Megharaj Adhikari

"Peak Modernism" argues that modernism’s most radical formal achievements were generated not by human artistry alone but by posthuman encounters with stratigraphical media operating across deep time. Against anthropocentric readings of mountains as symbolic screens for the sublime, empire, or environmental concern, this dissertation theorizes mountains as elemental pressures that destabilize humanist assumptions. It interrogates the traditions inherited from Burkean and Kantian sublimity, the Grand Tour, and Alpine to Himalayan exploration, showing how geological, atmospheric, and hydrological forces exceed the cultural frameworks designed to contain them. Combining close reading, media archaeology, and cosmopolitan analysis, "Peak Modernism" traces descents from Alpine summits and Himalayan zenith through slopes and base camps to the Sundarbans delta, arguing that elemental forces continually unsettle human meaning and point toward a planetary ethics of relation inspired by Édouard Glissant’s toutmonde.