The Apocalypse

Today every representation of nature conjures an apocalyptic vision of nature’s fiery end. How is the apocalypse interwoven with the image and imagination of nature?

For Haraway (1989), the apocalypse is embedded in how we think nature – certainly in any notion we have of preserving, protecting or honoring it. The specular image of nature, which intends to arrest its death, functions to announce its immanent end.

Robert Bateman, Vigilance, from www.artroots.com

B.C. Ferries advertising image uses picture of endangered Orca whales

She writes: “To make an exact image is to ensure against disappearance, to cannibalize life until it is safely and permanently a specular image, a ghost. The image arrested decay. That is why nature photography is so beautiful and so religious – and such a powerful hint of an apocalyptic future….. The image and the real define each other, as all of reality in late capitalist culture lusts to become an image for its own security.” (p. 45-46). And as Warner (1998) observes, just as we lust after security we may simultaneously lust after the apocalypse. She writes of the various ways and means we employ to “scare ourselves to death,” noting that “Emotions that thrill and pierce and shake or otherwise affect the body return presence and being to the person….” (p. 9).

In Ancient Greece, participants in the Eleusinian mysteries got “polluted” with wine and psychotropic drugs, approaching the secrets of Mother Nature by reaching for an ecstatic dimension, lowering the bar of the conscious mind. Archetypally, the ecstasy of self-annihilation does not mean absence or emptiness, but rather the end of differentiation, conflict and separation. Given the anxious “subject” of Western discourse, so profoundly and inadequately separated from the world of objects (see Self-knowledge), this crisis may indeed be earnestly sought.

In a recent article, Hurley (2006) describes visiting a gifted-students club in a Vancouver elementary school. “In their envisioned future, they imagined a community with only indoor parks. Beyond these parks, there would be no trees, no plants, no birds, and no animals. Freshwater would be gone, because lakes and streams would either be dried up or too polluted to support life; drinking water would have to be created from desalinization plants on the coast.” Shocked, Hurley wondered why “children who lived in an idyllic natural environment” would imagine a future that was ecologically dead. Looking at the messages these young people received from the media, concerned educators and environmentalists, she concluded that they had been taught this future was inevitable. Indeed, she realized that she herself sometimes believed this. A dystopic vision of the future was seen as more "realistic" simply because it was talked about more, visualized more, and analyzed more. By telling these children about restoration projects being done by individuals and non-profit groups at the local level, she found their vision of the future was completely shifting. “They reworked their vision to include flowing streams, trees, birds, animals, and happy people. They just needed to know that there were adults making positive change toward a flourishing earth. And then they asked me how they could help.”

Hurley cites peace activist Elise Boulding, who writes, "The sheer difficulty of imagining a future sustainability different from the present is one of our greatest problems as a society." She cautions activists against neglecting this important work, or dismissing it with informed cynicism.

NEXT: Decolonization and Reinhabitation

Thinking Nature Index

Thinking Nature References