In a passage that could be considered the motto of our historical moment, Fredric Jameson writes "It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imagination." Why does capitalism seem so inescapable? Why do we see it not just as an economic system that came into existence at a particular time, and will end at some point as well, but as a reflection of some fundamental truth about the world and ourselves–what Mark Fisher calls Capitalist Realism? At the same time, given Jameson’s allusion to the weakness of our imagination, might we be missing the way that capitalism is already mutating, changing into something else, not a revolutionary transformation into communism, but into a kind of digital feudalism in which we pay rent in information to a new class of tech overlords just to survive? How can we both imagine alternatives to capitalism and recognize the transformations it is already undergoing?In other words, can we evict the capitalist that lives rent free in our head, or at the very least start charging it rent.
Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-89-late-capitalism-2
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