ABSTRACT

This volume brings together scholars working in diverse traditions of the humanities in order to offer a comprehensive analysis of the environmental catastrophe as the modern-day apocalypse. Drawing on philosophy, theology, history, literature, art history, psychoanalysis, as well as queer and decolonial theories, the authors included in this book expound the meaning of the climate apocalypse, reveal its presence in our everyday experiences, and examine its impact on our intellectual, imaginative, and moral practices.

Importantly, the chapters show that eco-apocalypticism can inform progressively transformative discourses about climate change. In so doing, they demonstrate the fruitfulness of understanding the environmental catastrophe from within an apocalyptic framework, carving a much-needed path between two unsatisfactory approaches to the climate disaster: first, the conservative impulse to preserve the status quo responsible for today’s crisis, and second, the reckless acceptance of the destructive effects of climate change.

This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in the contributions of both apocalypticism and the humanities to contemporary ecological debates.

part 1|84 pages

Conceptualising the Environmental Apocalypse

chapter 2|16 pages

The Shapes of Apocalyptic Time

Decolonising Eco-Eschatology

chapter 4|18 pages

Slow Catastrophe

A Concept for the Anthropocene

chapter 5|16 pages

Apocalypticism in Islamic Environmental Thought

The Anthropocene as a Theological Concept

part 2|70 pages

Representing the Environmental Apocalypse

chapter 6|20 pages

The Disappointing Apocalypse

Climate Collapse and Visual Art since 1960

chapter 7|15 pages

Avoiding the Apocalypse

The How-To Guide as a Method

chapter 8|15 pages

Waiting for the End

Narrating and Grieving Extinction

chapter 9|18 pages

‘The Evening(s) of Our Day’

Melville, McCarthy, and the Anthropocene's Double Apocalypse

part 3|48 pages

The Ethics of the Environmental Apocalypse

chapter 10|15 pages

“Guilty?”/“Not Guilty?”

Kierkegaardian Reflections on Carbon Ideologies

part 4|50 pages

Beyond the Environmental Apocalypse

chapter 13|15 pages

The Improper Apocalypse

Vitalism with and against a Psychoanalytic Approach to the End of the World

chapter 14|15 pages

Wiping Away the Tears of Esau

Adorno's Reconciliation with Nature

chapter 15|18 pages

Looking beyond the Apocalypse

Environmental Crisis, Colonial Environmentalism and Eastern India's Tribal Communities