Detecting Post-nuclear Crisis in Hanna Jameson's The Last
. Hanna Jameson’s post-apocalyptic detective novel, The Last (2019), addresses contemporary issues that affect us on both a collective and an individual level. The author diagnoses the denial of nuclearism and calls for an awareness of the nuclear age combined with the looming threat of climate...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
Scientia Publishing House
2021-11-01
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| Series: | Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Philologica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://acta.sapientia.ro/content/docs/detecting-post-nuclear-crisis-in-hanna-j.pdf |
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| Summary: | . Hanna Jameson’s post-apocalyptic detective novel, The Last (2019),
addresses contemporary issues that affect us on both a collective and an
individual level. The author diagnoses the denial of nuclearism and calls for
an awareness of the nuclear age combined with the looming threat of climate
change. The novel negotiates alternative strategies for the treatment of crisis
brought about by the nuclear attack and borrows many of the thematic and
structural elements from twentieth-century nuclear fictions in which the
apocalypse is not necessarily regarded in negative terms but as a chance
for regeneration. The events of the post-nuclear months in a Swiss hotel
are narrated by an American historian whose written account serves several
goals. It gives the illusion of delaying crisis, but it also reveals his fears and
traumas conjured up by radioactive spectres. There are two different types
of narratives at work, the narrative of the crisis and that of the investigation.
The narrator-protagonist becomes obsessed with finding the solution to a
murder mystery, which in a metaphorical sense is to give a soothing answer
to the death of millions. However, this attempt keeps failing, and thus the
narrative of the crisis devours all kinds of rational initiatives to resolve
chaos. In order to elaborate on the psychological impact of the post-nuclear
crisis in subject construction, I do not only examine the character of the
amateur detective of the whodunit whose intervention aims to restore order,
but I also apply Gabriele Schwab’s concepts of post-nuclear subjectivity and
nuclear hauntology. |
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| ISSN: | 2067-5151 2068-2956 |