Michael Cameron explores post-apocalyptic/dystopian literature and its parallels with contemporary politics.
“Post-apocalyptic literature acts as a mirror for our political and scientific anxieties. A study of these texts can assist in thinking through our contemporary political impasses.”
When watching a dystopian film or reading a post-apocalyptic novel, one might be tempted to interpret these texts as purely speculative endeavors, future scenarios that are, at least presently, objects only of the imagination. Many such texts, however, speak both directly and metaphorically to past or current injustices, and I can think of few that […]
Recently, I was struck by a peculiar thought while I re-read Mary Shelley’s The Last Man—the 1826 novel by the author of Frankenstein that depicts a global plague systematically wiping out humankind until the “last man” is all that remains. Here I am, I thought, almost a year into a global pandemic, once again reading […]
