Coda

Abstract

The coda briefly recapitulates the central concerns of this book by discussing Second World Wartime in relation to the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing from Ernst Bloch’s conception of time as a river, and Walter Benjamin’s theory of historical materialism, it discusses why post-war literature and culture looked back to the wartime period through the trope of unexploded bombs, which functioned as mnemonic time capsules. It ends by considering Second World Wartime’s broader relationship to the later chronophobia of the Cold War, when advancements in nuclear technology created a newly fraught relationship between anticipation and retrospection.