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"environmental apocalypse"
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Apocalyptic ecologies : from creation to doom in Middle English literature
\"In Apocalyptic Ecologies, Shannon Gayk traces the catastrophic edges of thought and writing from medieval England. As Gayk reminds us, the century leading up to the English Reformation saw a series of devastating ecological catastrophes, from floods to fires, from droughts to storms, from plagues to famine. Gayk shows how premodern writers represented eco-catastrophes in a variety of texts-in biblical drama and sermons, in apocryphal writings, lyrics, and in more familiar poems like Cleanness and Piers Plowman. By analyzing how these medieval writers coped with and depicted disasters, we can better reflect on how these kinds of texts can help us to confront our own uncertain present-and future. It will be the first book to excavate the premodern English roots of how apocalyptic discourse shapes the environmental imagination, provoking ecological awareness and care. It will be read by a wide range of scholars, including those in literary ecocriticism, religious studies, and the environmental humanities more broadly\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Alan Moore and the Gothic tradition
The first book-length study to address Moore’s significance to the Gothic, this volume is also the first to provide in-depth analyses of his spoken-word performances, poetry and prose, as well as his comics and graphic novels. The essays collected here identify the Gothic tradition as perhaps the most significant cultural context for understanding Moore’s work, providing unique insight into its wider social and political dimensions as well as addressing key theoretical issues in Gothic Studies, Comics Studies and Adaptation Studies. Scholars, students and general readers alike will find fresh insights into Moore’s use of horror and terror, homage and parody, plus allusion and adaptation. The international list of contributors includes leading researchers in the field and the studies presented here enhance the understanding of Moore’s works while at the same time exploring the ways in which these serve to advance a broader appreciation of Gothic aesthetics.
eBook
Alan Moore and the Gothic tradition
The first book-length study to address Moore's significance to the Gothic, this volume is also the first to provide in-depth analyses of his spoken-word performances, poetry and prose, as well as his comics and graphic novels.
eBook
FROM TECH REVOLUTION TO APOCALYPSE: THE STRENGTH OF VISUAL METAPHOR IN ECOLOGICAL ART ACTIVISM
This article focuses on the analysis of artistic works created in different countries and reflecting the ideas of destruction brought on by the advancements of industrial civilization and technological revolution, as well as an ecological catastrophe that is the impending doom of humanity. The study concludes that artists from different countries, regardless of their cultural background, strive to express their ideas through the universal language that can be understood in every corner of the globe. The strength of visual metaphors helps get across the deep tragedy of global ecological art: imagery of suffering, dying, hopelessness and despair is meant to visualize the catastrophic scale and consequences of the unfolding ecological crisis. This study is expected to clarify significant theoretical issues related to the phenomenon of ecological art. The study expands the conceptual base for further research on the theory and history of ecological art.
Journal Article
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Retail Structure in Barcelona: From Tourism-Phobia to the Desertification of City Center
COVID-19 has meant major transformations for commercial fabric. These transformations have been motivated by the collapse of consumer mobility at multiple scales. We analyzed the impact of the collapse of global tourist flows on the commercial fabric of Barcelona city center, a city that has been a global reference in over-tourism and tourism-phobia. Fieldwork in the main commercial areas before and after the pandemic and complementary semi-structured interviews with the main agents involved highlight the relationship between global tourist flows and commercial fabric. The paper shows how the end of global tourism has meant an important commercial desertification. The end of the integration of the city center into global consumer flows has implications for urban theory. It means a downscaling of the city center and the questioning of traditional center-periphery dynamics. It has been shown that the tourist specialization of commerce has important effects on the real estate market and makes it particularly vulnerable. However, the touristic specialization of commercial activities as a strategy of resilience has also been presented. This adaptation faces the generalized commercial desertification that drives the growing concentration of consumption around the online channel.
Journal Article
Utopia and Apocalypse: 7 Theses on the Aesthetics of Sustainability
It is a common misconception that sustainability is a brand-new topic. Since the beginning, since the construction of the first house, sustainability has been a central component of the architectural concept. With industrial production and mass production, however, modernity has excluded the concept of sustainability from the consciousness of architecture. In the context of post-industrial society, the climate, resource, and migration issues, sustainability is now returning at a new conceptual level. In practice, however, materialistic, technical, and instrumental reasons prevail. What is missing, however, is a critical theory of sustainability that conceives of sustainability organically, from within architecture. The essay sketches out the foundations for such a critical theory of architecture, which focuses on the unity of human and non-human authors or, in other words, of humans, materials, and the system of earth.
Journal Article
Covid-19 and the Apocalypse
The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to existential crises. One way of finding meaning in this is through apocalyptic narratives. We differentiate between religious (based upon eschatology) and secular apocalypticism (based upon radical political and economic change) and argue that both are to be found in the wake of Covid-19 infection. For religious believers, the apocalypse signifies the rapture of the faithful into heaven while those on earth will undergo the tribulations. For secular believers, the apocalypse signifies sociopolitical change. The paper ends by speculating upon the socio-political and economic changes during and after the pandemic- the New Jerusalem.
Journal Article
An Apocalypse Foretold: Climate Shocks and Sovereign Defaults
Climate change poses an existential threat to the global economy. While there is a growing body of literature on the economic consequences of climate change, research on the link between climate change and sovereign default risk is nonexistent. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by estimating the impact of climate change vulnerability and resilience on the probability of sovereign debt default. Using a sample of 116 countries over the period 1995–2017, we find that climate change vulnerability and resilience have significant effects on the probability of sovereign debt default, especially among low-income countries. That is, countries with greater vulnerability to climate change face a higher likelihood of debt default compared to more climate resilient countries. These findings remain robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, including alternative measures of sovereign debt default, model specifications, and estimation methodologies.
Journal Article
From Pestilence to Pollution: Eco-Criticism and the Transformation of the Four Horsemen in Good Omens
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s (1990) Good Omens offers an apocalyptic rewrite of mythology, making it clear that Pestilence has been overthrown and replaced with Pollution as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This replacement reflects contemporary shifts of the cultural spotlight from the fear of infectious disease, which peaked in the mid-20th century, to the slow, gradual, and pernicious environmental damage caused by human agency. This shift continues through the current concerns of ecological collapse and climate change. Conventional wisdom suggests that in the Book of Revelation, Pestilence represents disease and decay. However, in Good Omens, Pollution symbolizes humanity’s most pressing existential threat: ecological devastation. Unlike apocalyptic works like McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Mad Max, which depict a braver, more violent apocalypse, Good Omens critiques environmental destruction through humor and satire. Pollution is characterized as a passive yet powerful protagonist, representing modernity’s acceptance of ecological violence, spoofing obscene consumerism, and highlighting the destructiveness of modern societal habits. Through the lens of eco-criticism, this paper discusses how Good Omens interrogates current ecological worries and contributes to the conversation around climate justice. This approach ultimately leads to an insightful exploration of how Pestilence’s reframing as Pollution challenges the tropes of the apocalyptic genre, engaging with broader ecocritical and cultural discussions about the role literature can play in shifting perspectives on the ecological crises faced today.
Journal Article
Retail Apocalypse as a Differential Urbanisation Symptom? Analysis of Ground Floor Premises’ Evolution in Barcelona between 2016 and 2019
The current health and economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated some of the trends that began with the counter-reform of capitalism in 1970. This paper deals with one of those trends—the retail apocalypse. The starting hypothesis is that this phenomenon takes part in an implosion (the massive and permanent closing of retail premises in agglomeration) and an explosion (a change of land uses in an urban agglomeration and beyond). In order to determine the reach of those trends, the last two commercial censuses of the City Council (2016 and 2019) are analysed using a one-to-one relation matrix and map representation. This phenomenon, which is not just economic but also urban, is expressed differentially according to the dynamics between the upper and lower circuits of the urban economy. An implosion is detected as a general form for the whole city; in contrast, an explosion is expressed in more dynamic areas.
Journal Article