‘How Much Do I Want the Apocalypse to Happen and Just Wipe this All Clean?’: The Use of Apocalyptic Narratives by Non-religious Youth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.31628Keywords:
apocalypse, future, religion, time, youthAbstract
Although the ways in which young adults relate to their own futures has been studied at length, the question of how they perceive the long-term, societal future has received comparatively less attention. This article considers how young adults relate to the long-term, societal future with reference to the concept of apocalypse. It draws on an analysis of 28 interviews in which religious and non-religious young adults were asked to discuss their perceptions of the long-term future. By comparing the eschatological depictions cited by religious respondents to the wider sample’s views of the future, the findings of this study highlight the presence of a secular apocalyptic narrative. Moreover, while many of the non-religious respondents’ understandings of apocalypse were derived from popular culture, this narrative was utilised in ways that extended beyond entertainment-based functions, and could be used to provide insight into the ways in which they related to the societal future.References
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Seed, David 1999. American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Strozier, Charles B. 1994. Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America. Beacon Press, Boston: MA.
Szerszynski, Bronislaw 2005. Nature, Technology, and the Sacred. Blackwell, Malden, MA. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470774311.
Taylor, Charles 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
Weaver, Roslyn 2011. Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film: A Critical Study. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC.
Williams, Roy 2015. Post God Nation? HarperCollins, Sydney.
Wojcik, Daniel 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York University Press, New York.
Anderson, Benedict 2006. Imagined Communities: Re?ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London, New York.
Beasts of the Southern Wild 2012. DVD recording, Fox Searchlight Pictures; Cinereach; Journeyman Pictures, USA. Directed by Benh Zeitlin.
Berger, James 1999. After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Braithwaite, Elizabeth 2015. The Perfect Place to Set a Novel about the End of the World? Trends in Australian Post-nuclear Fiction for Young Adults. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 53(2): 22-29. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/bkb.2015.0054.
Broderick, Mick 1993. Surviving Armageddon: Beyond the Imagination of Disaster. Science Fiction Studies 20(3): 362-82.
Broderick, Mick 2015. Apocalypse Australis: Eschatology of Southern Screens. Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies 29(5): 608-20. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2015.1125091.
Byrne, Cathy 2014. Religion in Secular Education: What, in Heaven’s Name, Are We Teaching Our Children? Leiden, Brill. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004264342.
Collins, John Joseph 1979. Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre. Semeia 14(1): 9.
Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Sage, London. Doi: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452230153.
Derrida, Jacques 1984. On an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy. Oxford Literary Review 6(2): 3-37. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3366/olr.1984.001.
Foust, Christina R., and William O. Murphy 2009. Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse. Environmental Communication 3(2): 151-67. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030902916624.
Galbreath, Robert 1983. Ambiguous Apocalypse: Transcendental Versions of the End. In The End of the World, edited by Erik S. Rabkin, Martin Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, 53-72. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
12 Monkeys 1995. DVD recording, Atlas Entertainment; Classico; Universal Pictures, USA. Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Gow, John, and Terry Leahy 2005. Apocalypse Probably: Agency and Environmental Risk in the Hunter Region. Journal of Sociology 41(2): 117-41. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783305050966.
Hulme, Mike 2010. Four Meanings of Climate Change. In Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination, edited by Stefan Skrimshire, 37-57. Continuum, New York, London.
Kermode, Frank 1968. Lawrence and the Apocalypse. Critical Quarterly 10(1): 14-38. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1968.tb02204.x.
Kumar, Krishan 1995. Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia Today. In Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World,edited by Malcolm Bull, 200-224. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry Jenkins 1995–2007. Left Behind, book series. Tyndale House, USA.
Levitas, Ruth 2010. The Concept of Utopia. Phillip Allen, London. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0010-9.
Levy, David L., and Andre Spicer 2013. Contested Imaginaries and the Cultural Political Economy of Climate Change. Organization 20(5): 659-78. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508413489816.
Mason, Michael, Andrew Singleton, and Ruth Webber 2007. The Spirit of Generation Y: Young People’s Spirituality in a Changing Australia. John Garrett Publishing, Mulgrave, Vic.
Martens, John W. 2003. The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television. J. Gordon Shillingford, Winnipeg.
McCarthy, Cormac 2006. The Road. Vintage International, New York.
Miller, Perry 1956. Errand into the Wilderness. Harper Torchbooks, New York.
Newman, Kim 2000. Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema. St. Martin’s Grif?n, New York.
Renner, Karen J. 2012. The Appeal of the Apocalypse. Literature Interpretation Theory 23(3): 203-11. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2012.703599.
Rosen, Elizabeth K. 2008. Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD.
Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew 2013. Disaster Movies and the ‘Peak Oil’ Movement: Does Popular Culture Encourage Eco-apocalyptic Beliefs in the United States? Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 7(3): 289-314. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v7i3.289.
Seed, David 1999. American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Strozier, Charles B. 1994. Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America. Beacon Press, Boston: MA.
Szerszynski, Bronislaw 2005. Nature, Technology, and the Sacred. Blackwell, Malden, MA. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470774311.
Taylor, Charles 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
Weaver, Roslyn 2011. Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film: A Critical Study. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC.
Williams, Roy 2015. Post God Nation? HarperCollins, Sydney.
Wojcik, Daniel 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York University Press, New York.
Published
2017-07-19
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Cook, J. (2017). ‘How Much Do I Want the Apocalypse to Happen and Just Wipe this All Clean?’: The Use of Apocalyptic Narratives by Non-religious Youth. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 30(1), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.31628
