Lecture and Discussion by Amitav Ghosh : Intimations of Apocalypse
WiSER, the School of Literature, Language and Media (SLLM) and the Presidential Climate Commission warmly invite you to a lunchtime lecture by
Amitav Ghosh
Intimations of Apocalypse: Catastrophist and Gradualist Imaginings of the Planetary Future
The world is currently in the grip of several intensifying crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical instability, and so on. Given the scale of the disruptions that are already being felt around the planet, it is hardly surprising that many people who have come to be convinced that an apocalypse is inevitable and requires active planning and preparation. This trend cannot be lightly dismissed for it is being spearheaded by the founders of companies like Facebook and Google, that is to say figures who are uniquely well-placed to stay abreast of all the latest information and research. It is well-known now that several billionaire tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Peter Thiel are preparing for an impending apocalypse by building enormously expensive and heavily fortified retreats on remote islands, or in sparsely-populated stretches of the United States and Canada. Not to be left behind, a bevy of America’s most popular stars, such as Taylor Swift and Tom Cruise have also acquired cutting-edge apocalypse shelters. Nor are the ultra-rich the only Americans who are investing in doomsday retreats: so great is the demand that a new and rapidly-growing industry has emerged to cater to it. This talk seeks to understand the thinking behind these trends, and what it signifies for the future of humanity.
Introduced by Sarah Nuttall (WiSER) and Dan Ojwang (School of Literature, Language and Media Studies)
Brief responses from: Stacy Hardy, Simon van Schalkwyk, Dipika Nath and Sarah Nuttall
Closing remarks by: Isabel Hofmeyr and Ivan Vladislaviç
Photo credit: Aradhana Sen
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire, Gun Islandand the non-fiction works The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. The Circle of Reason was awarded France’s Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two prestigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005 The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award. His novel, Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award. Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He holds four Lifetime Achievement awards and five honorary doctorates. He has received numerous prestigious awards for his work. Amongst many others, in 2018 he was awarded the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 2024.
Tuesday, 10th September 2024
1pm
WiSER Seminar room
Lunch will be served from 12:40
RSVP: Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za