Living After an End of the World

Contemplating the ecological crises of our time evokes visions of a catastrophic future shaped by climate change, mass extinction, or pollution: “[T]he present seems to be lost in a maze of multiple and unfathomable disasters” ( Horn, 2018 : 229). One such catastrophic scenario, a specifically modern type, is a technical failure or an accident, with Chernobyl serving as a prime example, according to Eva Horn (2018 : 138). The nuclear disaster on 26 April 1986, resulted in severe environmental devastation and extensive contamination. The Exclusion Zone surrounding the power plant, once used for cheap nuclear energy, became a waste(d)land and soil, water, and vegetation, in addition to the remnants of the reactor and other equipment were all transformed into nuclear waste. From a Western perspective, Chernobyl became “a figure for Soviet collapse, ecological ignorance and technological backwardness”, while it entered the cultural memory of Eastern Europe as “an existential shock that caused transnational trauma” ( Barcz, 2020 : 127). Russian-born philosopher Michael Marder, who was five years old at the time of the disaster, experienced its impact while visiting a health resort in Anapa, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, inadvertently exposed to the radioactive fallout that affected the Soviet Union and large parts of Europe, and this experience also left its mark on Marder.