Végre vége: az apokalipszis ökopozitív lenyomata
The End at Last: The Eco-positive Imprint of the Apocalypse

Summary/Abstract: Humanity’s effect on the shape of the natural environment has been a central phenomenon throughout the Anthropocene. While this impact has been increasingly substantial throughout human history, it reached new levels during the industrial and technological revolution in the 19th century. With the nature of this influence revealed as progressively threatening, climate change has grown into one of the anxieties in present-day culture, not only establishing itself as a central political and economic topic within Western cultures, but also eliciting a variety of artistic responses in its wake, shaping the aesthetics of a habitable human future to coincide with a “greener world.” This shift in environmental aesthetics can be observed in science fiction, as well, where pristine, technocratic utopias often give way to preferred secondary worlds where the artificial and natural strike a balance. In my paper I would like to explore eco-positive elements within a group of texts centred on the destruction of humanity, (post)apocalyptic science fiction. These post-anthropocene scenarios frequently operate with the radical transformation - ruination - of the artificial environment, including the urban landscape and the object world, symbolic of the traumatic loss humanity has endured. I will explore how in contemporary visual adaptations, like Logan’s Run (1976), I Am Legend (2007), Z for Zachariah (2015) or Station Eleven (2021), technological regression does not necessarily only constitute loss, but also a means to reassess humanity’s relationship to the natural environment. The resulting eco-friendly practices communicate utopian alternatives that are in stark contrast to the overall dystopian climate of these works of art. The topoi explored will include the romantic ruin, the post-apocalyptic Robinsonade, and the sustainable community as a progressive alternative in the wasteland of the post-apocalyptic aftermath.

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