On Apocalypse, Monsters and Mourning
If apocalypse literally means unveiling or revelation, why is it that so many twenty-first century popular narratives are caught in an endless loop where disaster never gives way to a new dawn? Why is it that they remain stalled at catastrophe and are unable to imagine a future? What is it that cannot be mourned and what is it that traps the libidinal energies of these narratives in past that cannot give way to a new world? In a reading of the American TV series The Walking Dead and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this paper suggests that “holding onto the hope of humanity” may itself be the problem.