Cultural sterility is a culture’s inability to produce the genuinely new
Evidence
It’s evident that the theme of sterility must be read metaphorically, as the displacement of another kind of anxiety. (If the sterility were to be taken literally, the film would be no more than a requiem for what Lee Edelman calls “reproductive futurism”, entirely in line with mainstream culture’s pathos of fertility.) For me, this anxiety cries out to be read in cultural terms, and the question the film poses is: how long can a culture persist without the new? What happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 561
Categorization
- XREF: Directly continues Fisher’s hauntological claim that futures are represented in the forms of the past (ch34) and the end-already-came anxiety. — connects to: Mere preservation of tradition destroys culture, not sustains it — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 564; Intellectual desertion causes cultural sterility until the people breed new intellectuals; Culture requires regular invention of fresh formats to stay healthy (+1 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: ‘How long can a culture persist without the new’ reframes sterility as a cultural rather than biological dread — a thesis-grade formulation connecting to hauntology.