Remainders of the American Century (eBook)

Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of US Decline

Brent Ryan Bellamy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
256 Seiten
Wesleyan University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8195-8033-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Theorist Brent Ryan Bellamy illuminates the political unconscious of the American post-apocalyptic novel, exploring over 35 works to show how this subgenre expresses a growing anxiety about the decline of US hegemony. The shape of the future is defined by "the remainder:" what is left after the imagined catastrophe. Bellamy draws on a range of disciplinary fields including science fiction studies, American studies, energy humanities research, and critical race theory, to describe how this literary mode accommodates both a reactionary impulse and a progressive impetus for a new world.

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This book explores the post-apocalyptic novel in American literature from the 1940s to the present as reflections of a growing anxiety about the decline of US hegemony. Post-apocalyptic novels imagine human responses to the aftermath of catastrophe. The shape of the future they imagine is defined by "the remainder," when what is left behind expresses itself in storytelling tropes. Since 1945 the portentous fate of the United States has shifted from the irradiated future of nuclear holocaust to the saltwater wash of global warming. Theorist Brent Ryan Bellamy illuminates the political unconscious of post-apocalyptic writing, drawing on a range of disciplinary fields, including science fiction studies, American studies, energy humanities research, and critical race theory. From George R. Stewart's Earth Abides to N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, Remainders of the American Century describes the tension between a reactionary impulse and the progressive impetus for a new world.

Autor

BRENT RYAN BELLAMY (Toronto, ON, CA) is an instructor in the English and cultural studies departments at Trent University and is co-editor of An Ecotopian Lexicon and Materialism and the Critique of Energy. He teaches courses in science fiction, graphic fiction, American literature and culture, and critical worldbuilding. He currently studies narrative, US literature and culture, science fiction, and the cultures of energy.

Inhalt

Title • Dedication •Acknowledgements• Introduction: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of US Decline • Part I: The Post-Apocalyptic Mode • Chapter I: Post-Apocalypse Tropes • Chapter II: Reduced Futures • Chapter III: Remaindered Books • Part II: The Contested Politics of US Decline • Chapter IV: Old and New Americas • Chapter V: Segregated Futures • Chapter VI: The Reproductive Imperative • Chapter VII: An Energy-Poor Tomorrow • Conclusion: Remainders of the American Century • Notes • Works Cited •Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.6.2021
• Verlagsort: Middletown
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of US Decline, Wesleyan University Press, WUP, Literary Criticism, Literary History, Historic Context, Canada, World Systems Analysis, Print History, Publication History, Cultural Analysis, Literary Fiction, Mainstream Fiction, Science Fiction, Cormac McCarthy, Octavia E. Butler, LeVar Burton, Storytelling, Contemporary, Twentieth Century, Twenty-First Century, Novels, Literary Form, Cultural Form, Fate, United States, USA, America, Global Warming, Narrative, Nuclear Holoc
• ISBN-10: 0-8195-8033-3 / 0819580333
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8195-8033-7 / 9780819580337