Law and Disorder in the Post-Apocalyptic Landscape: Social Breakdown, Sovereign Power and the State of Emergency

Abstract

This chapter explores the ‘crisis of law and order’ that underpins popular representations of the post-apocalyptic world. This world is one in which a regressive atavism takes hold as the institutions of law collapse. This imaginary depicts the fragility of order and the imminent threat of its breakdown, echoing perceptions of a disordered world of random violence, riots, revolutions and terrorism. In post-apocalyptic fictions, this crisis of law and order gives way to a ‘state of emergency’, an assertion of sovereign power which permanently suspends citizens’ rights and any limitations on the exercise of power, all in the name of restoring order. Mirroring current fears about the exercise of sovereign power in the ‘war on terror’, the post-apocalyptic world is one in which dictatorship replaces democracy, law issues from the arbitrary decisions of dictatorial authority, and extra-judicial punishment and execution become the terrifying norm.