Literature & Literary Studies

After the end

Cold War culture and apocalyptic imaginations in the twenty-first century

by David L. Pike

Description

After the End argues that the cultural imaginaries and practices of the Cold War continue to deeply shape the present in profound but largely unnoticed ways across the global North and in the global South. The argument draws examples from literature and literary criticism, film, music, the historical and social scientific record and past and present physical sites to consider the bunker as a material form, an image and as a fantasy that took shape in the global North in the 1960s and that spread globally into the twenty-first century. After the End reminds us not only that most of the world's peoples have lived with or died from apocalyptic conditions for centuries, but that the Cold War imaginaries that grew from and fed those conditions, continue to survive as well.

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Rights Information

Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo [DRC], Congo, Republic of the, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hongkong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, China, Macedonia [FYROM], Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Cyprus, Palestine, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Liechtenstein, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Dominican Republic, Myanmar, Monaco

Reviews

After the end studies the enduring legacy of Cold War culture in current debates and concerns around risk, security, borders, environmental justice, inequality, and apocalypse. The chapters trace this legacy from the ideologies of survivalism through global fantasies of bunkering from Switzerland and Alban to Taiwan and India to current imaginings of post-apocalyptic worlds. Pike argues that the real and imagined spaces of sheltering continue to inform in foundational and often unrecognized ways; not only in cultural forms such as literature, film, comics, music, and the built environment, but also policy and political formulations. The book documents the ways the Cold War affected its primary antagonists and how the rest of the world processed the fallout of this antagonism. It surveys the fate of Cold War fortifications and shelters as they are repurposed for twenty-first century needs. After the end shows how counter-visions appropriating those same apocalyptic forms have emerged from the global South and from marginalized populations within the U.S. and elsewhere to challenge the lingering verities of the Cold War years.

Author Biography

David L. Pike is a Professor of Literature at American University

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date March 2024
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526174048 / 1526174049
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages360
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade; College/higher education; Professional and scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions234 X 156 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5897
  • Reference Code15666

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