Mussgnug, F; (2024) Anti-Apocalyptic Optimism: Religious Eschatology and the Italian Environmental Humanities. Italica , 101 (3) pp. 408-425. 10.5406/23256672.101.3.04.

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Abstract

This article discusses Carla Benedetti’s influential critique of eschatological climate fatalism, which is centered on two religious concepts, “apocalypse” and “prophecy.” These concepts are described by Benedetti as contrasting cognitive and affective orientations. I compare Benedetti’s approach with the work of philosopher Déborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and with the ideas of theologians Catherine Keller, Judith Kovacs, Christopher Rowland, and Jakub Kowalewski, who have variously explored the connections between apocalyptic urgency and radical social and political critique: a nexus that, for Benedetti, is afforded by prophecy, but not by apocalyptic thinking. I also consider the question of anthropocentric scale, which I address from the perspective of literary critics Astrid Bracke, Timothy Clark, and Greg Garrard. I suggest that anti-apocalyptic environmentalism can lapse into a nostalgic attachment to the present, which I describe, with cultural theorist Lauren Berlant, as a form of clichéd optimism.

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