Research Project Ceren Dogan  Post-apocalyptic mass infertility as the end after the end?

A wide-spread post-apocalyptic imaginary in women’s literary fiction depicts a world in a reproduction crisis (e.g., mass infertility) that endangers the existence of humankind. This crisis forestalls the irreversible and ultimate ‘end after the end’ and is ontologically speaking the last possible catastrophe. Based on a transdisciplinary approach with insights from psychoanalytic, feminist, post-structural and critical race theory, I address the following research questions: Firstly, which constructions of femininity, female sexuality and the maternal can be identified in post-apocalyptic literary fiction that is centered around the idea of reproduction and (in)fertility? Secondly, I ask to what extent one can speak of post-apocalyptic femininities as novel forms of subjectivity that bear transformative power, able to eradicate or restructure the already-there. What novel and innovative ways of living, loving, relating are being tolerated in the post-apocalypse and what is being silenced, repressed and suspended but perhaps is still present, secretly lurking and sizzling? Thirdly, I explore the role of hope and hopelessness as an affect and as it translates into an ethics of care in resisting impeding human extinction, and in more general terms, the inevitability of death.