

1 419 kr

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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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2002-07-17
Vikt417 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieSUNY series in Postmodern Culture
Antal sidor222
FörlagState University of New York Press
ISBN9780791453957

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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