A utopian desire called dystopia: Analysing transnational projections of anti-capitalist futures in four post-apocalyptic television series

This article argues that the transnational appeal of post-apocalyptic narratives lies in the fact that, even as they depict new forms of domination, they also envision the end of a world in which one of capitalism’s defining ideology of homo economicus is non-existent and its concurrent malady, the axis of alienation and exploitation, has been extinguished. Accordingly, through analysis of four post-apocalyptic television series – Station Eleven (2022), The Last of Us (2023), The Collapse (2019), and Offworld (2022) – the article shows how these televisual texts articulate utopian possibilities emerging through the dystopian conditions generated by societal collapse.