A technology must decline before its true nature can be shown

Evidence

J. G. Ballard, himself one of the greatest postcontemporary dystopians, has found a stunning formulation for such aesthetic projections: they have reached, he tells us, a level of technology advanced enough to depict advanced technology in decline. True high technology means achieving the capacity to show historicity of high tech itself: Wesen ist was gewesen ist (negation is determination); you can’t say what a thing is until it turns into something else; not the end of art but the end of electricity, and all the computers breaking down. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 825

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains ‘Wesen ist was gewesen ist’ — a thing is only knowable once it has turned into something else — a Hegelian framework relevant to periodizing style.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s aim of testing whether ‘cultural dominant’ periodization is falsifiable — this is the metaphysical engine behind stylistic periodization.