Whose Apocalypse? Unfuturability and the Politics of Settler-Colonial Futurity in Western Apocalyptic Narratives
(1) Department of English, Universitas Kristen Krida Wacana, Jakarta
(*) Corresponding Author
Abstract
This paper argues that reading Western settler-colonial apocalyptic narratives—including films, video games, and novels such as The Road, the Fallout series, Children of Men, and Interstellar—through the lens of unfuturability reveals their underlying political function. I distinguish between “apocalypse-as-genre,” the spectacular collapse imagined in these works, and “apocalypse-as-structure,” the slow violence already endured in places such as Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. The analysis identifies three recurring settler-colonial tropes that work to secure the future as a racially exclusive domain: the reimagining of land as an emptied frontier, the rebirth of the hunter-hero through righteous violence, and the salvation of the future through a settler adoption fantasy. These tropes function as a form of “white property” by controlling who inherits futurity. In response, unfuturability is proposed as both an analytic and an ethic: a political refusal of the colonial future that opens space for plural, relational worlds already being built through Indigenous land stewardship, Black mutual aid, and decolonial archival practice. By using unfuturability to name and critique these narrative patterns, this paper offers a framework for reading apocalyptic culture beyond the horizons secured by settler futurity.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Angeli-Gordon, Joni Māramatanga. “Whakapapa, Mauritau, and Placefulness to Decolonise Indigenous Minds.” Genealogy 8, no. 4 (October 2024): 124. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8040124.
Austin, K.G., A. Mosnier, J. Pirker, I. McCallum, S. Fritz, and P.S. Kasibhatla. “Shifting Patterns of Oil Palm Driven Deforestation in Indonesia and Implications for Zero-Deforestation Commitments.” Land Use Policy 69 (December 2017): 41–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.08.036.
Badrudin, Ali. “PRANATA MANGSA JAWA (Cermin Pengetahuan Kolektif Masyarakat Petani Di Jawa).” Adabiyyāt: Jurnal Bahasa Dan Sastra 13, no. 2 (December 2014): 229–52. https://doi.org/10.14421/ajbs.2014.13204.
Berardi, Franco. After the Future. Edited by Gary Genosko and Nicholas Thoburn. Translated by Arianna Bove, Melinda Cooper, Erik Empson, Enrico, Giuseppina Mecchia, and Tiziana Terranova. New York: AK Press, 2011.
Brubacher, Laura Jane, Laura Peach, Tara Tai-Wen Chen, Sheri Longboat, Warren Dodd, Susan J. Elliott, Kaitlyn Patterson, and Hannah Neufeld. “Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, and Indigenous Peoples’ Health and Wellbeing: A Systematic Umbrella Review.” PLOS Global Public Health 4, no. 3 (March 2024): e0002995. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0002995.
Carlsson, Rasmus Mathias. “Non-Diegetic Film Music as a Narrative Agency in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014).” Master’s Thesis, Lund University, 2019.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “ANTHROPOCENE TIME.” History and Theory 57, no. 1 (March 2018): 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12044.
Chao, Sophie. “In the Shadow of the Palm: Dispersed Ontologies among Marind, West Papua.” Cultural Anthropology 33, no. 4 (November 2018): 621–49. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca33.4.08.
Cooper, Lydia R. “Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ as Apocalyptic Grail Narrative.” Studies in the Novel 43, no. 2 (2011): 218–36.
Daiyan, Md Mahir. “The Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Practices.” Praxis International Journal of Social Science and Literature 6, no. 6 (June 2023): 75–80. https://doi.org/10.51879/ PIJSSL/060611.
Damastuti, Ekaningrum, and Rudolf De Groot. “Participatory Ecosystem Service Mapping to Enhance Community-Based Mangrove Rehabilitation and Management in Demak, Indonesia.” Regional Environmental Change 19, no. 1 (January 2019): 65–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1378-7.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. With Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press, 2005.
Dinello, Dan. Children of Men. Constellations: Studies in Science Fiction Film and TV. Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2019.
Domingo, Julia Echeverría. “Liquid Cinematography and the Representation of Viral Threats in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Children of Men.’” Atlantis 37, no. 2 (2015): 137–53.
Dominy, Jordan J. “Cannibalism, Consumerism, and Profanation.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 13, no. 1 (September 2015): 143–58. https://doi. org/10.5325/cormmccaj.13.1.0143.
Dunne, Daniel Joseph. “Following the Fallout: Narrative Structures in a Videogame Franchise.” Master’s Thesis, Swinburne University of Technology, 2018.
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Edited by Michele Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedywick. Series Q. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Nachdr. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
Hadi, S P, H Purnaweni, B Prabawani, and R S Hamdani. “Community Movement for Sustainable Use of Natural Resources: Case Study of North Kendeng Mountain Area, Central Java, Indonesia.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 448, no. 1 (March 2020): 012069. https://doi. org/10.1088/1755-1315/448/1/012069.
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental Futures. Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices. Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016.
Harini, Setyasih, Sumarmi, and Anggit G. Wicaksono. “Manfaat Penggunaan Pranata Mangsa Bagi Petani Desa Mojoreno Kabupaten Wonogiri.” Jurnal Inada: Kajian Perempuan Indonesia Di Daerah Tertinggal, Terdepan, Dan Terluar 2, no. 1 (2019): 82–97.
Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe New York Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013.
Hartman, Saidiya V. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. 1st ed. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2019.
Hernández, Carol, Hugo Perales, and Daniel Jaffee. “‘Without Food There Is No Resistance’: The Impact of the Zapatista Conflict on Agrobiodiversity and Seed Sovereignty in Chiapas, Mexico.” Geoforum 128 (January 2022): 236–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.016.
Hoffman, Kira M., Emma L. Davis, Sara B. Wickham, Kyle Schang, Alexandra Johnson, Taylor Larking, Patrick N. Lauriault, Nhu Quynh Le, Emily Swerdfager, and Andrew J. Trant. “Conservation of Earth’s Biodiversity Is Embedded in Indigenous Fire Stewardship.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 32 (August 2021): e2105073118. https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.2105073118.
Hunfeld, Katharina. “The Coloniality of Time in the Global Justice Debate: De- Centring Western Linear Temporality.” Journal of Global Ethics 18, no. 1 (January 2022): 100–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2022.2052151.
Ibarrola-Armendariz, Aitor. “Cormac McCarthy’s The Road : Rewriting the Myth of the American West 1.” European Journal of American Studies 6, no. 3 (September 2011). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.9310.
Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. With American Council of Learned Societies. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985.
Kunsa, Ashley. “‘Maps of the World in Its Becoming’: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Journal of Modern Literature 33, no. 1 (December 2009): 57–74. https://doi.org/10.2979/JML.2009.33.1.57.
Lincoln, Noa Kekuewa, Jack Rossen, Peter Vitousek, Jesse Kahoonei, Dana Shapiro, Keone Kalawe, Māhealani Pai, Kehaulani Marshall, and Kamuela Meheula. “Restoration of ‘Āina Malo‘o on Hawai‘i Island: Expanding Biocultural Relationships.” Sustainability 10, no. 11 (October 2018): 3985. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10113985.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. 1. Vintage open-Market ed., [Nachdr.]. New York, NY: Vintage International, 2009.
Miettinen, Jukka, and Soo Chin Liew. “Status of Peatland Degradation and Development in Sumatra and Kalimantan.” AMBIO 39, nos. 5–6 (July 2010): 394–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-010-0051-2.
Mitchell, Audra, and Aadita Chaudhury. “Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘End’ of ‘the World’: White Apocalyptic Visions and BIPOC Futurisms.” International Relations 34, no. 3 (September 2020): 309–32. https://doi. org/10.1177/0047117820948936.
Morgenstern, Naomi. “Postapocalyptic Responsibility: Patriarchy at the End of the World in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Differences 25, no. 2 (September 2014): 33–61. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2773427.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. 10th Anniversary edition. Sexual Cultures. New York: New York university press, 2019.
Nicolaides, Angelo. “Duty, Human Rights and Wrongs and the Notion of Ubuntu as Humanist Philosophy and Metaphysical Connection.” Athens Journal of Law 8, no. 2 (March 2022): 123–34. https://doi.org/10.30958/ajl.8-2-2.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. First Harvard University Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press, 2013.
O’Donnell, Marcus. “Children of Men ’s Ambient Apocalyptic Visions.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 27, no. 1 (March 2015): 16–30. https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.27.1.2439.
Podgajna, Patrycja. “Between the waste land and no place - Christopher Nolan’s futuristic dystopia Interstellar (2014).: Między dystopią a utopią - futurystyczna wizja świata w filmie Christophera Nolana Interstellar (2014).” Studia Humanistyczne AGH 15, no. 2 (2016): 51. https://doi.org/10.7494/ human.2016.15.2.51.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University press, 2016.
Redman, Samuel J. Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674270015.
Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016.
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600 - 1860. 4th print. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan Univ. Pr, 1987.
Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity during This Crisis (and the Next). London: Verso, 2020.
Stang, Sarah. “Irradiated Cereal and Abject Meat: Food as Satire and Warning in the Fallout Series.” Games and Culture 17, no. 3 (May 2022): 354–73. https://doi. org/10.1177/15554120211030800.
Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
———. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule: With a New Preface. Berkeley Los Angeles London: University of California Press, 2010.
Susan Sontag. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Commentary, October 1965. https:// www.commentary.org/articles/susan-sontag/the-imagination-of-disaster/.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
Whyte, Kyle P. “Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias and Fantasies of Climate Change Crises.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1, nos. 1–2 (March 2018): 224–42. https://doi. org/10.1177/2514848618777621.
Widyaevan, Dea Aulia. “Kajian Kritik Seni Instalasi Tisna Sanjaya - ‘32 Tahun Berpikir Dengan Dengkul.’” JURNAL RUPA 2, no. 1 (January 2018): 13. https://doi.org/10.25124/rupa.v2i1.752.
Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. London: Verso, 2010.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/ret.v13i2.12831
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stefanus Galang Ardana
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Retorik: Jurnal Ilmu Humaniora is published by the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Retorik is also available in print edition. Please click here for contact information.