Nuclear Futurism: The Work of Art in The Age of Remainderless Destruction

by Liam Sprod

Overview

Starting from the end of history, the end of art and the failure of the future set out by such ends, Nuclear
Futurism reinvigorates art, literature and philosophy through the unlikely alliance of hauntology and the
Italian futurists. Tracing the paradoxes of the possibilities of total nuclear destruction reveals the terminal
condition of culture in the time of ends, where the logic of the apocalyptic without apocalypse holds sway.
These paradoxes also open the path for a new vision of the future in the form of experimental art and literature.
By re-examining the thought of both Derrida and Heidegger with regards to the history of art, the art of
history and their responses to the most dangerous technology of nuclear weapons the future is exposed
as a progressive event, rather than the atrophied and apocalyptic to-come of the present world. It is
happening now, opening up through the force of art and literature and charting a new path for a futural
philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780994345
Publisher:	Hunt, John Publishing
Publication date:	09/28/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	146
File size:	258 KB

About the Author

Liam Sprod was born in England before the possibility of nuclear war prompted his parents to relocate to Hobart, Australia. There he studied, researched and taught philosophy at the University of Tasmania. Eventually tiring of merely reading European philosophy he has been undertaking research throughout Europe, tracing the various end-of narratives from the ends of history in Berlin and Jena, through the end of poetry in Auschwitz, to the end of television in Timisoara, Romania. He currently lives in Stockholm where he is collaborating with visual artist Linda Persson on research, teaching programs and writing, much of which may be found on his blog http://essentialincompleteness.blogspot.com/.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: Terminal Documents 1

Chapter 1 The (Non) Event of 1984 6

Chapter 2 The New Beauty of Speed 12

Chapter 3 The Fabulously Textual Nuclear War 20

Chapter 4 The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing 36

Chapter 5 Spectral Matters 44

Chapter 6 Small Library Apocalypse 62

Chapter 7 The Work of Art and the Dangers of Technology 73

Chapter 8 Only a Remembrance 84

Chapter 9 Language, Literature and the Death Machine 92

Chapter 10 Death on a Pale Horse 98

Chapter 11 For the First Time and the Last Time 109

Conclusion 118

Footnotes 121

Bibliography 135