Just reading capitalist realism and listened to his talk that was linked in the current perusall reading series and I'd like to start a discussion about his ideas.
One major theme of Fisher seems to be the assessment, that culture has lost its forward momentum, that technology has progressed but culture stalled "we're basically watching 20th century entertainment on ever increasing resolution" or in regards to music that "the terms retro and nostalgia have lost their meaning, because now there is nothing else but them". And I'm not quite sure what to make out of this. One one hand I think this is somewhat plausible that a world, in which everything is instantly accessible and arbitrarily copy-able, would be overwhelmed by nostalgia for a time when there was still new and authentic stuff.
On the other hand, is this really the case? "In 15 years we went from the beatles to punk rock". Starting around 2000 somewhat staying in the genre we went from nu-metal to indie-soft-rock to ... whatever we have now. Idk if this is a good example. But to me this seems less self evident and more like a sort of vibe-ology. A mix of hipster-hopelessness and boomer "back in the day we had real ..." sentiment.
Please share your thoughts!
okay I've only ever read like half the book, but I remember behind all his opinions on art and music, his point was that there is today a prevalent feeling of there being no future, so people increasingly look backwards to a time when things were better and there was more hope.
And then I think he believes culture has stalled because it is hard to move forward when there is no vision of the future.
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