Settler apocalypse now: Santhosh Chandrashekar, Christina R. Foust, ‘Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Settler Power: Lessons for the End Times in Eruption’, in Nathan Crick (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power, Routledge, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler apocalypse now: Santhosh Chandrashekar, Christina R. Foust, ‘Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Settler Power: Lessons for the End Times in Eruption’, in Nathan Crick (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power, Routledge, 2024

06Sep24

Abstract: Apocalypse is a persistent form of rhetoric that appears in moments of collective upheaval, a genre that sets up certain courses of action while discouraging others. As rhetoric scholars have recognized, premillennial Christian discourses influence our understanding of apocalypse as the prophetic foretelling of a “world-ending” event—to which the proper response is agreement with prophesy (and perhaps atonement). This chapter reads the 2009 telefilm Eruption to better understand how such forms shore up settler-colonial (and white masculine) power at moments in which it is most threatened. We underscore the necessity of challenging settler apocalyptic frames as we navigate life in the sixth mass extinction.

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