Retorik: Jurnal Ilmu Humaniora
Vol 13, No 2 (2025): Cultural Studies After the End of the World

Transapokaliptika: “Setelah-Kiamat” Tidak Ada Kajian Budaya

Siswanto, Zuhdi (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
31 Dec 2025

Abstract

This paper examines Cultural Studies from a historical perspective, emphasizing its role as an intellectual project that emerges from social crises and structural antagonisms. Spanning its development from the 1960s to the contemporary period (1990–2025), the paper shows that neoliberal capitalism is not merely an economic project, but one that has also permeated education, healthcare, religion, art, and everyday life, forming circuits of commodification and capital accumulation. In response to discourses on global ecological crisis, Cultural Studies is framed not as a passive academic discipline, but as an interdisciplinary practice that thrives on contradiction, understanding “apocalypse” not as a singular event but as a historical, simultaneous, and rhizomatic condition that shapes human experience in the era of globalization and platform capitalism. Introducing “transapocalyptic” as a term for a comprehensive crisis produced by neoliberalism’s penetration into all spheres of life, this paper rejects the notion of a “post-apocalypse” by positioning it as a utopia construct. Accordingly, Cultural Studies functions as a tool for reflection and critique that enables survival amid contemporary social, ecological, and symbolic crises while reminding us that the journey toward a fully emancipatory order is always “not yet”, for beyond utopia, a truly “post-apocalyptic” world does not exist.

Copyrights © 2025






Journal Info

Abbrev

Retorik

Publisher

Subject

Arts Humanities Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Social Sciences

Description

Retorik: Jurnal Ilmu Humaniora was founded in 2001 with the aim of seeking a new scientific ethos in the humanities with an interdisciplinary, political, and textual spirit. It was, and still remains, the aspiration of Retorik to foster humanities research with a scientific ethos capable of ...