MANIFESTATIONS OF ‘NEW AGE’ RELIGIONS IN GATED COMMUNITIES OF J. G. BALLARD’S COCAINE NIGHTS AND KINGDOM COME – AN ECOCRITICAL APPROACH

The aim of this paper is to identify different manifestations of ‘new age’ religions within the gated communities of James G. Ballard’s urban violence novels Cocaine Nights (1996) and Kingdom Come (2006), using an ecocritical approach elaborated within the works of Stacy Alaimo, and to show that the entwining of the human body and the ‘more-than-human’ world also pertains to that of the human mind and soul and the environment. In other words, one’s mental, religious and spiritual tendencies are also shaped and transformed within the environment; man’s ability to go beyond the limitations of anthropocentrism make the binary oppositions of the body and mind/soul, like that of body and nature, fluid and as such suitable to be considered in a different light. Keywords: ecocriticism; human and more-than-human; body/soul and nature; urban environment; new age religions