Symbolic decline leaves people trapped in incommunicable personal realities

Evidence

The premier index of symbolic decline is probably, as Dean argues, Fox News: a frenetic propagation of alternate reality with chaotic signification and extreme agon. But think, too, of the recent metastasis of QAnon, the baroque conspiracy of a Democratic Party vampire pedophile cabal, supercharged not on institutional television but the dark web image board 4chan, fomenting absolute apophenic conviction among millions—those who refuse to be duped. Amid untrustworthy entities without means of discernment, the paranoiac position results in an impenetrability: impervious to facts, anathema to reason, lacking common language, there is no communication possible; as Dean cautions, “no amount of information, technology, or surveillance will compensate for the change in the symbolic.” This wholly irrational dynamic points to the dimension of enjoyment and desire: symbolic systems have changed, and the medium of language has undergone transformation, leaving individuals jammed in their own sovereign mini-reality, identification and projection, imaginary unbound. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 99

Categorization

• XREF: QAnon as ‘imaginary unbound’ parallels Foucault’s and Coles’ ‘revolts of the imaginary’ discussed in earlier chapters — a concrete case study of the failure of mediation. — connects to: People are haunted by futures the Eighties neoliberal turn terminated — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2290
• SEED: A concrete recent-news example for an essay on how loss of shared language produces conspiracy rather than mere misinformation — ‘apophenic conviction among those who refuse to be duped’ is a crisp diagnostic.