The Apocalypse Industry: Can We Imagine The End?

About this event

Talk about the end of the world is everywhere, from Silicon Valley tech-bros to US Vice President J. D. Vance. Recent western culture also seems to have been preoccupied with the apocalypse: films like 28 Days Later, Children of Men, or novels like The Drowned World and more recently What We Can Know, try to depict a future in which, in the words of REM, "it's the end of the world as we know it." And in the era of out-of-control climate change, Mark Fisher’s famous motto that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” has become a cliché. But can we actually imagine what it would be for the world to end? Or are we always just imagining a different world? Are we trying to transcend the limits of our language and thought when we try to imagine the end of the world? And why are we seemingly so preoccupied with thinking about the world ending? About the Speaker: Rafael Holmberg (https://www.rafaelholmberg.com/) is a political writer, social theorist, and researcher on philosophy and psychoanalysis based at at University College London. His work broadly draws on post-war Continental philosophy, German Idealism, Marxism, and psychoanalytic theory, with a special focus on the history of philosophy, political theory, contemporary UK, US, and European politics, as well as film, literature, and history. Holmberg's writings have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers, and book chapters, including Newsweek, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Radical Philosophy, Culture, Theory & Critique, and Aeon. He runs the Substack Antagonisms of the Everyday (https://rafaelholmberg.substack.com/) \- which explores contradictions and anomalies in culture and politics through a theoretical lens\, drawing amongst other things on sociology\, film\, philosophy\, and psychoanalysis\. \. His book After The End: Fragments of the Apocalypse Industry (https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/a-book/?p=11404) is forthcoming at Zer0 Books. The Moderator: Alexis Papazoglou (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/alexis-papazoglou-63b666187) is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini. \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. It is open to the public and held on Zoom. The event is free to attend but the Zoom registration page has, by default, an optional donation amount that you can change to $0 (or whatever you wish). Donations go to The Philosopher magazine to cover our costs and expand the scope of our series. Please send feedback or comments about our events directly to [[email protected]]([email protected]). We'd love to hear from you! About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/): The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally. The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K.