Anthropocene Aesthetic Shifts in Post-Apocalyptic Literature: An Analysis of Waste and the Sublime in Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse

This article explores ‘apocalyptic waste’ in seven short stories from Maureen F. McHugh’s 2011 collection After the Apocalypse. McHugh (1959-) is a contemporary U.S. sci-fi and fantasy writer, whose fiction depicts dystopian scenarios as varied as a China-dominated America, a sexist futuristic Morocco, and pandemics. Building on recent developments in theories of the sublime and waste aesthetics, this essay examines deployments of the notions and vocabularies of waste and the sublime in McHugh’s narratives as rhetorical strategies for representing the characters’ encounters with non-human others (zombies, human-like dolls, AI, and bio-batteries), or their experiences of traumatic events (bombings, family trauma) echoing our Anthropocene/Capitalocene moment. Coupled with its attention to the characters’ sensory perception and affects, this article’s analyses show that post-apocalyptic fiction is a fruitful site for exploring the shifting conceptual and aesthetic destinies of waste and the sublime and their relevance as critical concepts to the environmental humanities.