Category: capitalism
-
The (not so) original sin of Apple’s ‘Crush’ Advert
Apple have a bit of history with controversial commercials. The infamous 1984 cinematic ad directed by Ridley Scott won a sack full of awards, but many commentators highlighted how it signalled the birth of a kind of consumerist tech capitalism in which products’ branding and image were far more important…
-
Capitalism & Schizophrenia: A contemporary reading
It will not be a surprise to anyone who has attempted to read it, but Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia’ duology is a labyrinthine experience (to put it mildly). I have picked it up again recently after several years, and despite being wiser and grumpier in my…
-
Escaping 1997
Have you noticed that we’re stuck in the year of 1997? If you call recall that time, it was the apotheosis of neoliberalism with Bill Clinton securing a second term as US president and Tony Blair blustered into Number 10 riding the coattails of Cool Britannia culture and associated celebrities.…
-
Benjaminian Aura in the Age of Swift
Swift performs at Gillette Stadium on May 19, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass., during her Eras Tour. Scott Eisen/TAS23 via Getty Images My children are Swifties. I take this as an abject failure on my part to indoctrinate them with various hues of ‘dad rock’, but given that Taylor Swift has…
-
Hauntology: The Persistent Echoes of Lost Futures and Unfulfilled Promises
I sat down over the weekend to watch a Muppet’s Christmas Carol with the kids, and despite it being a tale a about a super-rich oligarch that is essentially guilt tripped into being a charitable entrepreneur, yet maintains his exploitative corporate enterprise but with just slightly higher wages in lieu…
-
Juxtaposition in the Capitalocene
One of the fundamental epistemological tenants of the Capitalocene can be analysed via a rather old-fashioned motif: a geographical, specifically, a scalar narrative. That is because our current conjuncture compels us to confront a stark and often discordant juxtaposition: one that chaotically zooms from the cosmological, the planetary, the national,…