University of California San Diego - April 5-6, 2019 - First Department of Literature Graduate Conference - Division of Arts and ...
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University of California San Diego
First Department of Literature Graduate Conference
April 5-6, 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Schedule of Events…………………………………………………………..….... 2
Keynote Address .……………………………………………………................... 5
Campus Map: Parking, Restrooms, Food …………....………………………… 6
Abstracts……………………………………………………………….................. 8
1
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Friday, April 5: Huerta-Vera Cruz Room
9:30 a.m. - 9:50 a.m. Dr. Streeby’s Keynote Address
Queering Perspectives: Fathers, Mothers, and Female (Re)production
Heather Paulson (UC San Diego)
Healing from Below: Working Class Women’s Spaces as Resistance and
Recovery
10 a.m.- 11:15 a.m. Summer Sutton (UC Riverside)
Problem Child and the Bildungsroman: Queering Reproduction, Care,
and Resilience in Jennifer Phang's Advantageous
Melissa Vipperman-Cohen (UC San Diego)
“Maid, Wife, or Whate’er thou Beest, No Man Shall Enter Here but by
My Leave”
Bio-Politics and Bio-Resistance
Keva Bui (UC San Diego)
Post-Nuclear Imaginings: Inconclusive Beginnings in Octavia E. Butler’s
Dawn
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Nima Rassooli (UC San Diego)
Fuck Society, Resist Neoliberal Crisis, and to the Next Episode of the
Serial Freak Show
Alan Stauffer (UC San Diego)
Occupy Biopower: Post-Apocalyptic Sex Praxis for a Self-Destructing
World
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Lunch Break
Recovery Through Religion: Reformation and Restoration
Meghan Elliott (University of Oregon)
From Entropy to Empathy: The Creation of “Mercerism” and
Socioemotional Reform in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Libby Kao (UC Berkeley)
“A Calamitous Ending”: Religious Yearning and the New Sincerity in
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Adrienne Gwen Rube (UC Irvine)
Redemption in The Winter’s Tale: Restoration Through Romance and
Religion
Theoretical Approaches to Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Kaitlyn Kretsinger-Dunham (CSU Bakersfield)
Agency, Renunciation, and Transformative Destruction: Yeong-Hye's
Resistance to Masculinist Culture in The Vegetarian
2
Cansu Kutlualp (Sabanci University)
Innocence of Anorexia: An Analysis of The Vegetarian
Shelby Pinkham (CSU Bakersfield)
“I Won’t Eat It”: An Ecofeminist Application to The Vegetarian
Caitlin Wolf (CSU Bakersfield)
Failure to Disclose: Infelicities of Agency in The Vegetarian
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Networking social at Hops and Salt
Saturday, April 6: Huerta-Vera Cruz Room
Recovery: Questions of Empire and Colonialism
Billy Collins (UC Santa Barbara)
Blindness and Foresight in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians
Zach Hill (UC San Diego)
10 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Local Histories/Global Recognition: Taiwan’s “Japan Complex” and
Nostalgia for Global-connectedness
Eunice Sang Lee (UC San Diego)
Taiwan from the Ground: The Settler Colonial Myth and
Environmental Protection in Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (2013)
Genres of Resilience and Resistance
Katie Neipris (UC San Diego)
Portals to Fantasy: Escape from Trauma
Beatriz Ramirez (UC San Diego)
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. La novela neopoliciaca and U.S/Mexico Border Crime Fiction
Jeanine Webb (UC San Diego)
Brujas, Tech Travelers, and Genre-Breaking
Sang-Keun Yoo (UC Riverside)
The Orient at the Gate of Sf Disorientation: Samuel R. Delany’s
Dhalgren
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Lunch break
Marginalized Resilience: Cultural (Un)death and Sacrifice
Jeshua Enriquez (UC Riverside)
“His World Now”: Cultural Undeath and the Generative Moment in
2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
Celine Khoury (UC San Diego)
“Here is my space”: Transcendence as Resiliency in Antony and
Cleopatra
Suzy Woltmann (UC San Diego)
“This is My Gift to You”: The Post-Apocalyptic Search for Utopia in
3
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Critiques of Return
Meaghan Baril (UC San Diego)
The World is Burning Again… But Don’t Worry, Mom Will Save Us:
Critiques of Essentialist Feminism in Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. for Leibowitz
Hannah Doermann (UC San Diego)
Resisting Post-Racialism in Post-Apocalyptic Young Adult Literature
Suyi Okungbowa (University of Arizona)
“Post” for Whom? Examining the Socioeconomics of a
Post-Apocalypse
Christine Weidner (UC Santa Barbara)
“It's Already Happened”: Post-Apocalyptic Affects in J.G. Ballard's
High-Rise
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Networking social at Rock Bottom
4KEYNOTE SPEAKER: DR. SHELLEY STREEBY
I am an author and educator whose interdisciplinary research is situated at the intersections of American
Studies; Literary and Cultural Studies; Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies; and Critical Ethnic Studies. I
was a science fiction fan from the time I learned how to read, and growing up in a small Midwestern
working-class city transformed by deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s made me always aware of the
power and significance of social movement struggles over science, technology, cultural memory, and the
future. Now Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, these
interests and commitments come together in my recent book Imagining the Future of Climate Change:
World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism. I focus on social movements led by Indigenous people and
people of color that are at the forefront of challenging the greatest threat to our environment: the fossil fuel
industry. Their stories and movements—in the real world and through science fiction—help us all better
understand the relationship between activism and culture, and how both can be valuable tools in creating our
future.
This book grew out of my work as Director, since 2010, of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers'
Workshop at UCSD. Being part of such an intensive collective project devoted to world-making and
imagining the future changed my life. It made me ever more alert to how the imagination and popular culture
are crucial tools in shaping change. The same is true of my service on the Internal Board of UCSD's Arthur
C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. I especially enjoy and appreciate how the Clarke Center and
Clarion join forces throughout the year to produce a stellar set of Public Humanities events that help us talk
with students and community members about the biggest problems, such as climate change, that confront the
world today.
Doing archival research is important to me in all of my projects. Instead of following the paper trails of rich
and powerful people, however, I seek out archives that illuminate struggles over inequalities and reveal the
power of outsider imaginations in shaping change. Much of my recent research focuses on climate change
and public education in the Octavia E. Butler Papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
When the great science fiction writer died much too young in 2006, she left behind a vast amount of material,
including newspaper clippings, story and novel drafts, letters, diaries, and journals, that archivist Natalie
Russell, following Butler's own organizational logic whenever possible, arranged in more than 350 boxes .
Calling herself a Histo-Futurist who extrapolates from the past and present to imagine the future, Butler drew
on this material in crafting her fiction. I argue that the papers themselves are also an important form of
"memory work."
In the last few years, I have participated in a number of collective Public Humanities projects focused on
Butler's memory. I held a fellowship at the Huntington in 2015 and in 2016 co-organized with Ayana
Jamieson a major three-day conference at UCSD called "Shaping Change: Remembering Octavia E. Butler
through Archives, Art, and World-Making." I also delivered a keynote at the June 2017 Huntington
conference, "Octavia E. Butler Studies: Convergence of an Expanding Field," co-organized by Jamieson and
Moya Bailey and participated in the year-long series of events that took place in in Butler's memory in Los
Angeles in 2016-2017 called "Radio Imagination: Artists and Writers in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler,"
organized by arts collective Clockshop's Director Julia Meltzer. I am currently writing a new book entitled
Speculative Archives about the future-facing memory work done by female science fiction writers who did
extensive research and left behind large archival collections. I am also co-editing Keywords for Comics Studies for
NYU Press with Ramzi Fawaz and Deborah Whaley. In 2014-2016 I was co-convener of a UCSD
Humanities Center Working Group in Comics Studies and presented with Pepe Rojo and Jeanine Webb at
the Comics Arts Conference as part of 2016 San Diego Comic-Con.
5CAMPUS MAP: PARKING, RESTROOMS, FOOD
The Huerta-Vera Cruz Room is located on the first floor of the Student Center under
the LGBT Center.
Suggested parking lots: P103, P451, P452
Student Center Restrooms
● One gender inclusive restroom in the LGBT Resource Center (second floor)
● One gender inclusive restroom in the Women's Center (second floor)
● Two gender inclusive restrooms on 2nd floor of Building A (201 & 205)
● One unisex restroom on 1st floor NE corner (105)
Mandeville Center Restrooms
● First floor: Men's and Women's restrooms near Art Gallery Offices
● Second floor: Men's and Women's restrooms near west elevator
Link to interactive campus map: https://maps.ucsd.edu/map/default.htm
6Food and Drink
On Campus:
Art of Espresso Cafe (7 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Friday, closed Saturday)
Serves coffee, smoothies, pastries, sandwiches, salads, desserts, and great service.
Student Center (five-minute walk from the conference):
Taco Villa (9 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. on Saturday)
Mexican restaurant that serves tacos, burritos, and sides.
Blue Pepper Asian Cuisine (8 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Friday, closed Saturday)
Features healthy Thai and vegetarian offerings.
Student Services Center (ten-minute walk from the conference):
Yogurt World (10:30 a.m. - 10 p.m. on Friday and 11:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Saturday)
Fill up your own cup of frozen yogurt! Located on level 1 of the Student Services Center (across
from Price Center).
Croutons (10 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Friday, closed Saturday)
Choose from a variety of fresh salads, soups or panini. Located on level 2 of the Student Services
Center (across from Price Center).
Price Center Food Court (ten-minute walk from the conference):
Bombay Coast (10 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. on Saturday)
Burger King (open 24 hrs on Friday, 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. on Saturday)
Jamba Juice (6:30 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. on Friday, 9:00 a.m - 4:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Lemongrass Farm Fresh Place (9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. on Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Panda Express (9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. on Friday, 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Rubio’s Coastal Grill (9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. on Friday, 10:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Santorini Greek Island Grill (7:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. on Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Seed + Sprout (10:00 a.m. -9:00 p.m. on Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Shogun Sushi and Teriyaki (10:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. on Friday, 11:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Starbucks (7:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. on Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Subway (7:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. on Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Sunshine Market (7:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. on Friday, 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. on Saturday)
Zanzibar at the Loft (9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. on Friday, closed on Saturday)
Near Campus:
Westfield UTC https://www.westfield.com/utc/entertainment/dining
The Shops at La Jolla Village: http://theshopsatlajollavillage.com/
La Jolla Village Square http://ljvillagesquare.com/dining.html
7ABSTRACTS
Friday, April 5
10 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.: Queering Perspectives: Fathers, Mothers, and Female (Re)production
Heather Paulson (UC San Diego)
Healing from Below: Working Class Women’s Spaces as Resistance and Recovery
Considering the era of the Great Depression as a metaphor for a post-apocalyptic environment, my paper
illuminates the strength of resistance embodied in texts by working-class women writers of the period.
Women-only spaces, what Adrienne Rich claims as an aspect of the lesbian continuum, function as sites
of recovery in these works. I will demonstrate how the shared knowledge and work produced by women
living in dire circumstances creates space for imagining how freedom from patriarchal capitalist
structures, and other oppressive systems governed through it, can be found.
Summer Sutton (UC Riverside)
Problem Child and the Bildungsroman: Queering Reproduction, Care, and Resilience in Jennifer
Phang's Advantageous
In this paper, I turn to a resilient literary genre, the bildungsroman, in order to explore how neoliberal
conditions of economic scarcity and social fragmentation disrupt the teleological future that typifies its
coming-of-age narrative. I do so by considering the function of a problematic child figure in a recent SF
bildungsroman, Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous. I begin with the premise that the bildungsroman,
as a genre, operates as both a narrative about reproduction and as itself a form of social reproduction
through the moralized tracing of a child’s adaptation to the social order. I in turn argue that Advantageous
queers the normative bildungsroman structure by foregrounding a female, Asian-American child
protagonist who both refuses and is not permitted to grow up in the ‘right’ ways. Phang’s figuration of a
problem child works to shed light on the necessary instability of a social order grounded in the
simultaneous exploitation of racialized and gendered bodies and the illusion of a reproducible, national
homogeneity that capitalizes on that exploitation. In both problematizing the adaptability of a neoliberal
social order and tracing the systems of care that, queerly, grow within its exteriorized spaces, Advantageous
offers a necessarily tenuous vision of care work as queer resilience.
Melissa Vipperman-Cohen (UC San Diego)
“Maid, Wife, or Whate’er thou Beest, No Man Shall Enter Here but by My Leave”
In this paper, I explore the destabilizing relationships between early modern proto-capitalism and early
modern desire as they are represented on the English stage. In order to do so, I utilize an unhistorical
queer theoretical paradigm to pose questions such as “does desire queer early modern capitalism, or does
capitalism queer early modern desire?”. Contemporary early modern scholars are performing significant
and provocative work in queer and sexuality studies, particularly with regards to an expanded,
deconstructionist emphasis on diachronic reading and methodology. I think, however, that these
conversations do not take into account the importance of changing economic practices in the theater and
in Western Europe more broadly during this time period. The plays in this paper highlight a growing
separation of the individual into one of many. William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and John
Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The Sea Voyage highlight the inconsequential, replaceable, and dispensable
nature of the individual participating in the expanding capitalist economy that relies on international trade
and exploitation. In contrast, the heroine Bess Bridges in Thomas Heywood’sThe Fair Maid of the West Part
I provides a new queered perspective in the context of early modern expansion – that of a middle-class
woman who exercises significant agency. In exemplifying a queer character who embraces the possibilities
8of global trade and travel for her own emotional, and not just economic, gain, she opens up the
possibility for regaining sense of self while participating in the marketplace.
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.: Bio-Politics and Bio-Resistance
Keva Bui (UC San Diego)
Post-Nuclear Imaginings: Inconclusive Beginnings in Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn
Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war that eliminates almost all life on Earth, Octavia E. Butler’s novel
Dawn f ollows one of the few human survivors, Lilith Iyapo, who is saved by the alien species Oankali
and charged with leading a small colony of humans back to Earth for re-inhabitance—in exchange for
involuntary participation in the Oankali gene trade. The Oankali possess a biological imperative to
interbreed with other species, desiring to genetically fuse with humans to reshape themselves in a
process they view as mutually beneficial. In a moment when both racial and species hybridity has been
valorized in posthumanist, ecological, and new materialist discourse, these non- consensual
Oankali-human relations draw attention to the power relations that undergird reproductive futurity. By
extracting the ideal genetic material from humans in order to perfect their own species, the Oankali’s
eugenicist project draws attention to the construction of the human body as an assemblage constituent
of microbial, molecular, and nonhuman parts. Through Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, I conceptualize how
the temporality of post-nuclear apocalypse offers a dialectical tension to rethink how we approach the
emergence of the modern human subject. By juxtaposing the discourses surrounding post-nuclear
apocalypse with eugenicist modes of reproductive futurity, this paper theorizes the formation of racial
subjectivity in the beginnings of a post-apocalyptic society, drawing from what Frances Tran calls
“inconclusive beginnings.” In sum, this paper on speculative fiction proposes a rearticulation of how we
imagine new feminist worlds to offer new ways of theorizing racial sciences.
Nima Rassooli (UC San Diego)
Fuck Society, Resist Neoliberal Crisis, and to the Next Episode of the Serial Freak Show
Creator Sam Esmael's Mr. Robot is an Emmy award-winning psychological serial multi-season thriller on
the USA Network. From the “mentally ill” cyberpunk hacker Elliot Alderson to the transgender Chinese
State Minister, the show goes in depth to understand the complicated motives of the protagonists and
antagonists who are marked by non-normative bodies. In its serial multi-season format, the show has
captured the spirit of the Occupy Movement to redistribute wealth from the 1% and end consumer debt.
Embedded in Mr. Robot’s narrative of resistance to the neoliberal biopolitical order challenges
neoliberalism but also simultaneously does cultural work to reify the neoliberal biopolitical order.
Neoliberal biopolitical narratives not only normalize heterosexual, abled bodies but also normalize
cripnationalism, the privileging of certain non-normative bodies over others, whose mark of
“disposability” ranges from the prison-industrial-military complex to the medical-rehabilitative. Alexander
Weheliye refers to assemblages as a means to characterize how embodiment and culture affect how
biopower is expressed to avoid abstract notions of biopower that don’t take into consideration race and
gender or view those categories in a static lens. Biopower needs to be examined in an intersectional lens
or as constellations that take into account ability, race, affect, gender, sexuality, and geography. As there
are characters with different life chances due to the neoliberal biopolitical order, there are therefore
multiplicities of biopolitical temporalities within a narrative. Hence, I use the concept of biopolitical
temporality as a term of narrative analysis to map imaginaries of biopower constellations of ability, race,
affect, gender, sexuality, and geography. Thus, I will reveal how the show utilizes multiple biopolitical
temporalities through its sub-narratives to flesh out the hierarchies of living and dying in a neoliberal
biopolitical world. I will also demonstrate how resistance is envisioned within this I also seek to
9demonstrate how the show fetishizes through narrative prosthesis the abnormal bodies of the characters
of the show; hence producing a neoliberal biopolitical freakshow.
Alan Stauffer (UC San Diego)
Occupy Biopower: Post-Apocalyptic Sex Praxis for a Self-Destructing World
In the face of environmental destruction, the (re)ordering of post-apocalyptic biopower has already
begun along the lines: consolidate, protect. Consolidation can neither outpace nor lag behind climate
change (see, for example, Miami’s ongoing struggle against sea level rise and imminent property
devaluation). Climate disasters such as earthquakes in Haiti, hurricanes in Louisiana, and forest fires in
California prompt institutional responses that range from preemptive- to non-action and suggest how
quickly this consolidation and protection can occur. Whose lives do these institutions protect? Whose
lives do they leave vulnerable? Whose lives do their actions expose to destruction? And, faced with
troubling answers to these questions, can we Occupy Biopower instead of pursuing its lines of retreat?
Because sex plays a key role in the biopolitical administration of life, in this presentation I will propose
post-apocalyptic sex praxis as part of a utopian task to occupy biopower. I refer to the current biopolitical
regime, probably unsurprisingly, as phallocentric. I argue that this regime takes penetration as its
relational mode and individual sovereignty as its organizing principle. To occupy biopower is not to seize
control of this phallocentric regime but rather to think sex in other than phallocentric terms. My
provisional post-apocalyptic sex praxis takes permeability as its relational mode and constellational
entanglement as its (dis)organizing principle. My presentation will focus on developing these provisional
concepts as they gesture toward the speculative task, Occupy Biopower.
2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m: Recovery Through Religion: Reformation and Restoration
Meghan Elliott (University of Oregon)
From Entropy to Empathy: The Creation of ‘Mercerism’ and Socioemotional Reform in Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep
While an apocalypse refers to the death of civilization, the term post in post-apocalypse represents the birth
or creation of social reform that follows pandemic destruction. Various post-apocalyptic texts have focused
on technological, ecological or practical efforts of reform in response to civil annihilation, but we cannot
overlook the significance of the personal, emotional and anti-isolative elements that inform the social
reconstruction of a world lost to a mutation of its former self. This paper analyzes how the post-apocalyptic
civilization in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep f ails to properly address the civilization’s need for emotional
progress, and actually makes a mockery of the social need for genuine empathy and emotional reform. This
paper begins by redefining the term empathy by virtue of its practical application to social reform, and then
shifts into analyzing socioemotional progress through two theoretical lenses: affect theory and psychoanalytic
theory. For the sake of brevity, the scope of this paper does not cover empathy in relation to the android or
technological other. Instead, it analyzes how P.K.D. creates a post-apocalyptic world that is doomed to
crumble into the abyss of entropy due to the creation of a pseudo religion called Mercerism that claims to
embody empathetic principles, but ultimately impairs the civilization’s ability to emotionally rehabilitate.
After deconstructing the negative aspects of Mercerism and its pseudo approach to empathy, this essay
concludes by offering a psychoanalytic solution to socioemotional distress by expanding on Donald
Winnicott’s theory of the true self in relation to the ways we emotionally reform (or fail to) in the aftermath
of social chaos.
10Libby Kao (UC Berkeley)
“A Calamitous Ending”: Religious Yearning and the New Sincerity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Through an exploration of excess, sincerity, and eschatological belief in the final 100 pages of White Teeth,
this paper broaches a reparative reading of the oft-reviled ending to Zadie Smith’s 2000 debut novel by
placing it in conversation with the work of irresolution and discontent in contemporary fin-de-siècle and
apocalyptic novelistic form. Many have studied the “postsecular” religious ethics of Zadie Smith’s
work—particularly its explorations of rationalism, fundamentalism, and religious pluralism—but these
discussions often stop short of considering the aesthetics and affective sensibilities of Smith’s
multitextured portraits of religious yearning. To begin to draw together these components, I engage
David Foster Wallace’s contemplations of the emergent post-postmodernist literary movement of the
“New Sincerity,” which has hailed Zadie Smith’s fiction as a foremost example. How might the theme of
yearning for the divine at the end of the world—at once timeless and uniquely inflected with modernity’s
anxieties—grant access to perspectives and phenomenologies that lie, in the words of Raymond Williams
on structures of feeling, “at the very edge of semantic availability”? This paper attempts to respond to
such questions by reading how religious yearning in the ending of White Teeth might actually be generating
a specific, affective critical dissatisfaction that challenges the utility of coherence in novelistic form
altogether, by dramatizing the existential irresolution of living with/in the fin-de-siècle,
turn-of-the-millennium anxiety and global precarity of contemporary multicultural experience.
Adrienne Gwen Rube (UC Irvine)
Redemption in The Winter’s Tale: Restoration Through Romance and Religion
This talk centers on the reconciliation that is uniquely allowed by the enigmatic genre and religiosity of
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, examining the play in the context of the emerging romance genre in 17th
century England as well as of the Protestant Reformation that both precedes and coincides with the
play’s initial production. At once tragic and comic, Christian and pagan, The Winter’s Tale fuses several
conventional dramatic categories and is informed by various source materials that complicate its
classification as strictly indebted to one tradition or another. I will focus on the play’s conclusion and on
the oft-debated supernatural effect of its final scene of restoration, one that historically has been imbued
with religious significance and widely interpreted by critics as adaptation of Greek myth or as broad
Christian allegory, either decidedly Catholic in the miraculous resurrection that it depicts, or contrarily,
decidedly Protestant in the anxieties about idolatry that it reveals. I will locate the political and religious
implications of this critical tendency, ultimately pushing back against it to suggest the necessarily syncretic
nature of the play and its ending as Catholic, Protestant and pagan. I will argue that Shakespeare does not
privilege any one institution and in fact refuses this kind of singular explanatory logic, transcending the
framework of religious conflict that is embedded in the period in favor of the power of art as a kind of
“tertium quid” (to borrow Maurice Hunt’s characterization), thus creating a new kind of “religion” or way
of understanding that is fit especially for the so-called secular stage.
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: Theoretical Approaches to Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
Cansu Kutlualp (Sabanci University)
Innocence of Anorexia: An Analysis of The Vegetarian
This paper discusses Han Kang’s The Vegetarian’s protagonist Yeong-hye’s narrative non-existence as an
act of passive resistance through “vegetarianism” and “anorexia nervosa”. I look at theories of anorexia
to determine the scope of Yeong-hye’s as anorexia nervosa, as hers is a stand against the violence she is
subjected to throughout the novel. I employ Rudolph Bell’s Holy Anorexia to propose a reading of
Yeong-hye’s story concluding that “holy anorexia” requires a different level of mobility and autonomy
than anorexia in general. Comparing Yeong-hye’s motivation of ridding the body of guilt and sin to
11Catherine of Siena’s story in the book I look at anorexia as metaphoric power in the familial context. I
deconstruct holy anorexia to autonomy involving a struggle for power which is the case for most of the
saints. The conclusion I come to is almost a refutation of all the characteristics specified to Yeong-hye.
She is neither a vegetarian, nor an anorexic. Admiring Kang’s way of failing every identificatory or
descriptive authority given to Yeong-hye I conclude that Yeong-hye is a saint-figure which includes the
discourse of self-starvation, violence and anorexia nervosa.
Kaitlyn Kretsinger-Dunham (CSU Bakersfield)
Agency, Renunciation, and Transformative Destruction: Yeong-Hye's Resistance to Masculinist
Culture in The Vegetarian
In Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian, the central character, Yeong-hye, undergoes a metaphysical
transition from human to plant, resulting in the destruction of her physical body. Yeong-hye's
self-destruction is not a movement from rationality to madness but instead the result of a deliberate
choice in service of a particular end: she must punish her body with starvation for its participation in the
violence inherent to human nature, and then relinquish that body, replacing it with a new identity (plant)
which is incapable of violence. For Yeong-hye, this transformation portends the loss of life for her
human body but a gain in spiritual well-being as she reclaims her agency from the masculinist culture
oppressing her and rebels against it by divorcing her metaphysical selfhood from her physical body. Her
resistance is both active and passive: it is deliberate and radical, but it causes no violent harm except to
herself. Like a phoenix from the ashes of self-immolation, Yeong-hye emerges—but her body does not
survive the transition. Still, her transformation succeeds at multiple purposes: withdrawal from her
violent and oppressed existence and a change in her essential being. This paper analyzes Yeong- hye’s
choices and explores their ramifications through the lenses of Susan Bordo’s body theory and Greta
Gaard’s ecofeminist thought.
Shelby Pinkham (CSU Bakersfield)
“I Won’t Eat It”: An Ecofeminist Application to The Vegetarian
Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2016) has received remarkably inadequate ecocritical attention; nevertheless,
as I will demonstrate, the novel features numerous correlations between the oppression of women and
nonhuman entities. To elaborate on these parallel structures, I employ the critical patterns associated with
ecofeminism. The article invokes Carol J. Adams’s concept that our dietary habits either “embody or
negate feminist principles” to discuss how gender oppression and nonhuman oppression mirror one
another in a masculine society. Yeong- hye, on a personal journey to more ethical dietary habits, is
force-fed, stripped of her rights over her own reproductive organs, and idolized for her young flesh. I
liken these events to the force- feeding of ducks and geese for foie gras, the double-colonization of cows
and chickens for more milk and eggs than their bodies can naturally produce, and the general
fetishization of the young flesh of all farm animals for the sustained production of meat to feed humans.
In addition to a scrutiny of Yeong-hye’s oppression, this paper explores Ferdinand De Saussure’s sign,
signified, and signifier to explain the language we use to remove ourselves from the process of oppressing
animals. By this logic of language, cows become beef, which become ground meat, which become
hamburger patties. This process of renaming is not unlikened to the ways in which the characters discuss
Yeong-hye, in hopes to dehumanize her. This article addresses, not only the leading voices in
ecofeminism, but also the leading voices against ecofeminism to establish an acceptance of nonhumans
into the feminist doctrine.
Caitlin Wolf (CSU Bakersfield)
Failure to Disclose: Infelicities of Agency in The Vegetarian
12In Han Kang’s 2016 novel, The Vegetarian, protagonist Yeong-Hye resists the intense compulsion,
inherent in a social community of individuals, to assert one’s self as a free actor. Her rejection of her own
assertive agency and responsibility toward others affects a pervasive negativity in the surrounding
characters, which in turn inhibits and undermines their own status as independent actors. Utilizing the
critical focus of Hannah Arndt on agency and disclosure, J.L. Austen on social communication, and
Sianne Ngai on negative affect, this essay examines disclosure of self, or in Yeong-Hye’s case, the refusal
to disclose, and the infelicitous consequences her actions impose on her community. Han focuses the
novel on the ramifications and outward effects of Yeong-Hye’s actions, compounding Yeong-Hye’s
silence by refusing her an authoritative voice on her own motivation. The first section of the novel
explores the oppressive force of social norms on Yeong-Hye’s individualism, while the second portion
question’s Yeong-Hye’s authority over her own actions, considering her denial of her actor- status.
Responsibility to the social system is examined in the final portion, where the consummately responsible
In-Hye is contrasted with the increasing self-absorption of her sister, Yeong-Hye. Yeong-Hye’s social
dissent and refusal of her status as an actor undermines the essentialism of agency while destabilizing the
social web around her. However, the final portion of the novel inspires a moment of hope in the reader,
centered around the image of In-hye. She is force resilient to the negativity inspired by Yeong-Hye’s
decline, propelled by a restorative responsibility for the welfare of others.
Saturday, April 6
10:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.: Recovery: Questions of Empire and Colonialism
Billy Collins (UC Santa Barbara)
Blindness and Foresight in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians
Set between the apocalyptic collapse of one political regime and the unseen genesis of the next, the
conclusion of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians leaves its narrator, a town Magistrate, balking at a
historiographical dilemma. Should he heed the “post-” in posterity by bequeathing to future generations
instrumental myths of lives lived in idyllic harmony with the seasons, or should he record as history the
colonial violence otherwise inscribed only as scars upon tortured bodies and as dream-spawning
impressions upon the psyche? While the Magistrate fumbles at this impasse, I contend that Coetzee
succeeds in establishing, between the discourse of myth and that of history, what Giorgio Agamben
would call a conceptual “zone of indistinction,” the likes of which alternately enable and undermine
political praxis in the West. Coetzee constructs this zone largely on the plane of style by intermingling the
processes of historiography with recurrent figurations of blindness and rhythmicity, which together
engender a vision of time between synchrony and diachrony, and between linear history and cyclical
myth. My intervention is thus twofold: I extend the critical idiom of betweenness with which scholars
have for decades described how Coetzee’s fictions self-consciously position themselves between, inter alia,
agents of colonial domination and their victims (David Attwell), and literary modes of documentary
realism and political allegory (Brian Macaskill); and I explore the historico-political utility of Coetzee’s
stylistic innovations during the most turbulent years of apartheid, years when its custodians were
consumed by what Coetzee describes as a paranoid “end-of-the-world fantasy.”
Zach Hill (UC San Diego)
Local Histories/Global Recognition: Taiwan’s “Japan Complex” and Nostalgia for Global-
Connectedness
Scholarship on the films of Taiwan’s “Japan complex” tends to explore the films of Wei Te-sheng as a
representation of Taiwanese history while focusing on issues of the national or the colonized-colonizer
13relationship. It is important to note, however, that as producing local community has become emphasized
in Bentu Taiwan, the presence of local Japanese history has taken on new significance. Rather than
viewing the presence of a historical Japanese empire as a sign of Taiwan’s nostalgia for the former
colonizer, then, the presence and focus on the relationship between Taiwan and Japan needs to be
examined through a focus on local community-making in Taiwan and the search for global recognition,
which can be at least partially attributed to the neocolonial presence of China on the global stage. Since
1994, the Taiwanese government has promoted an “integrated community-making program” that focuses
on the development of the notion of community in place-ness. This has led to a new emphasis on local
history and culture in Taiwanese identity and society. Policies like this work not only as a way to separate
Taiwanese identity from a Chinese one, but they also allowed for a move away from the native/outsider
divide that was polarizing politics as the KMT fell from power. Now, local community-making has
become pivotal to understanding the role of history in Taiwanese film, particularly as it relates to the
presence of Japan. This paper examines post-2000s films such as Viva Tonal, Cape No. 7, and Le Moulin
to show the intersection of local histories and their connection to a desire for global connection. At the
same time, this paper argues that understanding the legacy of Japanese empire in Taiwan shows how we
can understand the global aspects and legacies of empire to the present day.
Eunice Sang Lee (UC San Diego)
Taiwan from the Ground: The Settler Colonial Myth and Environmental Protection in Beyond Beauty:
Taiwan from Above (2013)
Beginning with the uninhabited green mountaintops of Taiwan, Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above ( 2013)
ostensibly depicts the majestic beauty of nature to force its audience to confront anthropogenic, or
man-caused, environmental damage on the island. The film follows a major undercurrent in nature
documentaries, colloquially termed “nature porn,” that use high definition footage of nature shot through
angles and paces uncommon to pedestrians, such as aerial and slow-motion shots. While the contrast
between the cinematic beauty of nature and anthropogenic pollution seems to call for the universal need
for environmental protection, this paper argues that in the case of Beyond Beauty, the nature documentary
method instead masks the film’s participation in the narrative of settler colonial nation-building and
solidifies the political and legal authority of the current Taiwanese state. Analyzing the voiceover
narration as well as accompanying visuals, this paper concludes that the film locates environmental
protection solely under the mandate of the Taiwanese state and authorizes its control through law and
regulation, even though the Taiwanese government partakes in the larger capitalist economy that fuels the
cycle of pollution. The film thus forecloses the possibility of an alternative form of environmental
protection and governance outside the purview of state control, such as those envisioned in indigenous
self-government activism.
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.: Genres of Resilience and Resistance
Katie Neipris (UC San Diego)
Portals to Fantasy: Escape from Trauma
Oxford’s Inklings played a crucial role in the formation of foundational fantasy texts, offering each writer
a community that understood the weight of shared, repressed wartime experiences. Tolkien’s child figures
act as surrogates for adult veterans who discover that portals to fantasy offer an escape from war, a
temporary respite from harsh industrialization, and a means of accessing new sources of power
previously relegated to adult figures. By willingly entering these portals, the child survivor may reconcile
their understanding of their new world and consider their new traumatic state through a magical or
fantastical lense. As Bilbo Baggins encounters apocalyptic scenarios, he is confronted with questions of
14access, guilt, and privilege - the same questions that the Inklings sought to help each other answer
through the detached lense of fantasy. Through an examination of the portals in The Hobbit ( 1937),
Elizabeth Goodenough and Andrea Immel’s study of wartime children’s literature, and Humphrey
Carpenter’s biographies of the Inklings, I maintain that this text functions as a means of helping war-torn
children - as well as the repressed, post-traumatic authors - return to normalcy.
Beatriz Ramirez (UC San Diego)
La novela neopoliciaca and U.S/Mexico Border Crime Fiction
Some Latin American authors since the emergence of the American hardboiled novel have taken a
political commitment to using this genre as a form of socio-political criticism of their respective
nation-state. Among these authors is Paco Ignacion Taibo II in Mexico who adapted this literary genre to
produce his own version, coined in the 1990s, as la novela neopoliciaca. T his version and term have been
taken on by other authors and scholars to describe Latin American detective fiction that follow some of
the hardboiled conventions, but also have a more leftist critique of their respective nation-state. Since
then, the term has become a buzz-word for scholars studying detective fiction in Latin America and to
some extent the US-Mexico borderlands cultural production. La novelaneo policiaca, as a model for
investigating nation-state crimes and corruption, allows us to delve into detective border fiction that
crosses the boundaries between two nation-states and the possible corruption that both can present to
marginalized peoples. Alica Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood and Taibo II Frontera Dreams demonstrate the
potential for theorizing la novela neopoliciaca beyond the scope of Latin American detective fiction into
border and ethnic American detective fiction. Using spatial geography scholars, I simultaneously argue
that while la novela neopoliciaca f orefronts the authors’ socio-political and economical criticism of their
nation-state, scholars like David Harvey and Doreen Massey allow us to consider the detective’s role
within the neoliberal production of their respective city and the potential for resistance of its oppression
to marginalized people.
Jeanine Webb (UC San Diego)
Brujas, Tech Travelers, and Genre-Breaking
I propose a paper that would examine themes of resistance, resilience and recovery in three new and
exciting works of contemporary speculative literature of the last two years by San Diego Latinx authors
responding to the current climate, including Lizz Huerta's in-progress near-future novel The Wall
(forthcoming) and its technological brujas, guerilla fighters and border healers, the poet Manuel Paul
López's These Days of Candy ( Noemi, 2017), a nd its otherworldly voices and visual ludicism, and Alfredo
Aguilar's post-apocalyptic speculative narrative epic poem What Happens On Earth (BOAAT, 2018).
Sang-Keun Yoo (UC Riverside)
The Orient at the Gate of Sf Disorientation: Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren
American science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany’s 1975 novel Dhalgren is eight hundreds’ pages long and
is full of disorienting riddles. Although the academic frame for analyzing this novel has changed from
postmodernism to poststructuralism and other various theories, one thing that has not changed is critics’
engagement with race theories, especially those focusing on African American identity and history in the
United States. From Mary Kay Bray’s cornerstone article in 1984 to Marc C. Jerng’s recent article in 2011,
the focus has been on whether Dhalgren represents or deconstructs African American identity and history.
This paper, however, sheds light on half-Native American identity of the main protagonist Kid and Asian
identity of the two “Oriental” characters in the novel: the “Orientally” looking woman Kid meets in the
beginning and at the end of the novel and Lansang, a “Filipino” employee who is working at the gate of
Calkins’ mansion. Although these characters are keystones in the novel’s plot, critics have mostly ignored
15them, simply mentioning that they show the deconstruction aspects of the novel. By critically engaging
with postcolonial and indigenous studies by Jodi Byrd, Mark Rifkin, Sarah Ahmed, Lisa Lowe and Bill
Mullen, this paper argues that although this novel deconstructs foreground and background, the
protagonist and these two “Oriental” characters remain in the background of the novel compared to
other characters who are depicted in the foreground. I would argue that these “Oriental” characters serve
as a disorienting tool for the novel’s deconstructionist plot.
2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.: Marginalized Resilience: Cultural (Un)death and Sacrifice
Jeshua Enriquez (UC Riverside)
“His World Now”: Cultural Undeath and the Generative Moment in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
My paper examines Colson Whitehead’s postapocalyptic 2011 novel Zone One as an example of the
emergence of a new mode in contemporary American fiction, in which elements of speculative fiction
such as futuristic technology or supernatural occurrences are deployed within the contextual setting of
the familiar real world, and while the text maintains a focus on the experience of mundane everyday life.
The pos-tapocalyptic setting of Whitehead’s Zone One, in which protagonist Mark Spitz serves as part of a
team reclaiming New York City for human habitation after the rise of undead creatures known as skels,
provides an opportunity to excavate the artifacts and collapsed sociopolitical structures of the 21st
century United States. I argue that these economic and political structures, which largely excluded and
marginalized major segments of the population – including African Americans like the novel’s
protagonist – are made visible by the inclusion of speculative elements, revealing the underlying material
realities of the present in a way that neither mainstream realist fiction nor traditional science fiction can
independently. I analyze the character arc of the protagonist from alienated and disregarded denizen of
the present pre-apocalyptic world to ambivalent, self-proclaimed “mediocre” survivor, and finally to an
empowered subject with agency in the open possibilities of the new world devoid of old structures. In
conjunction with this dynamic character arc, I argue that this new speculative mode with emphasis on
everyday experience itself opens the possibilities for new kinds of futurity, which work against the
structures of exclusionary power.
Celine Khoury (UC San Diego)
“Here is my space”: Transcendence as Resiliency in Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra has provoked debate among literary and theatrical critics, feminists,
and educators. The genre of the play is widely contested—the terms tragedy, “feminine tragedy,”
tragi-comedy or comi-tragedy, and problem play have all been used by scholars to attempt to categorize
the play’s themes of war, love, lust, and the fall and rise of empire. Debates about the play’s genre and
themes all rely on one common approach: the Rome versus Egypt binary opposition that places Rome as
superior to Egypt. Dominating scholarship for centuries, this interpretation privileges the defeat of Mark
Antony and Cleopatra, celebrating the birth of the Roman Empire under Augustus. Under this
construction, Rome (Augustus) symbolizes imperialism, European masculinity, rationality, logic, order,
rule, control, and the mind; Egypt (Cleopatra) embodies the opposite, foreign femininity, abundance,
emotion, disorder, chaos and sexuality; finally, Mark Antony embodies the battle between the two sides
of the binary. Moving away from this binaristic thinking, my analysis of Antony and Cleopatra does not
reduce the play to the Rome versus Egypt divide, but interprets the spaces that the play occupies as part
of a larger, interconnected ecosystem. When we no longer regard Rome and Egypt as two separate
worlds, but as belonging to a singular, interstitial space, we open the text to a new interpretation. My
interpretation focuses not on the tragedy of “the end,” but on the resiliency of Mark Antony and
Cleopatra—a resiliency that is rooted in the construction of suicide as transcendence.
16Suzy Woltmann (UC San Diego)
“This is My Gift to You”: Post-Apocalyptic Search for Utopia in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide depicts the impact of a devastating 2004 tsunami in the Sundarban
islands. The novel explores the intersections of environment and humankind, man and woman, Indian
and American, subaltern and cosmopolitan. In my article, I argue that the novel also demonstrates the
post-apocalyptic search for utopia as a fruitful endeavor. Characters in the novel experience personal,
political, and ecological disasters that create apocalyptic scenarios; however, their desire to seek utopia
demonstrates a resilience that defies trauma. In particular, characters in the novel seek utopia through
interaction with the dispossessed (utopia-as-person), attempts to create a utopian society
(utopia-as-place), and subaltern death (utopia-as-sacrifice). Utopia-as-person is articulated mostly through
Kinai’s interactions with the displaced Piya. Attempts at achieving utopia-as-place fall short because of a
harsh environmental and political climate, but these projects are not perceived as failures. Rather, the
striving for a utopian ideal place is worthy for the aesthetic and cultural discourse it creates. Finally,
utopian sacrifice and death allow the subaltern to achieve voice. Ghosh calls for a world in which this
discourse is translated into material existence and there is a more socially conscionable way of life in
which cultural heterogeneity is uncompromised. The interrelatedness of temporal and spatial
post-apocalyptic realities subvert the material and cultural binary, and through aesthetic portrayals of
man, nature and death, utopia is sought for and sometimes achieved. These utopias are translated through
hope, idealism, and the search for improvement.
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: Critiques of Return
Meaghan Baril (UC San Diego)
The World is Burning Again… But Don’t Worry, Mom Will Save Us: Critiques of Essentialist
Feminism in Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
Apocalypse novels traditionally tackle a variety of broad topics including ignorance, fear, hope, the
environment, technology, biology, and regrowth. Despite the wide array of storylines that populate the
genre, these works all typically fit into the very traditional masculine/feminine binary in which the
masculine is, as is commonly seen in other genres, privileged over the feminine. Individual characters or
groups of people either survive, or attempt to survive, the apocalypse by displaying immense amounts of
masculinity in the form of bravado and courage as well as making the difficult decision to do whatever it
takes to survive, despite their previous set of ethics and morals. Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
approaches the topic of the end of the world with seemingly as much of a singular focus on masculinity
as most other works in the same genre, yet also considers how and why a society can destroy itself.
Despite what seems like a complete exclusion of anything feminine, A Canticle for Leibowitz brilliantly
incorporates, and even privileges the feminine, showing how a blind and thoughtless trust in essentialist
feminist ideas leads time and time again to the end of civilization, and the near death of humanity. My
presentation will focus on how a sustainable “return” after an apocalyptic event is impossible given the
dependence humankind has on the figure of “Mother Earth” through an analysis of Miller’s novel.
Hannah Doermann (UC San Diego)
Resisting Post-Racialism in Post-Apocalyptic Young Adult Literature
My presentation will discuss the relationship between the post-racialism of post-apocalyptic literature and
the emphasis on diversity in Young Adult literature (YA). Post-apocalyptic literature oftentimes imagines
a future where racial difference has been erased, rendering racism an issue of the past. Discourses around
YA, on the other hand, focus on the need for representations of racially and sexually diverse characters,
albeit by perpetuating a misappropriated, depoliticized understanding of diversity. I will discuss how two
17contemporary post-apocalyptic YA stories about queer protagonists of color take up the tensions
between these two genres. First, I will discuss Alex London’s 2013 novel Proxy, which resolves this
tension by representing characters of various skin colors—thus satisfying the YA market’s hunger for
“diversity”—without identifying its characters’ racial identities or discussing racism as part of the
post-apocalyptic regimen’s exploitative practices, thus nonetheless participating in the postracial politics
of post-apocalyptic literature. Then, I will discuss Malinda Lo’s 2012 short story Good Girl as representing
a more radical approach to this tension. Good Girl rejects the post-racialism of post-apocalyptic literature
as well as the depoliticized understanding of diversity in Young Adult literature by making racism central
to its post-apocalyptic world. The way post-apocalyptic YA discusses (or fails to discuss) racism as a
primary issue in post-apocalyptic societies’ attempts to return to an orderly existence can therefore
illustrate the ways diversity discourses fall in line with post-racialism and colorblindness, as well as
function as an explicit critique of these misappropriated diversity discourses that fail to challenge
post-racialism.
Suyi Okungbowa (University of Arizona)
“Post” for Whom? Examining the Socioeconomics of a Post-Apocalypse
Post-apocalyptic scenarios in today’s literature, like Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, often promote
a return to normative social order as the desire of groups stuck in the aftermath of an apocalypse. Such
perspectives focus on the desires of hegemonic socioeconomic groups--mostly White and middle to
upper class--and do not adequately represent a global socioeconomic perspective, where other desires are
front-and-centre for groups already existing within the conditions post-apocalyptic scenarios present. Do
post-apocalyptic worlds necessitate drastic change for all, or for hegemonic socioeconomic groups alone?
This paper discusses the definition of normalcy, and examines the idea that groups outside the normative
hegemony--underrepresented, marginalised, working poor and poverty level--require further definition of
the concept. Through critical analysis of Station Eleven, typical post-apocalyptic breakdowns in access to
food, water, infrastructure, social services and technology are juxtaposed with real-world scenarios where
such situations already exist to further illustrate this point. This socioeconomic examination of the “post”
in “post-apocalypse” sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue that post-apocalyptic narratives
are often built under the catch-all desire of reconstructing a past world of hegemony. This paper urges us
to, rather, consider existent socioeconomics as the definer for the desires of various groups in the
aftermath of a world-altering event.
Christine Weidner (UC Santa Barbara)
“It’s Already Happened”: Post-Apocalyptic Affects in J.G. Ballard's High-Rise
Director Ben Wheatley begins his 2015 film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel, High-Rise, with the
banal brutality of a turntable playing a Bach concerto as a dismembered human arm roasts on a spit. This
is protagonist Dr. Robert Laing’s “new world” and the shock of the post-apocalyptic in both texts comes
from the building’s seamless juxtaposition of primal urges with the debris of a now-festering bourgeois
lifestyle. “Part of its appeal,” Ballard writes, “lays all too clearly in the fact that this was an environment
built, not for man, but for man’s absence.” Critic Mark Fisher grounds his “capitalist realism” in the work
of Slavoj Žižek and Frederic Jameson who maintain that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than
it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Fisher’s “capitalist realism” returns with a vengeance in Ballard’s
post-apocalyptic imaginary where consumerist detritus weighs down the possibility of post-apocalyptic
regeneration. High-Rise refuses to use the apocalypse as a deus ex machina c apable of easily erasing
capitalism’s inequities. For Ballard, the apocalypse cannot eradicate alienation. Laing’s remaining
indifferent clinical detachment is evidence that capitalism’s alienating effects persist after the end of the
world as we know it. The building is not just a container for a violent nostalgia for a bucolic past; it
encodes a toxic desire for a return to the past that retains the trappings of capitalist consumerism. The
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