The apocalyptic imaginary in Democracia and Weather : an interdisciplinary and comparative study

Details

Supervisors

Fabry, Geneviève ; Gilquin, Gaëtanelle

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale, à finalité didactique

Abstract

This dissertation assumes that the two recent novels Democracia (Gutiérrez, 2012/2019) and Weather (Offill, 2020), which depict major crises of the 21st century (namely the 2008 financial crisis in Spain and the climate-denying Trump’s accession to presidency in the United States), illustrate phenomena of the same larger systemic crisis of late capitalism. After demonstrating that the term “crisis” itself is problematic, this dissertation calls upon the concept of the “Apocalypse” to analyze the imaginary conveyed in the novels. Using literary and linguistic tools in an interdisciplinary approach, it assesses to what extent, in Weather and Democracia, this imaginary, which reveals the multiple cracks of the current system, challenges the dominant, capitalist worldview. In that respect, this apocalyptic imaginary can also be referred to as postgrowth in alignment with Prádanos’ theory. Following on French "collapsologie", which defines a collapse as both a current and impending process, this dissertation demonstrates that the Apocalypse in the two novels is presented as complementarily immanent (happening in the present) and imminent (happening in the future).