Ruins

This chapter discusses the depiction of thoroughly eroded, post-apocalyptic worlds where capitalism, the commodity frontiers that have always fed capital, and the economic conditions that make standing armies possible, have disappeared. Much of the fiction considered in this chapter describes a Hobbesian world devoid of the material comforts, securities and privileges previously enjoyed by (white/middle-class) communities. Even so, the heroes of these texts do their best to honour the violent social contract established by extractive and militarized capitalism.