Apocalyptic Desire and Our Urban Imagination

Apocalyptic DESIRE AND OUR URBAN Imagination AmY murphY University of Southern California INTRODUCTION The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. Paul Valery For approximately the last three millennia, some portion of the world’s population has subscribed to the notion that the world as we know it is going to be destroyed by the wrath of nature, the will of God, or by human development itself. While many apocalyptic references relate back to conservative religious traditions, a great number in circulation today are being promoted by progres- sive secular entities. Eco-theorist scholar Greg Garrard writes that not only has the notion of the apocalypse been present since the beginning of Judeo-Christian time, but the apocalyptic trope has more recently “provided the green movement with some if its most Figure 1. Opening shot of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988). striking successes,” in publications such as Rachel Carson’s Silent The apocalyptic trope has proven to be one of the most complic- Spring, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and Al Gore’s An In- it, resilient, and powerful metaphors used throughout our history convenient Truth.1 to manipulate human behavior. On one side, it continues to be a central rhetorical element connecting a multitude of conservative As demonstrated by Pixar’s Hollywood feature Wall-e or Hayao Mi- agendas (religious, military, and industrial) to justify an assumed yazaki’s popular anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, moral supremacy of one group over other humans as well as nature. there are no shortages of references to a future civilization emerg- On the other side, in contrast, it has emerged as one of the most ing after the fall of industrial-capitalism in today’s popular media. relied-upon and productive rhetorical devices in the current envi- While some post-apocalyptic representations such as Katsuhiro ronmental movement. Otomo’s Akira or the History Channel’s Life After People might re- main fairly nihilistic in their future projections of urban life, the Lawrence Buell writes in his seminal work, The Environmental Imagi- majority of these post-apocalyptic narratives provide some glimmer nation, “The apocalypse is the single most powerful master meta- of hope that, with a few critical changes to certain Western tradi- phor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at its tions, a new type of sustainable balance is possible. disposal.”2 It is hard to find any contemporary environmental argu- ment today that does not cite this metaphor. While both sides might This paper builds on my past research regarding the above topic, embrace the idea of a future reckoning, there is little agreement on tying it here to sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of reflexive modern- what to do next, particularly because the apocalyptic desire is built ism, connecting his theories on social agency to the theme of this around the desire of a final show-down between opposing worldviews. conference regarding change and imagining the future. While many of the threats that fuel today’s apocalyptic imagination are real, I ar- As Mathew Gross and Mel Gilles have stated in their recently pub- gue in the end that the real crisis of the future is first and foremost lished book The Last Myth: What the Rise in Apocalyptic Thinking that of time — or more precisely our current out-of-date concept of Tells Us About America historical time. “(t)he purpose of the anticipated apocalyptic moment is to vindicate THE APOCALYPTIC TROPE one’s beliefs. The apocalyptic moment resolves with finality the ten- sions between good and evil, between believer and non-believer, be- The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. tween environmentalist and capitalist—and the holder of the apoca- Abraham Lincoln lyptic vision invariably comes out on top.”3 121 - 2012 ACSA International Conference CITIES II So, while the scientific Enlightenment temporarily quelled tradi- the under-availability of protection against either nature or aggres- tional religious apocalyptic fervor during part of the last millen- sive military forces of others, the apocalyptic urge today is due to nium, the two rivers of religion and science-- each with their strong the over-presences of manmade byproducts of the industrial age.6 narrative push forward-- have, with the advent of the nuclear age and the current environmental crisis, become in effect one fast As written in his seminal work, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, moving river. “The risks and hazards of today thus differ in an essential way from the superficially similar ones in the Middle Ages through the global Historically, the disciplines of architecture, landscape and urban nature of their threat (people, animals, and plants) and through their planning of course have emerged from both those two traditions. modern causes. They are risks of modernization.”7 As such, it is imperative that we all critically assess to what extent our own imaginations are limited or pre-determined by this often- Risks have always been here throughout history, but that in the past, latent trope. these were risks to individuals. “In the earlier period, the word ‘risk’ had a note of bravery and adventure” In contrast, because today’s In truth, several significant apocalyptic-like events have already risks (such as global warming) endanger entire populations, the occurred within the last century, for the same reasons any larger one might eventually pursue—those reasons being our mistaken “normative bases of their calculation the concept of accident and belief in our ability to both control nature and to manage risks by insurance, medical precautions and so on—do not fit the basic di- the same means we might manage smaller local industrial hazards mensions of these modern threats…This means that the calculation of risk as it has been established so far by science and legal institu- during the last century. Cities such Hiroshima, Chernobyl, New tions collapses.”8 Orleans, Port-au-Prince, Sendai have within the last half century experienced devastating acts of man and/or nature. Even those catastrophes that might be ‘blamed on nature’ were by and large exacerbated by human decisions either underestimating the extent of nature’s power or overestimating the technology used to control it. Without a doubt, our traditions and desires and our hubris are knitted deeply into our built environment. Architecture by and large has responded to each crisis by using the same technology guided by the same attitudes that helped bring upon the initial calamity to begin with. As Pulitzer Prize winning cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker has noted: across the span of history, societies when threatened are more likely to more sol- idly cling to their cultural beliefs than to change them, even if it those beliefs might lead to the culture’s own extinction.4 As such, without a significant rethinking of our culture’s relationship to nature and without gaining independence from all forms of current Figure 2. In Miyazaki’s Nausicaä (1984), the Princess discovers the secret apocalyptic discourse, we will continue to have as many failures as world of nature hiding beneath toxic forest above. successes in our continued attempts to control nature—whether in rebuilding these cities or designing new ones. With deep resigna- I am interested in Beck’s work because, rather than proposing a re- tion, Buell suggests, since our desire to control nature will continue gressive turn to deal with this complexity, he instead proposes that what is needed is a reflexive impulse brought to the next stage in “to run strong in late twentieth-century American culture, we may modernity’s own trajectory—through social engagement of a larger expect the oscillation between utopian and dystopian scenarios that began in the last century to continue unabated….there is no question number of participants in the assessment and management of to- of it disappearing anytime soon as plot formula.”5 day’s level of acceptable risk at large than in the past. TOWARDS A REFLEXIVE FUTURE: ULRICH BECK’S ANALYSIS Modernization involves not just structural change, but a changing relationship between social structures and social agents. When Moderniza- tion reaches a certain level, agents tend to become more individualized, Risk society is catastrophic society. In it the exceptional condition that is decreasingly constrained by structures…And for modernization threatens to become the norm. Ulrich Beck successfully to advance, these agents must release themselves from these structures and actively shape the modernization process. 9 The motivating forces behind the deployment of this trope within the environmental movement are quite different on many levels Originally, modern society promoted increased individualism, free- than those in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In short, while the initial dom liberal democracy relative to pre-modern society. Yet, recent apocalyptic tendencies of the past were a metaphysical response to postmodern critique reveals how the “quasi-religious modern icon CHANGE, Architecture, Education, Practices - Barcelona - 122 Apocalyptic DESIRE AND OUR URBAN Imagination of science ” has in fact imposed controlling identities on “social Emerging as a genre after World War II in the shadows of Hiroshima actors, in the construction of risk, defining sanity, proper sexual and Nagasaki, anime productions by and large acknowledge that we behavior, countless other rational frames of social control.”10 In now live in a landscape that has been forever altered (akin to Bill the case of architecture and urbanism, I would say these controls McKibben’s pronouncement of the end of nature).16 Finding in the to our society might related to certain modernist zoning practices, aftermath of devastation, the protagonists are thrust into some form the technologies employed to control nature and people, such as of leadership due to the exposed limits of traditional authority.

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