There is a strand that runs through the modern imagination, the obverse or compliment to the infinite multiplication of consumer goods. It is a strand that is easily picked up in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic literature, and for me it is one visual captured in the final scenes of Antonioni's 1970 Zabriskie Point:
As the clip showcases, the impulse I am gesturing toward has to do with the obliteration of our consumer society. When consumer goods and domesticity are unable to fulfill their utopic promise, there is something comforting in the spectacle of fragmentation, the glittering shards, splinters, and scraps of televisions, refrigerators, and wardrobes. But while the catharsis that accompanies this imaginative destruction might offer a liberating vision of a more simple life free from the trappings of excessive goods, what happens when the material surplus takes another form? What is the imaginative impact when there are an excess of human matter?
In Cousin de Grainville's 1805 novel The Last Man, the reader is given a quasi-fictionalized account of the Book of Revelations. Omegarus, the Omega to Adam's Alpha, lives through the final gasps of an increasing sterile Earth despite the falsely prophesied hope that he may start humanity anew with his Brazilian wife Syderia. With the Last Days in full swing, Omegarus beholds a truly bizare sight:
In lieu of the familiar image, seen in plenty of post-apocalyptic depictions, where the excessive detritus of the previous world lies in splinters, The Last Man offers a somewhat different vision. The problem here is not too many things, a somewhat simplistic critique of capital. Nor is it another familiar critique of too many people, a population crisis that is the alibi for biopower's racially-biased operation. Instead, there is a literal and transformative excess of dead human matter. The remains of the dead come to possess and transform the world of the living, making it nearly unrecognizable.
This vision of the excess of dead human matter finds an echo in Max Brook's zombie-apocalypse novel World War Z. While the Last Man vision is the distressing signal that the end has truly arrived, within the narrative of World War Z, the vision is one that signals hope. The following account is part of a battle that becomes a turning point in the novel as the United States Army begins to fight back against the zombie threat, taking back the land east of the Rocky Mountains.
On the one hand, these visions can easily be shuttled into a ready-to-hand historical explanation. The living always abide in a world made by the dead, a testament to the inescapable power of historical continuity as one generation inescapably inherits the goods and evils of its fore bearers. And I believe this is not an inaccurate reading, as much of World War Z is about the perpetuation of transgenerational trauma as one generation inherits the inability to sufficiently process a variety of events that strike at the heart of representation: genocide, the horrors of the Soviet Union (however disputed), the atomic bombings of Japan, and the Holocaust.
However, what I think this account may threaten to leave out is the very real material impact that these visions present. In both novels, dead human matter literally changes the lived environment, in the one case acting almost like napalm to eat away at the earth and in the other to build a fortification. These apocalyptic visions challenges us to consider the question: What do we do when there is an excess of death? When death, not simply as a theoretical negation, but deathly material, non-animated material bodies, bones, ashes, no longer stay put but actually come to be constitutive elements along the lines of stone, steel and brick? What is life in the face of living with excessive death?
At its heart, as the subtitle of World War Z ("An Oral History of the Zombie War") testifies, the novel is about being at war. It is shot through with military acronyms, discussions of military maneuvers, and the inadequacies of military equipment. At its core, this is a novel that paints an intimate portrait of trauma, the mental repercussions of being actively engaged in an extended armed conflict with a non-traditional enemy. It presents a poignant commentary on the seemingly endless continuation of the war in Afghanistan, which has nearly lost its temporal conjunction with the purportedly inaugural events of 9/11.
As a way of conclusion, I want to cite a passage from Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel Falling Man, which I believe has echoes with both The Last Man and World War Z. As Keith, an "average" guy who was working in the Twin Towers when the planes hit, returns to his apartment near Ground Zero days later, he looks out at steel girders, the last vestiges of the towers:
Perhaps the comfort that is comes at the moment of destruction of inorganic matter, the fragmentation of consumer society, is difficult to reproduce in the face of an excess of organic matter. In all three novels, The Last Man, World War Z, and Falling Man, the excess of bodies, bones, and ashes traumatizes those who inherit this world of excessive death. The vision that these novels present challenge us to consider the vision of a world where a surplus of dead human matter no longer remains pushed to the proscribed areas, but becomes part of the constructive fabric of everyday life.
In Cousin de Grainville's 1805 novel The Last Man, the reader is given a quasi-fictionalized account of the Book of Revelations. Omegarus, the Omega to Adam's Alpha, lives through the final gasps of an increasing sterile Earth despite the falsely prophesied hope that he may start humanity anew with his Brazilian wife Syderia. With the Last Days in full swing, Omegarus beholds a truly bizare sight:
"Released from His promises and from the laws He had imposed upon Himself, God gave the signal for the resurrection of the dead...The graves opened and they came forth -- from shattered trees, split rocks, collapsing edifices. The earth resembled an immense volcano from which, through an infinite number of fissures, human bones and ashes were ejected...Three hours were enough for the resurrection of all human remains, so swift and violent had the eruption been."The account goes on to describe how the earth had been "disfigured" by these "human remains," and that "entire cities had vanished beneath the covering ashes." Unsurprisingly, upon seeing the Earth vomit up the semi-processed dead, Omegarus is frozen in place with terror.
In lieu of the familiar image, seen in plenty of post-apocalyptic depictions, where the excessive detritus of the previous world lies in splinters, The Last Man offers a somewhat different vision. The problem here is not too many things, a somewhat simplistic critique of capital. Nor is it another familiar critique of too many people, a population crisis that is the alibi for biopower's racially-biased operation. Instead, there is a literal and transformative excess of dead human matter. The remains of the dead come to possess and transform the world of the living, making it nearly unrecognizable.
This vision of the excess of dead human matter finds an echo in Max Brook's zombie-apocalypse novel World War Z. While the Last Man vision is the distressing signal that the end has truly arrived, within the narrative of World War Z, the vision is one that signals hope. The following account is part of a battle that becomes a turning point in the novel as the United States Army begins to fight back against the zombie threat, taking back the land east of the Rocky Mountains.
"They started piling up, forming this artificial palisade at the first range marker, this ridge of corpses that got higher and higher each minute...It was kinda eerie, the sun rising over this mountainous ring of corpses. We were totally walled in, all sides were piled at least twenty feet high and over a hundred feet deep...When we started burying the bodies they came tumbling out."As in The Last Man, there is such an excess of raw matter that it becomes constitutive, building a fortress that surrounds the soldiers. Not only does it pile up to the point of building a barrier, but the re-killed dead bodies overflow the places of internment, or as The Last Man account states, "the graves opened and they came forth." Not simply the dead, as in the accumulation of names no longer living, but the signifiers of death serve to construct a new world around the living.
On the one hand, these visions can easily be shuttled into a ready-to-hand historical explanation. The living always abide in a world made by the dead, a testament to the inescapable power of historical continuity as one generation inescapably inherits the goods and evils of its fore bearers. And I believe this is not an inaccurate reading, as much of World War Z is about the perpetuation of transgenerational trauma as one generation inherits the inability to sufficiently process a variety of events that strike at the heart of representation: genocide, the horrors of the Soviet Union (however disputed), the atomic bombings of Japan, and the Holocaust.
However, what I think this account may threaten to leave out is the very real material impact that these visions present. In both novels, dead human matter literally changes the lived environment, in the one case acting almost like napalm to eat away at the earth and in the other to build a fortification. These apocalyptic visions challenges us to consider the question: What do we do when there is an excess of death? When death, not simply as a theoretical negation, but deathly material, non-animated material bodies, bones, ashes, no longer stay put but actually come to be constitutive elements along the lines of stone, steel and brick? What is life in the face of living with excessive death?
At its heart, as the subtitle of World War Z ("An Oral History of the Zombie War") testifies, the novel is about being at war. It is shot through with military acronyms, discussions of military maneuvers, and the inadequacies of military equipment. At its core, this is a novel that paints an intimate portrait of trauma, the mental repercussions of being actively engaged in an extended armed conflict with a non-traditional enemy. It presents a poignant commentary on the seemingly endless continuation of the war in Afghanistan, which has nearly lost its temporal conjunction with the purportedly inaugural events of 9/11.
As a way of conclusion, I want to cite a passage from Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel Falling Man, which I believe has echoes with both The Last Man and World War Z. As Keith, an "average" guy who was working in the Twin Towers when the planes hit, returns to his apartment near Ground Zero days later, he looks out at steel girders, the last vestiges of the towers:
"The dead were everywhere, in the air, the rubble, on the rooftops nearby, in the breezes that carried from the river. They were settled in ash and drizzled on the windows all along the streets, in his hair and on his clothes."This might just as easily have been a description of Omegarus as the ashes of all humanity poured out in the apocalyptic realization. In both cases, the ashes of the dead are no longer bound to the urns or burial grounds where we expect them to be. Instead, their literal presence covers the world, a corrosive material that eats into the urban fabric, changing the city landscape. And not simply an external element, but something immerse, seeping into the very fabric of life, part of the air that is breathed.
Perhaps the comfort that is comes at the moment of destruction of inorganic matter, the fragmentation of consumer society, is difficult to reproduce in the face of an excess of organic matter. In all three novels, The Last Man, World War Z, and Falling Man, the excess of bodies, bones, and ashes traumatizes those who inherit this world of excessive death. The vision that these novels present challenge us to consider the vision of a world where a surplus of dead human matter no longer remains pushed to the proscribed areas, but becomes part of the constructive fabric of everyday life.
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