Apocalypse

SPELL 12 contains articles based on papers given at the Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association for North-American Studies (SANAS), which took place at the University of Bern in December 1998. With the year 2000, the contemporary imagination is increasingly preoccupied with various forms of apocalyptic interpretation and expectation. In America especially, Doomsday prophecies alternate with visions of spectacular rebirth and salvation. Linear and sometimes melodramatic conceptions of history are producing end-of-time scenarios experienced as either imminent or already taking place: nuclear destruction, ecological catastrophe, biological warfare, technological excess, overpopulation, etc. However, most of the articles in this volume question the linearity of much of the popular apocalypticism. Openly or covertly, they are concerned with a postmodern, post-Cold-War view of a culture in crisis, which is informed by notions of circularity, repetition, or even redundancy.