Abstract:

Abstract The objective of this article is to answer a question: can there be an original social narrative after the end of the current postmodern era? Following poststructuralist theorists' different presumable ends –historical, meta-narrative, etc… -, this study wants to illustrate how a secular apocalypse works as a discursive and narrative strategy to speak about the human impossibility to generate new and original fictive social constructs in the aftermath of a catastrophe. This analysis is applied to Spaniard Emilio Bueso's novel, Cenital (2012). At times extremely post-apocalyptic, at others very dystopic, Cenital is always very insightful and self-reflexive regarding its status as a cultural product of the late capitalist era. Its narration unveils the needs, contradictions and fears of postmodern society when facing the idea of the End, and it is thanks to those states that the uncertainty that guides this study's hypothesis can be made explicit.

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