Scherpe Klaus R., Brent O. Peterson. Dramatization and De-Dramatization of The End: The Apocalyptic Consciousness of Modernity and Post-Modernity

Cultural Critique, No. 5, Modernity and Modernism, Postmodernity and Postmodernism (Winter, 1986-1987), pp. 95-129In the age of posthistorie, the dead end of the world [Weltuntergang] no longer be a topic, at least not a dramatic one. The historical, philosophical, and theological power of the apocalypse to conjure up images of the end, in order to make life more meaningful, seems to be exhausted. As
Hans Magnus Enzensberger remarks in his "Two Notes on the End of the World": "Finality, which was formerly one of the major attributes of the apocalypse, and one of the reasons for its power of attractions, is no longer vouchsafed us."' The nuclear catastrophe, viewed as "pure" terror, as the fatal consolidation and refinement of all the vital power of labor and knowledge, excludes every metaphysical reflection and paralyzes our fantasy and imagination.