• Home
  • Infrastructures of Apocalypse
Infrastructures of Apocalypse

Infrastructures of Apocalypse

American Literature and the Nuclear Complex

Jessica Hurley

A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures

272 Pages, 6 x 9 in

  • Hardcover
  • 9781517908737
  • Published: October 13, 2020
BUY
  • eBook
  • 9781452962672
  • Published: October 13, 2020
BUY
  • Paperback
  • 9781517908744
  • Published: October 13, 2020
BUY

Details

Infrastructures of Apocalypse

American Literature and the Nuclear Complex

Jessica Hurley

ISBN: 9781517908737

Publication date: October 13th, 2020

272 Pages

2 B-W Illustrations

8 x 5

"Modest and profound."—Jewish Currents

"Infrastructures of Apocalypse will instantly take its place in the growing tradition of environmental justice criticism that is carefully attuned to the entangled legacies of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the environment—and to the potential of radical futureless-ness to enact a more just present."—ISLE

"Hurley's writing is lively and consistently hopeful, despite the difficult subject matter she addresses."—Modern Language Review

 


A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures

Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Although it requires a massive infrastructure that touches society on myriad levels, nuclear technology has typically been discussed in a limited, top-down fashion that clusters around powerful men. In Infrastructures of Apocalypse, Jessica Hurley turns this conventional wisdom on its head, offering a new approach that focuses on neglected authors and Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American perspectives.

Exchanging the usual white, male “nuclear canon” for authors that include James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ruth Ozeki, Infrastructures of Apocalypse delivers a fresh literary history of post-1945 America that focuses on apocalypse from below. Here Hurley critiques the racialized urban spaces of civil defense and reads nuclear waste as a colonial weapon. Uniting these diverse lines of inquiry is Hurley’s belief that apocalyptic thinking is not the opposite of engagement but rather a productive way of imagining radically new forms of engagement.

Infrastructures of Apocalypse offers futurelessness as a place from which we can construct a livable world. It fills a blind spot in scholarship on American literature of the nuclear age, while also offering provocative, surprising new readings of such well-known works as Atlas Shrugged, Infinite Jest, and Angels in America. Infrastructures of Apocalypse is a revelation for readers interested in nuclear issues, decolonial literature, speculative fiction, and American studies.

Jessica Hurley is assistant professor of English at George Mason University.