Catastrofi ecologiche e tecnologiche: i paesaggi e gli oggetti straniati nelle post-apocalissi contemporanee

The essay offers an investigation of the “object” in contemporary post-apocalypse scenarios. In this kind of representation, which shows a world in collapse after an environmental or technological catastrophe, the “object” (food, technological devices, clothes, furnishings, cars) is almost invariably broken, destroyed, useless or deprived of its usual function. The paper will analyze this loss of functionality by the objects – and their consequent alienated representation – in the light of the categories identified by Francesco Orlando in The Obso- lete Objects in Literary Imagination. The aim is to understand whether the considerations he draws about the different kinds of “obsolete objects” may also be applied to this specific literary sub-genre and the world representation upon which it stands.