In the Spotlight Alys Moody
What were your first thoughts when you saw the call for applications for the fellowship?
I was intrigued!
What does the apocalypse and/or post-apocalypse mean for you?
As a literary studies scholar, I think about the apocalypse as both a way of thinking about or orienting oneself to future and present worlds, but also as a literary genre with a specific history. I’m interested in the etymology of the term “apocalypse” as “revelation,” as well as its association with the “end of the world,” but I’m also interested in the ways that contemporary apocalyptic thought continues to bear the traces of the (pretty wild) early Jewish and Christian writings that gave us this term.
What is your fellowship trying to achieve, which questions is it addressing, and with which methods?
My work at CAPAS is nestled within a larger project about the development of the ideas of world hunger and world literature in the period of historical decolonization, from roughly 1945 to 1990. The project as a whole is interested in how this period changed how we thought about what “the world” was, and what kind of shared political space that opens up. So at CAPAS, I’m exploring where and when the apocalypse features within that. When and why do people start thinking of world hunger as a harbinger of apocalypse, and what does that do to the political ideas of the world that these theories of world hunger entail?
How does the fellowship project build on or connect to your previous career or biography?
My first book was also about hunger, but of a much more individual, isolated kind: the way a certain kind of artist, writing in the aftermath of modernism and in contexts of great political tumult, used hunger to talk about the impossibility of aesthetic autonomy—that is, the idea art and literature should be free from political or market considerations. My current work carries forward my interest in hunger as a theme, of course, but also my broader interest in what literature’s social role is in the aftermath of modernism, and how politics and aesthetics do and don’t articulate with each other.
What do you hope to take with you from the project and its results?
Apocalyptic thinking is so pervasive in our world at present, that it seems to me really urgent to clarify the stakes of interpreting our political and ecological moment as apocalyptic. I am particularly interested in how apocalyptic thinking opens up, or closes down, the space for political action.
What are the aspects you are looking forward to with respect to input from other disciplines, other perspectives, and the exchange with the fellows and people at CAPAS?
The group of people at CAPAS—fellows and more permanent center staff and faculty—is really impressive, and having the opportunity to think with them is such a privilege. I love that it’s such an international group of people, in terms of both where they’re coming from and what they’re working on, and the breadth of disciplinary backgrounds is likewise amazing. I’m learning so much about how and where the apocalypse appears as a figure of thought, and the conversations we are having are helping me to think more carefully and deeply about our contemporary historical conjuncture.
To get some practical advice: What would be the three things you would definitely need in a post-apocalyptic world?
I’m not sure I’m the person I’d come to for practical advice, post-apocalyptic or otherwise!
Alys Moody is Associate Professor of Literature at Bard College, where she teaches modernism, world literature, the literature and theory of decolonization, and feminist theory.