APOCALYPTIC FICTION AND CONTEMPORARY THEORY: ‘THE REAL’ GOING BEYOND POSTMODERNISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, AND DECONSTRUCTION

Abstract

Apocalyptic fiction, though it is a twenty-first century genre par excellence, traces back to the religious genealogy of the bible and the historical genealogy of literary tradition and archetype. Both narrative modes, apocalyptic and postapocalyptic, belong to apocalyptic thinking and envision the end of the world, yet they express different historical, environmental, and human catastrophic conditions. At this point, this article tries to unveil the genealogy of apocalyptic thinking and its current environmental concerns, in attempt to prove that this literary genre can have an effect on reality. ‘The real’ that has always been challenged, questioned, and doubted by postmodernism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction is brought to discussion again by apocalyptic fiction, given the inevitability of environmental threats and catastrophes. Putting aside any speculative allegations, many scholars of language theories and neurobiology prove that ‘the real’ has to be taken more seriously. On a practical level, three apocalyptic novels, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, are taken as examples in point, which can enrich the discussion and demonstrate the unrefusable nexus between apocalyptic fiction and tangible reality, which gives birth to the term ecological realism. Therefore, this article is divided into three main sections, following the development of argument. First, there is a tracing back of apocalyptic thinking in religion, literature, and history. After, there is an attempt to establish arguments for ‘the real’. Then, there is a discussion of the environmental threats portrayed in fiction, particularly in the three novels, and their tangibility and reality, which is named as ecological realism. 

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