A very period-specific but still potent theory anthology from the late Cold War moment, gathering figures like Baudrillard, Virilio, Morin, Gebauer, Kamper, Lenzen, Treusch-Dieter, and Wulf around apocalypse, exhaustion, simulation, catastrophe, and the cultural imagination of endings. This is not “end of the world” in a pulp or prophecy register; it is about how late modernity thinks collapse, how media and power aestheticise crisis, and how concepts of history, the body, childhood, war, speed, and ruin mutate under terminal pressure. In other words: proper Semiotext(e) territory.

It’s that this kind of compact, weirdly designed, high-concept anthology has become a small artefact of theory culture itself. It catches that 80s atmosphere where nuclear anxiety, media saturation, European philosophy, and American art-school/punk-adjacent reading publics all crosswired. For the right person, this is catnip.

Semiotext(e), 1989.