The Technological Posthumous Fantasies of J. G. Ballard
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51427/com.est.2024.03.02.0007Keywords:
English Literature, Death, Death Drive, SurrealismAbstract
In J. G. Ballard’s fiction, death represents a drive towards transcendence, a logical next step of an extremely abstract approach to the changed psyche brought about by 20th century technology. These propulsions towards death, against the instinct of self-preservation, are manifestations on one hand of the perverse desires and suicidal manias of their protagonists, but can also be read as metaphorical instances in which death figures as a mode of transcendence. In this article I discuss Ballard’s representation of death as a drive towards transcendence and recreation of the world through the imagination, with a reading of the novel The Unlimited Dream Company and other texts of the Ballardian canon.
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