Abstract

In the striving for mastery over nature, a new mode of thinking and dealing has established itself in the modern western world, one responsible for the excesses of technical-scientific advance. The experience of the Chernobyl catastrophe, which momentarily shattered the way of life we had lived theretofore, reflects the abandonment of humankind to an instrumental and utilitarian rationality. ;Examined in this work are literary representations of the Chernobyl catastrophe which paradigmatically evidence the individual and social problems accompanying technical-scientific advance. The question pursued is why the western social and economic system must organize in such a manner that when decisions involving the employment of the prevailing rationality are made those decisions must manifest the dominance of utility value over all other values. It is not the technological risks themselves that form the object of inquiry here; this work aims rather to uncover the roots of the destructive powers of our civilization, powers that can lead to self-annihilation. The goal of post-escatologic literature is to diminish this destructivity. ;Insofar as many of the new risks evade the power of immediate human perception, the perspective power of literature is called upon to avoid the structural paralysis and self-destruction lurking behind a production of material values suddenly out of control. This dissertation shows that this literature--to the extent that it thematizes and criticizes a purposive rationality and expresses our fears as well as exposing their repression and resistance--functions through aesthetic mediation as a model for another dimension of reality