SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... The City at the End of the World: Eschatology and Ecology in Twentieth-Century Science Fiction and Architecture A Dissertation Presented by Connor Matthew Pitetti to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University December 2016 Copyright by Connor Matthew Pitetti 2016 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Connor Matthew Pitetti We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Adrienne Munich - Dissertation Advisor English, Art, and Cultural Analysis and Theory Dr. Elizabeth Ann Kaplan - Chairperson of Defense English and Cultural Analysis and Theory Dr. Stacey Olster English Dr. Michael Rubenstein English Dr. Matthew Taylor English and Comparative Literature The University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation The City at the End of the World: Eschatology and Ecology in Twentieth Century Science Fiction and Architecture by Connor Matthew Pitetti Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University 2016 A basic tenet of environmentalist thought holds that how we live in the present has an impact on the possibility that an environmental disaster will take place in the future. This project explores a dynamic that works in the other direction, arguing that the stories we tell about future disasters help to shape environmentalist practices in the present. The analysis builds on readings of twentieth-century science fiction and the writings of modern and postmodern architects, archives that contain some of the most influential accounts of social and environmental futures produced in the last century. Both of these discourses seek to make futures visible, whether through imaginative description or through prescriptive plans for future construction projects; in doing so, both shape cultural understandings of the material world in and through which they imagine the future becoming manifest. This impact is often a result of the way a narrative frames its account of the future, and a given narrative can thus foster implicit ideas about environmentally responsible behavior that exceed and even directly contradict its explicit content. The project focuses on “end of the world” narratives as a limit case of speculative storytelling, distinguishing between “apocalyptic” stories in which disasters mark a rupture between radically different worlds and “postapocalyptic” stories in which disasters punctuate and inflect ongoing historical processes. Apocalyptic stories are popular among environmentalists, but the project demonstrates that this narrative mode is inherently anti-ecological; because they equate futurity with post-historical finality, apocalyptic narratives cannot acknowledge the complexity and dynamism of ecological relationships. The project argues that the open-ended framing of postapocalyptic narratives allows for more complex and ecologically sensitive accounts of humanity’s interaction with and dependence on nonhuman beings than are possible in apocalyptic texts, and that this mode of speculative storytelling has an important role to play in contemporary environmentalist discourse. iii For my mother iv Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction Two Green Cities: Eschatological Narrative and Ecological Thought in Science Fiction and Architecture 1 Chapter 1 The Nature of the End: Apocalypse and Postapocalypse as Modes of Speculative Narrative 46 Chapter 2 The Radiant City: Hugo Gernsback, Le Corbusier, and the Modern New Jerusalem 82 Chapter 3 History in the Future City: The Arcologies of Paolo Soleri and William Gibson 141 Chapter 4 Life in the Ruins: The Endless Worlds of Octavia Butler’s Parables and Detroit’s flower house 197 Coda The Tree of Heaven: A Postapocalyptic Parable 245 Bibliography 253 v List of Figures 1. Universal Pictures, promotional poster for I am Legend 14 2. Frank Paul, "New York, 2660 A.D," illustration for Ralph 124C 41+ 86 3. “Dieu leur à prépare une cite,” image from En Avant 96 4. Le Corbusier, model of the Plan Voison 98 5. Gustave Doré, “St. John at Patmos” 109 6. Gustave Doré, “The Crowned Virgin: A Vision of John” 115 7. Frank Paul, “City of Tomorrow” 128 8. Photocollages by Superstudio. 1972 134 9. Paolo Soleri, “Comparative Densities” 152 10. Paolo Soleri, elevation, section, and plan views of various arcologies 154 11. Paolo Soleri, “Asteromo, elevation” 164 12. Paolo Soleri, “Ecumenopoly and Arcology” 166 13. Heather Saunders, photographs of the flower house 223 14. Andrew Moore, photographs from Detroit Disassembled 232 15. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, “Michigan Central Station” 234 14. Heather Saunders, details of flower house installations 240 15. Heather Saunders, details of flower house installations 242 vi Acknowledgments My most appreciative thanks are due first and foremost to Laura James, Adam Katz, Daniel Lee, Katherine Perko, Eileen Sperry, and Allison Tyndall, who read drafts of this manuscript at the grueling rate of seven pages a week for much longer than they would probably care to recall. Thanks are also due to Drs. Adrienne Munich, Stacey Olster, Michael Rubenstein, E. Ann Kaplan, and Matthew Taylor, who read my drafts at a more reasonable pace but were equally judicious in their advice and tireless in their support. A great many thanks and much love to my parents, Moira Hogan and Matthew Pitetti, whose passion for the written word put my feet on this path and whose support have kept them there. In a less direct fashion, these pages reflect the conversation and council of the many teachers, students, and colleagues I have had the good fortune to know at Greenwood High School, in the Architecture and English Departments at Harrisburg Area Community College, in the English Department and the Writing Center at the City College of New York, in the English and CAT Departments and at the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, in the seminars and lectures of the School of Criticism and Theory, and in the Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik at Philipps- Universität Marburg. Many apologies to the friends and family members who saw too little of me during the writing process, and as many thanks to Johanna Heil, who saw entirely too much of me and put up with all of my compositional foibles and dramas. Work on this project was made possible by generous fellowship support from the Graduate School at Stony Brook, the New York Council for the Humanities, and, in the final year, from the American Council for Learned Societies. The writing was accomplished primarily in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City and in Marburg an der Lahn. One of the animating convictions of this project is that it is important to think ecologically, in terms of the extended networks of relation that make our lives possible. From such a perspective the task of acknowledgement mounts asymptotically and impossibly—my debts are endless, and my capacity to recall them all to limited. If I have forgotten to mention you, please know that it is not because I do not value what you have given me. vii Introduction Two Green Cities: Eschatological Narrative and Ecological Thought in Science Fiction and Architecture “[T]here is no more just category for the future than that of the ‘perhaps’ . a possible surely and certainly possible, accessible in advance, would be a poor possible, a futureless possible.” – Jacques Derrida “The key difference . is a definition of what it is to be the part of something else.” – Bruno Latour Narrative and the Possibility of Environmental Thought It is a commonplace of contemporary environmentalist rhetoric that in an era of global crises it is important to take a long view of future history. In his 2009 climate change exposé Storms of My Grandchildren, for example, climatologist James Hansen, then director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, references new data on atmospheric carbon in explaining the professional pivot from detached climate science to politically invested climate activism that his book represents, but he credits a shift in the way he thinks about the future that was triggered by the birth of his first grandchild as the catalyst for the transformation. “In 2001 I was more sanguine about the climate situation,” he writes, but “I . changed over the past eight years, especially after my wife, Anniek, and I had our first grandchildren. If it hadn’t been for my grandchildren and my knowledge of what they would face, I would have stayed focused on the pure science, and not persisted in pointing out its relevance to policy.”1 The shift in Hansen’s attitudes and actions is the 1 James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), xii. 1 result of a change in his use of narrative to engage with the future; the abstract story of global climate trends triggers his interest in “pure science,” but the more personalized story of his family’s future pushes him to engage with politics. Hansen defends the policy