Impossible Immunity and Care: Nevil Shute’s On the Beach
Type de matériel :
85
On the Beach (1957) is one of the most influential British nuclear novels. It presents a post-apocalyptic situation in which the survivors of a total, worldwide atomic war, who have taken refuge in Australia, are preparing for a more individual apocalypse, as the radioactive cloud that will lead to their deaths draws inexorably closer. This is a text which, far from concentrating on the question of immunity—which implies a vaccine or antidote—is concerned with that of radical toxicity, from which no one can escape. It allows us to explore the extreme manifestations of vulnerability, proposing a narrative of the fall into bare life, in an invitation to consider the living as subject to dependencies and interdependencies. Moreover, against the manifestations of denial, so frequent in climate change fiction, it promotes an ethic of solicitude and consideration. This is why I use care, which is based on the responsibility for and attention to the other, as the main line of inquiry of this article by focusing successively on interdependences, emotions and attention to the ordinary.
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