Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World

In this volume, historians, critics, and theorists review 3000 years of apocalyptic thought. Tracing the history of millenarianism from ancient times to the 17th century, each theorist investigates the modern and postmodern debates in which apocalyptic themes are recirculated. From Zoroaster to Derrida, thinkers have used the dramatic language of apocalyptic to uncover the ends of the world, exploring the relationship between ends as purposes and ends as terminations, and the connections between religious and secular versions of apocalyptic theory. In the resulting interplay of closure and disclosure, they have sought to find purpose to lift, and a conclusion to history. As the millennium draws to a close, questions about the end of the world seem increasingly urgent. This volume then is a guide to these bewildering questions and discourses of the limit. It should be of interest to anyone participating in contemporary debates in cultural studies, religious studies, literary theory, postmodernist philosophy and history. Malcolm Bull is the co-author (with Keith Lockhard) of "Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-Day Adventism and the American Dream".

List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements viii 1 On Making Ends Meet 1 Malcolm Bull PART I 2 How Time Acquired a Consummation 21 Norman Cohn 3 ‘Upon Whom the Ends of the Ages have Come’: Apocalyptic Interpretation of the New Testament 38 Christopher Rowland 4 The End of the World and the Beginning of Christendom 58 Bernard McGinn 5 Pattern and Purpose in History in the Later Medieval and Renaissance Periods 90 Marjorie Reeves 6 Seventeenth-Century Millenarianism 112 Richard Popkin PART II 7 Secular Apocalypse: Prophets and Apocalyptics at the End of the Eighteenth Century 137 Elinor Shaffer 8 Saint-Simonian Industrialism as the End of History: Auguste Comte’s Vision on the Teleology of Universal History 159 Laurence Dickey 9 Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia Today 200 Krishan Kumar PART III 10 Versions of Apocalypse: Kant, Derrida, Foucault 227 Christopher Norris 11 Waiting for the End 250 Frank Kermode 12 Adorno as Lateness Itself 264 Edward W. Said Index 282