When you think of the end of the world in literature, two things immediately spring to mind: Joël Dicker or the great dystopias. It's neither of these that we're going to discuss here. In the same way that fantasy and science fiction are intimately linked to the apocalyptic vision of humanity, so-called «white» literature is also increasingly taking up the subject. And if the world is being turned upside down, the two novels we're going to look at are also turning the reader upside down. Each in its own way.
Director of the Religioscope Institute in Fribourg, Jean-François Mayer is a specialist in new religious movements. Among his subjects of study: beliefs in the end of the world, which belong to the spiritual realm, but not only... Interview.
Tales of the end of the world have been told throughout the ages, and still exist today. These dire predictions conceal...
74,000 years ago, mankind was on the brink of extinction. The cause was the explosion of a volcano. Genetic studies confirm that the human population numbered only a few thousand individuals at that time. Today, the threat of mass extinction remains.
What would be left after the end of the world, or rather life on Earth, following a nuclear catastrophe or climate change? Certainly not works of art. But perhaps technology. Here's a scenario from a digital art exhibition.
«THE END OF THE WORLD» SPECIAL REPORT | Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar who failed his exams four times and who, after an existential crisis, encountered God through Christian missionaries, was the catalyst for one of the deadliest armed conflicts in history.
DOSSIER «THE END OF THE WORLD» | They are sometimes referred to as «prophets of the Apocalypse», or «unreasonable catastrophists». However, beyond the caricature, the proponents of this «science of collapse» have a well-constructed, rational discourse worthy of interest.
There's climate change. The growing world population. The depletion of resources. Facts that no one can...
Return of war to Europe, nuclear threat, climate crisis... the spectre of the «end of the world» has not gone away....
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