{"id":11561,"date":"2025-03-13T12:58:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T16:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/?page_id=11561"},"modified":"2025-03-18T12:51:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T16:51:46","slug":"zone-one-friday","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/scifi2025\/scifimarch13\/zone-one-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Zone One “Friday”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week’s discussion post asks about the cultural work postapocalyptic* narratives do in reflecting our (possibly) collective anxieties about the environment, social collapse, machine automation, and mass somnambulism<\/a>. Try to expand upon that by participating in class discussions. I haven’t read or watched EVERYTHING out there dealing with postapocalyptic themes, so your experiences are important to bridge unfamiliar texts with our course materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*post-apocalyptic<\/a><\/em><\/strong> vs postapocalyptic<\/a><\/em><\/strong>: come to ENGL 4183 “Editing with Digital Technologies” to learn about hyphens with similar words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zone One<\/em>, “Friday”<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We’re reading this book (and all our readings) to consider them from a cultural perspective. Yes, Whitehead wrote a cool story; yes, his language is poetic and stylish; yes, he hates Connecticut. But the bigger picture–how we can relate this to contemporary American culture of the previous decade–provides us a much richer appreciation of the text. In order to maximize your appreciation, you need to read between the lines to locate the American values that Whitehead both highlights directly and comments on subtlety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve all lived through a “plague,” the COVID-19 pandemic, so I know you can make connections to that; however, let’s hold off (if possible) from commenting on COVID-19 today and save it for next week. Remember, this was published in 2011: post-Obama’s election and post-2008 “Great Recession.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter Benjamin’s essay “Dream Kitsch: Gloss on Surrealism”<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Epigraph<\/strong>: “the gray layer of dust covering things has become their best part” (p.1)
From Walter Benjamin’s essay “Dream Kitsch.” For now, it’s less important to discuss Benjamin’s essay, but you should know what kitsch<\/a><\/strong> is. Those of you in art history have your time to shine!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to get us too bogged down on Walter Benjamin and this essay…the essay discusses dreams and failed dreams (think back to Bruce Springsteen’s “The River”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n