Envisioning Posthuman Apocalypse

<p dir="ltr">Cinematic visions of possible futures run the gamut from pessimistic speculations of technological innovation to comparatively optimistic representations of posthuman experience. With this variety in mind, Chapter 2 spotlights films featuring apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic scenarios to delineate posthuman takes on cataclysmic change to life on earth. The pervasiveness of apocalyptic representations in the twenty-first century highlights the timeliness of this category of cinema, as well as contemporary filmmakers’ tendencies to merely tease human extinction to generate suspense, rather than to challenge core humanistic values. Case study films—including Lynette Wallworth’s Collisions (2016), Julia Hart’s Fast Color (2018), and Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter (2011)—illustrate forms of posthuman critique that expose alternative modes of human and nonhuman earthly habitation. Drawing on the scholarship of Susan Sontag, Evan Calder Williams, Neil Badmington, and Sarah Keller, the second chapter argues that posthuman disaster cinema depicts catastrophe as rooted in historical traumas and as already well underway, rather than imminent. This cinema also delivers a wake-up call regarding humanity’s precarity and the need to take the politics of the posthuman condition to task.</p>