This book is the first sustained investigation of the political dimension in the work of J.G.
Ballard. A product of and reaction to the cultural-socio-economic moment commonly designated as
the postmodern condition Ballard's oeuvre is read as a continuous and developing meditation on
the postmodern examining it specifically as an expression of late capitalism. The book shows
that at the heart of this meditation lies the question of resistance. Drawing on a wide range
of concepts and ideas taken from the field of critical theory it argues that in the face of a
world marked by an unprecedented expansion of capital in which modernity's grand narratives
have been invalidated and in which received forms of political struggle have lost their
effectiveness Ballard's fiction commits itself to a deliberately irrational and extreme
pataphysical thought in order to develop a new discourse of resistance. Against past readings
that have construed Ballard's writing as non-political decadent or quietist the study thus
reveals Ballard as a thoroughly political author committed to a subversive politics. In this
way the book also constitutes a timely intervention in the ongoing discussion concerning the
nature and state of the political.
