London PUS Seminar - Dr Hauke Riesch - The End: Science, Risk and Prophecy - 28th November

On November 28th, Dr Hauke Riesch will give a talk on "The End: Science, Risk and Prophecy'. 

Abstract:

The sense that the world is in a period of crisis is often exemplified through apocalyptic narratives on a variety of flashpoints: climate change, environmental degradation, political and economic collapse, increased international tensions, the rise of populist and nativist politics in the US, Europe, Russia and elsewhere, renewed threats of nuclear war, and international terrorism.  
However, apocalyptic and millennial narratives that expect an imminent end have a long tradition in Western culture, and the world has, of course, not ended yet. The talk will trace and map the narrative connections between the traditional religious accounts of apocalypse and how the current world-wide crises are talked about, with specific emphasis on technologically mediated potential catastrophes: environmental crisis, nuclear annihilation and climate change. Millennial narratives include not only dire warnings about a catastrophic future, but also offer chances of redemption and hopes of a possible better world.
I argue that combining perspectives from millennial studies with a Science and Technology Studies based analysis can bring new insights into how environmental apocalypses can be understood and ultimately communicated. Discussing examples from UK and German environmental literature, I argue that we can construct our fears of current environmental catastrophe as a (late) modern apocalyptic narrative, and discuss the implications of the apocalyptic account of our ecological future on efforts to mitigate against it.
I argue that we can understand wider social reactions to the current set of crises by looking at the narrative traditions through which we impart a wider meaning on an essentially secular and nihilistic set of catastrophes.

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