[from Alternative Modernity, pp. 41-72] CHAPTER
THREE
Dystopia and Apocalypse The Emergence of Critical Consciousness
CRITIQUE AS MASS CULTURE The twentieth century has been a time of growing doubts about the viability of the modern project. So long as the pessimistic mood was confined to a few literary humanists, it had little impact. But since World War II, prophecies of doom have become cliches on everyone's lips. Social critical themes hitherto reserved for an intellectual elite are now mass political culture. This chapter concerns one of these themes: the secularized myth of the end of the world, eschatology that no longer needs religion now that it has become a distinct technical possibility. The myth takes two forms, corresponding to the material and spiritual destruction of humanity by its own technology. Nuclear and environmental disaster promise the death of the human species, while future technologies of mind control are extrapolated from contemporary propaganda, advertising, and computers. In this chapter, I describe three significant moments in the process by which these apocalyptic and dystopian themes entered popular consciousness in the 1950s and 1960s. I begin by tracing the rise of new doomsday myths inspired by the invention of the atom bomb. Scientists frightened by their own achievements were among the first to awaken to the posthistoric implications of technological advance. They tried to communicate their insight to the general public by writing both serious essays on public policy and 41 science fiction. Although their hopes for nuclear disarmament were