Category: capitalism
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The Immortality of Capital
In the daily doomscroll, I came across this news article that tells of how Alan Hamel, a multi-millionaire entrepreneur has been ‘keeping his wife alive’ with AI’ “you can’t tell the difference!” Grief effects people different, of course it does, and being married for 55 years, I can perhaps understand…
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“Got your number”: 118118 as the cultural ghosts of a future we never had
In the early 2000s, before the global financial crash ripped the world apart and the latent fascistic tumult was cloaked in a burial shroud of capitalist realism, the soon-to-be outgoing Labour government was not immune to the heady allure of the privatisation drug. In their sights was the clumsy, but…
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The Architecture of Alienation: Severance and the Marxist Office-Space Nightmare
I’ve just finished season 1 of Severance, the Apple TV+ series and I must say, I’m impressed. The way it slices consciousness into ‘innie’ and ‘outie’ is a clear allegory of Marx’s concept of alienation, but for me (with my obdurate urban gegoraohy schooling) the architecture doesn’t just set the…
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The Limits of Marx in the Age of Trumpian christofascism
For me, it is increasingly perplexing to witness traditional class-based critiques being clumsily deployed to analyse our contemporary social crisis in the age of Trumpism 2.0. That is not to say that the well-trodden frameworks of capitalist critique, particularly those rooted in Marxist analysis, aren’t relevant in understanding economic exploitation,…
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Excess as Resistance: The Panacea of Collective Joy in an Age of Fascism
The spectre of fascism that once loomed with unsettling persistence, has now firmly taken root in the American heartland. While it was always present for some, it is now the politics for all. The question of how to resist it is not merely academic but essential. Fascism, as history and…
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2098: Regeneration Day for King Elon
This year’s ceremony was not going to be like the rest. 125 years old is a big milestone after all. To celebrate, King Elon was going to address Fiefdom Terra and rumours were swirling he was going to offer some gifts to mark the occasion. The excitement was palpable. So,…
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The Comedian’s Irony: A Banana, gaffer tape, and the Cryptocurrency scam
In the annals of art history, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian – a banana duct-taped to a wall – has always been an utter joke had tongue-in-cheek appeal. Its conceptual premise is simple yet vacuous: playfully critiquing the notion of art as an object of value. So, on 21st Nov, in the…
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Fredric Jameson (1934 – 2024)
Over the weekend, while many of us were undoubtedly enjoying the fruits of the cultural conditions of late capitalism (be that at a theme park, out with friends not seen for years, or simply sat in front of the TV or social media), the main architect of our nuanced understanding…
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Hope, fractured
In the scattered debris of our contemporaneous existence in this most heinous chthulucene, we are too often fractured asunder. The planet, spinning like a forgotten top on the edge of ruin, its centrifugal force pushes us to despair. From the quasar-flecked heavens to the quarks evading detection in our nuclei,…
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Bubblegum Dystopia: The Sweet Decay of Late-Stage Capitalism
I recently came across the term ‘bubblegum dystopia’ (this video explains that it comes from a quip about Terry Gilliam’s 2014 film The Zero Theorem) and oh yes, it’s a *chefs kiss* description of the current conjuncture of late-stage palliative capitalism we find ourselves in… Because while the world boils,…
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