Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 23 - Apocalyptic Trauma and the Politics of Mourning a World

  • from Part III - Varieties of Apocalyptic Experience
  • Edited by John Hay, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Book:
    Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 304-316

  • Summary

    Because of its inherent multidisciplinarity and conceptual flexibility, trauma theory has, from the start, been subject to ongoing revisions and redefinitions. This essay expands the notion of trauma as resulting from unassimilable, life-threatening, past events by conceptualizing trauma as resulting from the envisaged imminent annihilation of the known world. This apocalyptic trauma is embedded in American literature and closely tied to the politics of mourning dramatized in narratives of loss and melancholia but also in narratives of political activism and regeneration. This essay discusses apocalyptic expressions related to the trauma of the loss of the culture of the Old South in William Faulkner’s work, to the trauma of dispossession and cultural erasure in Chicano/a literature, and to the trauma of envisaged global annihilation in American eco-poetry.