Consumerism's Endgame: Violence and Community in J.G. Ballard's Late Fiction

J.G. Ballard's final four novels constitute a discrete phase of the novelist's career, revealing a writer preoccupied with the relation of violence to community. In each novel, Ballard's narrator is initially repulsed yet later seduced by the allure of violence. Cocaine Nights (1996) and Super-Cannes (2000) suggest that, rather than silencing and isolating individuals, the spectacle of violence unites and revives communities. Millennium People (2003) and Kingdom Come (2006) develop the representation of violence and community into a critique of consumer society. Ballard's late fiction indicates that the infantilizing illusions promoted by consumerism will result in boredom punctured only by outbreaks of violence. Consequently, analysis of these novels in relation to violence reveals the ways in which Ballard envisions the end state of consumerism to consist of a perpetual cycle of sedation and psychopathy.