“Apocalypse now”? Neither Now nor Ever

Thinking of infinite Postmodernity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first one is to indicate how the so called consumer society of the West is gradually becoming a homogeneous global media market inside an increasingly mobile web, where the social and the semantic patterns interchange their places in order to build upon the several life worlds a system of media signs: a system which proposes, at the same time, the impending possibility of a total destruction of mankind, and the paradoxical security that this is an event that will never happen. The second aim is to propose an ontological foundation of that contradictory dynamics, discussing the practices of writing (sensu lato) about Apocalypse and its constant deferring. The essay pays special attention to the Book of the Revelation of Saint John, interpreting it as a perennial pattern for the reconstruction of reality, through the disjunction of the temporal ecstasies and sensorial orders (seeing, hearing, touching the Message), which express something literally unimaginable: the absolute end of time.