And, looking back to his past towards the end of his life, a retrospection that by definition should allow the sense of an ending to emerge, Clark does not see any meaningful order but only a series of photographs and disconnected short films (Mandel, 2014: 279). Cameron, C 2014 Station Eleven Offers Suspense and Science Fiction, but It Is Undoubtedly a Literary Work. In this podcast, PSR Versus podcast hosts Josh Wigler ( @roundhoward) and LaTonya Starks ( @lkstarks) compare episode 7 of The Last of Us and Station Eleven. As Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth (1992) emphasises, if modernity is about the belief in the epistemic neutrality and objectivity of our representations, postmodernity is ultimately about foregrounding the constructedness of our representations and of neutrality itself. See, for instance, the state propaganda in Colson Whiteheads, There are varying degrees of dystopian post-apocalyptic scenarios: from, The world of the comic has suffered an apocalypse of its own: the space stations artificial sky was damaged during a war with the aliens that have taken control of the Earth so that Station Eleven has been in a state of perpetual twilight for fifteen years (, A similar alternation between pre- and post-apocalypse, which troubles the teleological linearity of apocalyptic history, can be found in Selfs, In this sense, it is interesting to note Hillary Chutes reflections on the form of comics in terms of their spatial gaps that subvert linearity: through its spatial syntax [of gutters, grids, and panels], comics offer opportunities to place pressure on traditional notions of chronology, linearity, and causality as well as on the idea that history can ever be a closed discourse, or a simply progressive one (. Mackenzie Davis, left, leads the sprawling cast of HBO Maxs (post-)apocalyptic series Station Eleven.. WebThe most problematic texts involve passages that are not directly from the Koran but rather contain the Saudi government’s particular interpretation of Koranic and other I admit that it probably says something about where I am at right now that I wanted more of the disaster and less of the hope. Just like McCarthys father and son, Jeevan and [A]lmost everyone was moving south in a silent landscape. This utopian narrative about the pre-apocalyptic past obscures the material labour that props up the hyper-connected globalised world and the inequalities between the global North and South that lie beneath its seemingly seamless unity. Indeed, Mandel glosses over the blood-drenched years just after the collapse, the first unspeakable years which were, tellingly, spent on the road, travelling (Mandel, 2014: 48, 37). The novels final paragraph consists mostly of questions, while the hypothetical ships move towards another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333; emphasis mine), that is, towards a future that, contrary to the normative and prescriptive utopian visions of apocalyptic logic, remains undefined. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. "No cities," she tells NPR's Scott Simon. Available at: https://www.clarkeaward.com/2015-winner/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. The prophets image of the pandemic as an avenging angel (Mandel, 2014: 60, 286) echoes Revelation 1516, where the seven bowls of gods wrath are unleashed on the Earth by seven angels. This is a reference to Revelation 20:1115: during the Last Judgment, people are judged according to their deeds, which are written in books, and only those whose name is in the book of life will be allowed to dwell with god in the new heaven and earth of the New Jerusalem. As Mandel muses, Its almost as if The Road gave more literary writers permission to approach the subject [of the post-apocalypse] (Alter, 2014: n.pag.). Having established its Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. Ricoeur, P 1984 Time and Narrative, 1. After a discussion of traditional apocalyptic temporality as it informs modernity and a theorisation of the notion of critical temporality, my article turns to Station Eleven, drawing comparisons with other contemporary post-apocalyptic novels to illuminate key features of this body of writings and the critical temporalities they articulate. As Mark West points out in another article in this special issue, Clarks reflection addresses but rather miscasts the globalized trade networks in that it fetishizes the beautiful objects at the expense of the workers who make them, workers who are dehumanized into assemblies of working parts (note the emphasis on their hands) (2018: 19, 20). In a way, Station Eleven is an interesting Rorschach test of apocalyptcisms appeal. 2010 Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. Published in 2014 to critical and popular success, Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven is part of a widely-discussed, growing corpus of post-apocalyptic novels written by authors who do not typically write science fiction.1 In what Andrew Hoberek (2011) identifies as the genre turn of contemporary fiction, the post-apocalyptic genre has moved from the margins (tacky science-fiction) into the mainstream (legitimate, widely-recognized and practiced speculative fiction) (Buell 2013: 9), so much so that Frederick Buell frames it as a cultural dominant.2 As Andrew Tate puts it, contemporary narrative is haunted by dreams of a future that is a place of ruin (2017: 2). It could remind us of our civilization. [Children] were told about the Internet, how it was everywhere and connected everything, how it was us. I even caught myself asking a blasphemous question: If art were truly capable of saving us, wouldnt we already have been saved? There's something about art I think that can remind us of our humanity. It wasnt like that. London: Sceptre. Secondly, the interruption of each story defers closure, and even the stories conclusions contain hints to the following narrative. Or more nuancedly, as Clark, a good friend of Arthurs, comments to Tyler: its not a question of having been bad or the people [who died] were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (Mandel, 2014: 260; ellipsis in original). Because it seems like an improbable outcome, when I look back at the sequence of events (Mandel, 2014: 77, 157). Yeah, I was interested in the randomness of what survives and what doesn't. You know, I think I'd want to save a globe. 20 years later it the Traveling Symphony, a group that travels and performs for people, roams the wastelands. It's some sort of combination of pessimism or narcissism that it's almost as though we want to believe or living at the climax of the story. On the other hand, the key element of the novels final passage is the sense of possibility (see my emphasis below), rather than the totalising teleological determinism of apocalyptic logic: is it possible that somewhere there are ships setting out? Mandels novel thus exposes apocalyptic temporality as an artificial teleological order that one imposes on contingency, often with oppressive agendas in mind, as is the case of the prophet. Questioning the passivity of apocalyptic determinism, Adam, the protagonist of the nineteenth-century narrative, reminds us that history admits no rules; only outcomes and encourages us to believe in the possibility of a better world than one culminating in an apocalyptic dystopian future (Mitchell, 2004: 528). What you call the present showcases people who are neither hero nor villain, except perhaps in their own minds, but they are artists. De Cristofaro, D 2013 The Representational Impasse of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: The Pesthouse by Jim Crace. At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. London: Continuum. Huntley, K 2014 Station Eleven: Booklist Review, August. Now that that's all mapped and charted out and there are no more frontiers that's left us with a certain restlessness, that I suppose gets channeled into our interest in this futuristic, speculative fiction. NATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST Set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse - the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking For her, the important thing is the work itself, not whether or not it's ever published. I focus on three elements, which reflect central features of this body of writings the critical appropriation of religious apocalyptic logic, the critique of utopian teleology, and non-linear narrative structures and parallel Mandels novel with three other key texts of the genre, Douglas Couplands Player One (2010), Cormac McCarthys The Road (2006) and David Mitchells Cloud Atlas (2004). Are you ever surprised? Station Eleven requires audiences to pay attention, offering up a dramatic tapestry of considerable depth. That we secretly desire a situation in which this entire apparatus is blown up and we all start over again on perfect equal footing. As I have argued, the critical temporalities of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel debunk the apocalyptic conception of history at the core of western modernity as a narrative construct. Post-apocalyptic ravaged aftermaths implicitly subvert the central element of apocalyptic discourse, that is, a sense-making utopian historical teleology. Watching it from the perspective of our own existential crisis a devastating pandemic and a climate apocalypse, each worsened by the twilight of democracy I was struck by the notion that only those who come of age in a time of optimism can draw the conclusion that progress is our natural state; for others (hello, fellow millennials! They discuss both shows and recap the events of Station Eleven, then halfway into the podcast, set the two shows against each other in a head-to-head battle. Instead we got a department store turned into a maternity ward and an Oreo used to demonstrate a cervix dilated to five centimeters. (Only the Apple TV+ show See takes on the importance of myth and art, albeit in a more controlling, prophetic way, but that pandemic left everyone blind, which brings its own issues.). Twenty years after the pandemic, when Station Elevens post-apocalyptic narrative strand is mostly set, society has stabilised into an archipelago of small towns, and although almost everything, almost everyone [is lost,] there is still such beauty (Mandel, 2014: 48, 57). But book awards and paperback releases are a thing of the past in the world Mandel has created. The bulk of the series is set twenty years after a flu pandemic brought human civilization as we know it to an end. Published by Somewhere around the time Jeevan, her accidental savior, managed to purchase and then bungie-cord together a train of loaded shopping carts and navigate them through many city blocks to his brothers apartment building, I realized I would either have to surrender to an epic quest and all its potential pitfalls, or not. The narrative continuously moves between the pre- and the post-apocalypse without any regular pattern, and, what is more, even in these two distinct periods, the narrative keeps shifting between different times, from the night Arthur dies and the pandemic begins, to various moments in his life and that of people that are connected to him, from the catastrophes immediate aftermath, to fifteen and twenty years after it.12 Just as in Cloud Atlas, Station Elevens structure encourages us to read for connections between pre- and post- apocalyptic fragments, rather than for an end that integrates the various moments. Hoberek, A 2015 The Post-Apocalyptic Present. Toronto: Anansi. So yeah, there is a comic book that's drawn by a character in the present day. Keller, C 1996 Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. This adaptation of the astonishingly prescient 2014 bestseller is deeply unsettling, even in the bits it gets wrong. Further threads arise from the stories of other settlements one led by Clark and the female actor (Elizabeth, played by Caitlin FitzGerald, who ended up marrying Arthur after an affair they began while he was with Miranda) and begin to be woven together. Chaudhary, it finally clicked: Station Eleven soars when it rejects the mantra There is no before when it acknowledges that the future is a science fiction. The series creator explains why, Station Eleven, like the Shakespeare that sustains it, is something of a miracle, Unlike Andor, Mandalorian is going all in on Star Wars lore. Confused? Art and literature can, the series argues, offer some safety rails, some moments of connection. In addition to the texts discussed in my article, other examples of this growing body of twenty-first-century writings include: Louise Erdrichs, Despite the genre turn, Hoberek points out a persistent prejudice against genre fiction central to what Mark McGurl has dubbed the program era of post-World War II fiction (2011: 484). However, on the one hand, the novel is far from adhering to the radical utopian renewal of traditional apocalyptic discourse. : Shakespeare, Salvagepunk and Station Eleven. Writing with Intent 19822004, pp. This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Eleven s narrative structure. Time, Paul Ricoeur contends, becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative ( 1984: 3 ). Notice, in this sense, Clarks musings on the snow globe housed in the Museum. Gomel, E 2000 The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body. Ive spent the entire season trying to reconcile the above with my deep and abiding affection for the episodes Hurricane, The Severn City Airport, Goodbye My Damaged Home, Dr. Season 1 Review: Station Eleven is brilliant television. Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. As Jeevan describes it, this night, was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life (Mandel, 2014: 20; emphasis in original). (Sorry, it all always comes back to Lord of the Rings.) Because this is an epic quest and those kinds of stories make certain demands. Ultimately, Station Elevens critique of apocalyptic temporality as a self-referential narrative construct is particularly effective because the prophets fanatic apocalyptic fabrication is an attempt at making sense of history in the wake of an apocalypse that, as typical of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, failed to bring about the expected utopian renewal. How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. Albany: State University of New York Press. The red bandanas turn up and disappear in one fell swoop to provide a cliffhanger between episodes; ditto the strained mystery of the the Prophet. Thus, one might suggest that Mandels book describes an apocalypse that already happened in 20082009: it is a novel not about a post-apocalyptic future but a post-apocalyptic present, for the ships embody the breakdown of capitalisms fundamental premise of eternal growth (Hoberek, 2015: n.pag.). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery In: Atwood, M (Eds. Told in a relentless stream of disclosure, the story swirls around two troubled siblings, an addict named Paul and his absurdly gorgeous half sister, Vincent. Clark speaks to himself in bed next to Miles. Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the People with chaos in their hearts cannot abide here (Mandel, 2014: 61). Berkeley: University of California Press. The first few episodes look beautiful but move at a stately pace. I mean, extra points for level of difficulty, no? Similarly to Player One, which features sections foreshadowing what happens in the next hour of the story narrated by the post-human Player One (the implication being that, when it comes to history, the apocalyptic perspective from after the end of time is manifestly impossible in human terms), sentences like The Georgia Flu would arrive in a year, Civilization wont collapse for another fourteen years, A year before the Georgia Flu, Two weeks till the apocalypse, just before the old world ended, the Georgia Flu so close now (Mandel, 2014: 40, 71, 110, 201, 217, 328) punctuate Mandels narrative. The dazzling power of electricity floodlights, porch lights, candy-coloured halogens, screens shining, the points of glimmering light that are towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows populates Mandels incomplete list of what is lost in the catastrophe (Mandel, 2014: 312). McCarthy, C [2006] 2007 The Road. 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