Violence and Transgression in J. G. Ballard's Postmillennial Fiction

Abstract

My central thesis, around which the various questions I explore revolve, is that in his postmillennial fiction Ballard suggests that the idea of an affluent and peaceful society is but a fantasy, an illusion whose realization is impossible due to the irreconcilability of the instinctual drives of individuals and the constraints which are inevitably imposed on them within a community. Narrowing down my scope of analysis, I am going to focus on certain dimensions of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes, drawing mainly on Jean Baudrillard’s social philosophy, Freudian psychoanalysis, as well as Georges Bataille’s and Slavoj Žižek’s cultural theories.