The Apocalyptic Visions of J.G. Ballard: Surrealism, World War II, and Modern Technology

This dissertation examines how, throughout the four major phases of his literary career, J.G. Ballard’s engagement with, and synthesis of, various twentieth century artistic and intellectual movements assisted Ballard in deciphering the twentieth century, while also enabling him to prophetically speculate on the future of the human condition. Ballard incorporated major symbols of the twentieth century into his work—television, cars, nuclear weapons, gated communities—as a means of decoding them, and he thus worked to uncover the latent patterns and effects of the modern technological landscape, envisioning various extreme end points for humanity and warning about the various psychopathologies that may arise as a result of our interactions with modern technology and architecture.

After a brief opening chapter provides important context on Ballard’s childhood and internment during the Second World War, the second chapter explores the intersection of Surrealism and psychoanalysis in Ballard’s first tetralogy—The Wind from Nowhere (1962), The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1965), and The Crystal World (1966)—and will explain how these movements informed Ballard’s reimagining of the science fiction genre. Though Surrealism and “inner space” remained strong components of Ballard’s work, when Ballard shifted to deciphering the symbols and patterns of the modern world in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975), I argue that he began a literary conversation with Marshall McLuhan, who, like Ballard, warned about technology’s ability to inflict pain and anxiety. Ballard’s final tetralogy—Cocaine Nights (1996), Super- Cannes (2000), Millennium People (2003), and Kingdom Come (2006)—also appears largely indebted to McLuhan, investigating how technological environments can unknowingly shape behaviour and render the individual somnambulistic and docile. It is also in his exploration of the nefarious uses of technology that Ballard predicted the rise in far-right politics that has gripped the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The final chapter, on Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novels—Empire of the Sun (1984) and The Kindness of Women (1991)—will return to exploring Ballard’s Surrealist impulse, elucidating how most, if not all, of the major themes and ideas in his novels are rooted in his wartime experiences.