The influence of psychedelics and toxicity in J.G. Ballard and Tom Wolfe’s representations of petroculture

A reading of J.G. Ballard's short story 'Dream Cargoes' finds a post-growth imaginary focused on a species-wide change of pace amid future nano- and biotech waste. Comparing this to Tom Wolfe's account of the Merry Pranksters during the 1960s and 1970s Great Acceleration, the essay argues that Ballard suggests time—with its associations of extinction, renewability, and futurity—has become a central human concern. Literary representations of toxicity awaken readers to the limits of consumer culture, offering insight and motivation to seek alternatives to petroculture.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT In my reading of Ballard’s short story ‘Dream Cargoes’, I find a post-growth imaginary that focuses on a profound species-wide change of pace in the context of future nano- and biotech waste. I compare this to Tom Wolfe’s heady account of the Merry Pranksters set during the Great Acceleration of the 1960s and 1970s. While Wolfe captured multiple fragmented points of view located in scattered time frames in his account of the Pranksters, Ballard is suggesting that time and its specific contemporary associations with extinction, renewability and futurity has become a central concern for humanity at large. I argue that literary representations of toxicity yield insight by awakening the reader to the ultimate limits of consumer culture. Thus, this essay offers an approach to fictions such as Ballard’s and Wolfe’s seeing them as essential resources for assessing toxicity in our lives as a source of insight as well as motivation to look for alternatives to petroculture.