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‘We Are Dead and We Are Going to Die’: The Apocalypse Documentary

image of ‘We Are Dead and We Are Going to Die’: The Apocalypse Documentary

Documentary may be becoming the new science fiction, as more films set their sights on the future, which is increasingly being represented as all but lost. In this rush toward these catastrophic representations, this chapter posits a new genre to be considered: the Apocalypse documentary. Not only do these films align with the assertion that the end of the world may be easier to imagine than the end of capitalism, but they are also distinctly gendered, as if the feminized labor of “staying with the trouble” is not nearly as captivating or spectacular as envisioning our own demise.

Keywords: Anthropocene ; Apocalypse Documentary ; ruin-porn ; sublime

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References

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  4. Barthes, Roland (1981), Camera Lucida, New York: Hill and Wang.
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  5. Castaing-Tayler, Lucien and Paravel, Varena (2012), Leviathan, USA: Arrête ton Cinéma/Sensory Ethnography Lab.
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  8. Demos, T. J. (2020), Beyond the World's End: Arts of Living at the Crossing, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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  9. Derrida, Jacques (1992), ‘Of an apocalyptic tone recently adopted in philosophy’, in H. G. Coward and T. Foshey (eds), Derrida and Negative Theology, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 25–72.
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  13. Geyrhalter, Nikolaus (1999), Pripyat, Austria: Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion/firstchoicefilms.
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  14. Geyrhalter, Nikolaus (2011), Abendland, Austria: Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion.
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  15. Geyrhalter, Nikolaus (2016), Homo Sapiens, Switzerland; Germany; Austria: Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion/ ORF Film/Fernseh-Abkommen/3sat.
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  18. Haraway, Donna (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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  22. History Channel (2016), Doomsday: 10 Ways the World Will End, USA: Flight 33 Productions/History Channel.
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  23. Juhasz, Alexandra and Lebow, Alisa (2018), ‘Beyond story: An online community-based manifesto’, World Records, 2:3, https://worldrecordsjournal.org/beyond-story-an-online-community-based-manifesto/. Accessed 25 November 2023.
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  24. Kant, Immanuel ([1790]1987), Critique of Judgement (trans. W. S. Pluhar), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.
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  25. Kolbert, Elizabeth (2014), The Sixth Extinction, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
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  27. National Geographic (2008 and 2010), Aftermath: Population Zero, USA; Canada: Cream Productions.
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  29. Shaviro, Steven (2012), ‘Melancholia or the romantic anti-sublime’, Sequence, 1:1, https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence/files/2012/12/MELANCHOLIA-or-The-Romantic-Anti-Sublime-SEQUENCE-1.1-2012-Steven-Shaviro.pdf. Accessed 25 November 2023.
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  31. Story, Brett (2019), The Hottest August, Canada; USA: Oh Ratface Films/ Walking Productions.
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  32. Swyngedouw, Erik (2010), ‘Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change’, Theory, Culture & Society, 7:2–3, pp. 213–32.
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  33. Tsing, Anna (2015), The Mushroom at the End of the World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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  34. Tsing, Anna, Swanson, Heather, Gan, Elaine and Nils Bubandt (eds) (2017), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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  35. Waugh, Thomas (1976), ‘Beyond verité: Emile de Antonio’, Jump Cut, 10–11, pp. 33–39.
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  36. Weisman, Alan (2007), The World Without Us, New York: Picador.
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  37. Yusoff, Kathryn (2018), A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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  38. Zylinska, Joanna (2014), Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press.
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