Dystopian future-terror is class-based fear of proletarianization and spatial loss

Evidence

Here a certain Nietzscheanism operates to defuse anxiety and even fear: the conviction, however gradually learned and acquired, that there is only the present and that it is always “ours,” is a kind of wisdom that cuts both ways. For it was always clear that the terror of such near futures — like the analogous terror of an older naturalism — was class based and deeply rooted in class comfort and privilege. The older naturalism let us briefly experience the life and the life world of the various underclasses, only to return with relief to our own living rooms and armchairs: the good resolutions it may also have encouraged were always, then, a form of philanthropy. In the same way, yesterday’s terror of the overcrowded conurbations of the immediate future could just as easily be read as a pretext for complacency with our own historical present, in which we do not yet have to live like that. In both cases, at any rate, the fear is that of proletarianization, of slipping down the ladder, of losing a comfort and a set of privileges which we tend increasingly to think of in spatial terms: privacy, empty rooms, silence, walling other people out, protection against crowds and other bodies. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 624

Categorization

• XREF: The spatialized account of privilege — privacy, empty rooms, silence, walling people out — resonates strongly with the reader’s curated interest in silence and the soundscape as class-marked resources.
• QUESTION: If fear of near-futures is class-based, what follows for the ‘waning of affect’ claim — is postmodern affectlessness itself a class position?