Cultural breaks are growing rarer, smaller, and possibly terminal.
Evidence
All of this makes Fredric Jameson’s theories about postmodern culture’s inability to image the present more compelling than ever. As the gap between cultural breaks becomes ever longer and the breaks themselves become ever more modest and slight, it is beginning to look as if the situation might be terminal. Alex Williams, who runs the Splintering Bone Ashes blog, goes so far as to claim that “what we have experienced is merely a blip, perhaps never to be again repeated — 150 or so years of extreme resource bingeing, the equivalent of an epic amphetamine session. What we are already experiencing is little more than the undoubtedly grim ‘comedown’ of the great deceleration.” This might be too bleak. What is certainly clear, however, is that technology will not deliver new forms of culture all on its own. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1233
Categorization
- XREF: This is the core of Fisher’s ‘slow cancellation of the future’ thesis circulated in K-Punk. — connects to: Cultural stagnation can be reversed by choosing new norms and values — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 38; Culture’s dissolution means total expansion, not its disappearance — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 157; Grünberg’s optimists saw a higher culture emerging from decaying forms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 90 (+1 more)
- QUESTION: Williams’s 150-years-resource-binge framing is worth chasing — it anticipates degrowth arguments made mainstream a decade later.
Broader Connections
- Weeks-long generation gaps measure cultural vitality, and their collapse signals death
#exemplifies(0.87) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 797 - Cultural stagnation can be reversed by choosing new norms and values
#qualifies(0.82) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 38 - Culture’s dissolution means total expansion, not its disappearance
#contradicts(0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 157 - Grünberg’s optimists saw a higher culture emerging from decaying forms.
#contradicts(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 90