Despairing art engages the world only to confirm its own bleak hypothesis

Evidence

Like Joy Division’s “Disorder”, “100 Years” seems to lift its head from morbid self-absorption to gaze at the world — its words a Cold War ticker-tape as filtered through an adolescent nervous system in the midst of breakdown — but in reality it only selects for consideration those things which confirm its hypothesis that cosmic despair is the only justifiable attitude. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1066

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Art is trapped between utopian longing and the charge of false comfort — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 66; Art promises happiness only at the cost of illusoriness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2742; Hopeless artistic ambition can itself give a life its meaning — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 344 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Hopeless artistic ambition can itself give a life its meaning #complicates (0.78) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 344
• Art is trapped between utopian longing and the charge of false comfort #corroborates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 66
• Art promises happiness only at the cost of illusoriness #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2742
• Art achieves objective revelation through subjective effort only at the cost of illusoriness #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2742
• The world reveals itself only through engagement and rejection #corroborates (0.72)
• Adorno held that art anticipating despair moves reality toward change #responds-to (0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2236