You have to watch it. I don't even play video games, but it's great. This channel is consistently good, if you're into the whole pondering the sense and meaning stuff, of course.
Depends. At least a neat addition to your understanding of marxism and postmodernism in relation to pop culture, but potentially the beuty that is left-tube, philosophy youtube, or even the internet. It all depends on where you are falling from.
It disappoints me how many people commenting here seem to have got the idea of hauntology reversed. It's not that we are now nostalgic for the past, and that this is somehow unique to the present situation. Of course cultures of the past also did this. It's that cultures of the recent past also had an eye looking forward, imagining a different, and better, future. The argument Fisher and others are making is that culture today is unable to create a vision for a near future which we or our children may one day exist in that is any different than our world now, that lifestyle, living conditions, etc aren't going to be different, and that this lack of vision and direction for where we collectively want society to go is expressed through our media, art, music etc
not entirely true. there is a vision for the future. many visions in fact. information overload has obscured a lot of this. the lack of discipline in certain areas of life has also led to the blurring of these visions. again, we do not lack the ability to progress, we are just in a far more chaotic world of information at the moment, and who knows where that will go.
I don't know I seem to disagree with this hauntologie perspective look at Washington DC why are the Egyptian obelisk and classical architecture that looked back to Europe of past. It is because they admired that culture as human beings we read history and all have nostalgia for time and cultures we have never been to and that past helps us create in the present. Japan obsession with its samurai past. I went to Italy and was taken over by the Italy of old with its architecture and if I create I would take inspiration from it. And people on the renaissance took inspiration from Rome. So I see no problem looking fondly to the past to emulate it in the present for at the end of the day in trying to emulate you create something completely new.
@@rozamo2627 You completely failed to grasp what this person was actually saying. They were literally saying that the stuff you're talking about is not what Hauntology is about, your point is entirely irrelevant. No one has ever said that nostalgia hasn't existed before, the point is that while nostalgia has always existed there has also always been a new vision of the future but we seem to be somewhat unable to imagine a new future in the 21st century. The only thing we really imagine is more advanced technology but it tends to look exactly like things look today and it tends to involve people doing the exact same things as they do today. People in the 50s thought that by 2000 we'd only work 4 hours a day, these days you can barely convince people that working 8 hours should give you a living wage. The problem is seemingly right now we only have nostalgia and revival.
@@hedgehog3180 "there has also always been a new vision of the future" while there have been examples of futuristic or speculative fiction since at least ancient Rome, it only became prevalent during the industrial revolution. Before that, most people regarded the near future as a continuation of the present, maybe with some slight differences like new rulers or new religions. The enlightenment laid the basic structure for constant anticipation of futuristic ideas, by introducing new ideas about science, governance, economic systems, human nature etc. and it started developing really fast when the industrial revolution came around. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is generally regarded as the first real example science-fiction.
I understand Fisher's POW, but i have to disagree with him. Progress has never stopped, technology is only going forward and today we can imagine a future we could only remotely suppose back in the 80s. Today, with environmental, overpopulation and viruses and information spreading much faster than before, humanity has to actually face the future we just used to idealize back in the 80s. Virtual reality, robotics, nuclear fusion, self-driving cars and space colonization are becoming a reality, so now what? Back when future was so distant we couldn't see its problems, but now that we're getting closer to it, we are understanding how it works. It's like when you have a dream job vs when you actually get hired and start working on it. It's like when you have a project vs when you actually start modeling it and having to overcome the hardships that stop you from reaching your goal. Even if you like it, you have to face its issues, that it's not all fun and games, and having great tehcnology comes with a lot of responsibility as well. Responsibility can be a burden, which not many humans are happy to carry all their life - see the rise in "Return to Monke" memes and anarcoprimitivism, but that's a story for another video - and Fisher clearly couldn't bear it.
I've seen the trend of 80s revival and retrofuturism as less "stuck in a loop" or stagnancy and much more as the result of people realizing we're on a timeline now that we're unsatisfied with. Because of this, culturally, we have decided to go back to a more-optimistic, hopeful, or open-ended point in time to make new choices or corrupt the past timeline in order to escape it into a different present and future. We're using the tools available to us in the present to assert power we didn't have 30 years ago on the shape of culture and the world.
So what is the significance of a cultural revival, if there even is such a thing (possible) still remember a cultural revival of the fifties music in the seventies.. (i. e. Movie example: "american graffiti") but it is just a partial rendition, a limited exercise in nostalgia -thats all there is. You folks have to create your own time of culture... I am verry sorry, that present culture really...sucks quite a bit, with all the pc bs going on, all divided and conquered in the head by the social engineers of the "elites" you have to reclaim everything - now theyre taking the web away. 80ies revival? Oh that was a great time, i can fully appreciate it only in hindsight, back then i took it for granted, but thats normal. And btw. We used technology and computers back then already too, not as today, yes the web is significant, just as significant as its absence essential for the eighties was. Back to issue: you have to seize the present, create your own culture - and yes, that is perfectly possible. Sorry, but that is just a heuristic, cultural concept, that "stuck in a loop"thing, popular science lingo, a fad, Nope we are not stuck in a loop, but the effing fascist nwo coming up, if we all dont stop it, creating your bonafide own culture is vital part of it. While the eighties certainly had their problems, They did feel free, almost carefree, freedom of speech was not challenged as today, no SJW, the sexes got along just fine, as in the seventies, some fuxxed it all up by design, take it back, it is your culture alone!
It can be argued that the same thing happened in the 80s with all of the 50s nostalgia then. It's all pretty meta. My theory is that people were getting tired off all the gross hippie stuff from the 60s and 70s and wanted to look back to a more idealistic and clean cut era like the 50s. Same with now, people are getting tired of the negative emo and victim mentality and all of the divisive the SJW snowflake stuff. They want to go back to a more seemingly optimistic and constructive time like the 80s. Again this is just a theory.
...…………………………………………………………….although don't know what was gross about hippie culture but .your description is accurate for some people in the 80's…………..………………………………………..but many people were too young to remember the 50's so they couldn't really be nostalgic about the 50's…………..……………………………………...some just loved futurism and pop music and the combination of the two things that was presented to theme in the 80's...…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..if you were born in 1971 there's no way you could be nostalgic about the 50's so there must have been some other motivation for you…………..…………………………………………………………………….the sci fi movie sales proved that the young like futurism and the chart sales proved that they liked pop music so someone combined the two things they liked and it was successful...………………………………………………………………………………………………………….in 2019 as usual the record industry is trying to ram some type of music down our throats...……………………………………………………………………..that's hip hop and R&B combined and they don't care whether we like it or not...………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..in the late 80's we didn't have much of a choice whether to listen to what they were playing or not but now we have the internet so we don't have to listen to the FM radio so we don't care...………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..we can get any style of music that we want
Just found your channel yesterday, and I'm already treated to a new video. What's amazing to me is the way so many of our works hinge on nostalgia, but are marketed for people who could not possibly be nostalgic for the characters, ideas, or moods presented. I almost feel like we're beyond being haunted, that we are just ghosts. Not just the future, but also the present has been subsumed by the past, and we're just experiencing it eternally, smeared across everything.
Because Gen X lost its connection to the nuclear family and community gave way to individualism and digital proxies. There is no sense of synthesis or organic transmission of culture. So Gen X without the anchors of traditional forms of identity attainment are stuck in a loop of symbols and artifacts, which are only approximations for culture. So cultural progression will be stunted until a sense of mastery has been achieved, which is unlikely within the old paradigms they operate within.
I think fisher once called it the ‘oppressive weight of the past’ I took it to mean the idea that the past now is just inescapable. The old long to return to a place they once were and the young long to return to a place they never knew.
RIP Mark. I was in his last class at Goldsmiths. His work is so relevant and eye opening. I recommend "Capitalist Realism" as a must read to anyone interested in philosophy or critical theory.
This is a fascinating analysis -- it hadn't occurred to me that we have largely ceased to imagine new futures, but are instead trapped to rehash our past visions of what the future might be, or simply try to recapture the past aesthetic itself.
Remember those movies? Blade, Underworld, Hellboy, Matrix, End of Days...Those late 90s, early 2000s movies has a certain vibe of "dark and pale city life". I call this vibe "Dark Millennium". And it was gone after iPhone and Iron Man became popular. I'm a writer/columnist and interested in such cultural talks. Maybe we can discuss this further.
grew up in the 90s and miss those times soo much, that dark unironically cool and futuristic feeling we had going into the new millenium... now everything is scared to take itself seriously, everything has to be ironic
Ever heard of solarpunk? It's a relatively new aesthetic and cultural movement which attempts to, in a sense, counteract this kind of hauntology; avoiding excessive nostalgia for what's lost by trying to create something genuinely new. Solarpunk is rooted in the idea that bleak and apocalyptic visions of the future gone wrong - which emerge mainly due to the inability to imagine alternatives to the capitalist state system - need to be combated by hopeful and utopian visions of the future gone right. It imagines a post-hierarchical tomorrow based on ecological sustainability (the "solar" comes from solar power), political and economic decentralism, egalitarian cooperation, and cultural unity-in-diversity. It's also premised on the rejection of an opposition between ecology and technology, proposing that tech can be used to enrich both humanity and nature, as long as it's used in a mutualistic way, and not a parasitic way as it's used now.
I think it breaks out of the prevailing attitude of the future as a dystopia that is what underlines most 80s nostalgia, so I vaguely agree with Eoin O'Connor. I agree that it takes things though from other sources, but it kind of doesn't mimic a more popular narrative . (though you are def onto something with miyazaki comparisons because of the heavy nature vibes)
Also thanks for pointing this out to me. I think it can be rammed into our heads that things will only go to ruin, but it is good to have hope for how we can imagine the future to be.
"the future had been cancelled". i feel reminded of the 2000s and the excitement about the internet. it felt like the first time the word "freedom" made sense to me. my online identities seemed independent from my location. pirating copyrighted material seemed like a trivially normal thing in my generation. i remember an older friend of mine buying weed on eBay. an on the horizon there were projects like Freenet that were promising to cement these freedoms against state attacks. censorship was going to die. nationalism was going to die. religion was going to die. much of it seems like a faint glimmer now, maybe i just lost sight of amazing things happening in this regard. but it feels like, now, posting with your birth name is normal. paying for access to media is normal. censorship is normal. and there come the hordes bringing the dark ages back. okay now it's a slightly hyperbolic. i'm not even that pessimistic, just .. disappointed.
sofias. orange No you are correct. The late 90s and early 2000s had the shimmer of internet opening us all up. Bringing us all closer. And oddly enough thru smartphones and social media it has now created a world where everyone is afraid to do anything wrong that can be filmed by anyone and then attacked by the masses (thought policing by threat of mob) , everyone veing trackavle 24 7, even thru the same devices being able.to be seen and heard by anyone else who wants to hack and turn on your mic or camera. Jesus could you even inagine something as simple as google being hacked, and everyones IP adresses (with corresponding Street Adresses) released alongside everyones google history?! The world we know would nearly collapse into something totally diff tomorrow
This topic articulates a notion I've had about scifi since the start of the 2010s. That is, that the future died in the 90s. The late 90s is the last point in time where culture was able to create and explore the future. After that, sci fi became mostly about the past in relation to the future, instead of the future itself. You can hear it in the experimental music and art forms just prior to and after the new millennium. This desperate last plea for the notion of the future and then... silence; the the processing of culture through remixes. A blended nostalgia smoothie of everything great created in the last 100 years, processed to sell
I would argue that the emergence of the iphone and other apple products inspired a future of slick and smooth aesthetics and intuitive interfaces for a while which is unique.
What do you think about shows like Black Mirror or Westworld? I see modern day takes on the future as a much bleaker and darker world than initially anticipated in SciFi. We are beginning to see how techno capitalism is harmful. The concept of retreating more and more into a simulated hyperreality or world is becoming the real thing.
@@godiebeard I think you're right that there was a sorta futuristic vision like that for a while but it didn't exactly lead to any major works of sci-fi. Like what were the highest grossing sci-fi movies in the 2010s? Well it was the rebooted Star Wars series. I can only think of a few fully original pieces of sci-fi which imagined the future in a new way and I think the biggest one is Mass Effect but it didn't really question capitalism or imagine new ways of living and it was based on the designs of Syd Mead not the slick future that was seen in iPhones and other consumer electronics.
Also maybe this is why Cyberpunk is seemingly becoming more and more spot on, like the world is actually starting to kinda look like what we saw in Cyberpunk, giant glass skyscrapers with massive internet integration and shiny lights all over them. Extreme surveillance and being constantly surveilled with little ownership over our own things. Zeerrust was a pretty constant thing but like most cyberpunk works were only really wrong about what the computers would look like but not really the cities or how we live. If the future has been cancelled then it follows that visions of the future also can't get outdated anymore, we'll never imagine a new future where Cyberpunk looks hilariously and awkwardly dated.
I find this discussion really interesting but at the same time, I can't help but think that the whole idea of imagining the future and ongoing "progress" is both very unique to society under capitalism and Eurocentric. Like can we not say the same for a peasant or serf working in the 1500s imagining progress? What about an aboriginal tribe that have kept their way of life for 1000s of years because progress to them in the way we see it is unnecessary, harmful and not sustainable. I doubt a tribal member would imagine their descendants lifestyles being any different to theirs; two hundred years down the road. Is their vision of the future ruined?
The best example of this for me is seeing a nightclubbed absolutely packed with 18/19 year olds dancing to ABBA and the Smiths. They're a cultural sensation.. again.
The Smiths were the epitome of musical genius. It's not about nostalgia.. It's just great music that saves us from the carefully-manufactured-for-utmost-profit pop of today.
This is currently the best video essay I've ever watched and I'm grateful for it as it articulated ideas and feelings I've had for a long time. Thanks to you I've discovered the whole aread of hauntology analysis and started reading Fisher (then tumbling down the rabbit whole). Thanks a lot for this
This is an interesting critique of the neoliberal "end of history" phenomenon. Our inability to imagine anything after capitalism serves as both a creator of fundamental apathy and capitalism's greatest defence. If there can be nothing better than capitalism, if imagination about another future cannot exist, then capitalism remains the end state (until it eventually decays or the planet simply become uninhabitable).
Japan in the 80's was very capitalistic yet futuristic (look at the recent Plastic Love city pop phenomenon). I don't think it's entirely down to capitalism, because it's possible to have a futuristic capitalistic society. One other difference between then and now is that America is demographically completely unrecognizable from just a few decades ago, which could play into it.
@@avatarion you missed the point: it's not that culture didn't have a vision of the future then ; it's that It doesn't now. Capitalism has corroded and destroyed visionary thinking: we are incapable of conceptualise a "way forward" that isn't stricly limited by the boundaries set by the system, either directly (for example, the profit motive) or indirectly (climate change and environmental distruction). So then we resort to going back to the last. Other comments explained It Better than me but here's the gist. Also, Why do you think demographics have any Role in this phenomenon?
This was a reference for a "Philosophy of history Philosophy of the future" seminar in my first year of my bachelor's in philosophy. Keep up the great work!
Such a great video and super important too! It's a subject that I've been reading up on a lot lately for a video that i'm working on. I think the concept of Hauntology is scarier than any horror story I've ever been exposed to. I think the prospect of being stuck in a 20th century limbo is way more terrifying than any ghost, demon or ghoul.
Another excellent RUclips essay. Really enjoying the Cluck phenomenon. As for my thoughts- probably in a world of accelerating change this constant referencing of the past is an attempt to slow things down. Also given that in the digital age nothing decays (as was said in this essay) and everything is always available for replay, rehashing is a useful way of extending an interesting moment in time. I for one need time to digest images, sounds and ideas. Which is why I'm grateful I can always replay Cluck's RUclips clips!
i think human culture has always been hauntological, think of renaissance, age of enlightnenment, art nouveau, art deco...the technology is the game changer, because i think it accelerates the gain and spread of knowledge, amongst other. we always rehashed or revitalised past culture, we do it now and consume it very fast, almost each decade we revitalise something. i also think we will do this indefinitly, albeit in a very different maner. but i do not think we are condemned to focus mainly on revitalisation. as hauntological beings we will complicate it even further and it brings comfort knowing that
I'm happy to have found this. I've been thinking a lot about just this but haven't found anyone talking about it. The conclusion I arived at was that this phenomenon is more like a mourning for the past. It's not that we can't create new things which makes us long for the past but our love and longing for the past makes it difficult to come to grips with the loss of Golden ages, and that makes us want to relive it.
There may be a simpler explanation for this phenomenon. People in their 30s tend to be a target audience for movies because they go the most and have the money to spend. And nostalgia for one's childhood seems to be almost innate in humans. Thus big media such as major motion pictures and TV shows will try to profit off this by recreating imagery from approximately 30 years earlier. Right now, this means recreating the imagery of the 1980s and 90s. But back in the actual the 1980s and 90s this would have meant appealing to nostalgia of the 1950s and 1960s. And indeed you see this in many films from that era. Think of movies/shows like Back to the Future, Stephen King's It, Stand by Me, American Graffiti, A Christmas Story, Forrest Gump, MASH, The Wonder Years, Happy Days, etc. Stephen King's It is a particularly good example of this trend because both versions of it, the one from the 90s and the one that came out last year, each take place about 30 years prior to their own release date. And not only are these films intended for audiences in their 30s and 40s who are nostalgic for their childhoods in those decades, but the people making the films are also likely making films that remind them of the time they grew up in. Not to say that this explains everything, but I think it is definitely part of the reason for this trend.
I think the question should be thought why is a nostalgia for one's childhood "innate in humans". I don't think that's the case. I think it is a symptom of our current reality in which adulthood kinda sucks. We miss our carefree childhood days where mommy and daddy took care of us etc. Adulthood by contrast is filled with anxiety and alienation due to the present social conditions of adulthood. But it could be otherwise!
I was thinking this the whole time. So many simpler and more obvious explanations for what we are observing. And this video acts like we haven't always been obsessed with our past. The video completely ignores the way early hollywood was OBSESSED with recent Western history such as the wild west frontier. People are always looking to the past and the movie studios have gotten extremely skilled at playing to the masses, hence the constant nostalgic revivals we see. I honestly think videos like this are more symptomatic of narrow minded intellectual culture and its rabid obsession with trying to pin things on capitalism/neoliberalism. It's like intellectual activity is so constrained by what's been laid down by people like Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard that more simple and obvious explanations for phenomena provided by other disciplines are ignored (or even a cursory moments thought based on actual experience and observation rather than application of handed down theory.)
That type of feeling is not exclusive to our time, it has been present everywhere throughtout our history, lots of literature works with this theme, Richard Wagner, for example, in his autobiography talks with such warmth about his childhood that you can almost see yourself there. Adulthood has always been the same, responsability and care is the minimum you should have as one and if i may, i think it was even harsher the more we go back, so i think our ancestors did miss their childhood way more than we do. I think our generation has a problem of alienation from reality, we try to apply our ideal concepts to the world, and let me tell you, the world isn't gonna change because you think it should. Unless what you think is true, not for you and your friends but for all, and for that there is a long way of one's self development to go, and most of the time we are completely wrong. During our childhood we don't even have real conceptions about the world, we just live and let live, so it's definetely a better time, but as an adult you must learn to order your inner chaos to be able to transcend your own human condition and produce something of real value for yourself and the people around you.
So retrofuturism is a part of the nostalgia cycle? Thank you for this. It's really given me new insight into one of my favorite genres, and a new word - hauntology.
On a personal note: I really loved your original RUclips handle but I am thankful you changed it so I don't have to write a citation that takes my professor to a channel called "Cuck Philosophy". You did me a big solid my guy. Thank you so much!
shit like ready player one genuinely disgusts me. not only is it a story which doesnt exist without references, but the references -- taken out of their original context -- become meaningless.
I didn't watch it, but I read the book. First 30 or so pages caught my attention, as I felt an expectation of interesting dystopia or very late capitalism. Notion of people spending a lot time in virtual reality, thus not doing anything productive and living on the edge of poverty with bare minimum of needs satisfied made me think critically a lot about universal basic income, though I used to be fond of this idea. Unfortunately the rest of the book was just list of useless references. I didnt know most of them, but I guess even if I did reading this ode to nerdy pride of knowing 50 year old shitty tv productions by heart would be really tiresome. Such a disappointment.
but does it? At the end of the day it's one which give the "avatar" meaning and to every person will have a different meaning. I guess that's part of what makes eastereggs so popular. Saddly there is not a good story making little nods to that idea. Imagine if they did it using the concept of hauntology and avatar/easter eggs having personal meaning, I believe that even relying on heavily on references they could make something special and interesting.
The movie was just awful, it had virtually nothing in common with the book. I grew up in the 80s and it was one of the very best times of my life so all the references appealed to me.
Thank you for finally articulating this in a way that clicks with me. This has been a focus of mine for a while now, and I thought to make this a thematic feature in a work of science fiction if I could ever find myself capable of producing it or with the proper collaboration of others.
The 80's actual aesthetic was taken from The Memphis School and Biba and Retro-Art Deco... These ideas were old when they first became general in popular culture!
Really loving this channel and all your big brain content... I've noticed a really big trend in making PS1-styled video games this year, another example of this retrocoding like with pixel games. In cinema, we've seen recent classics like the Lighthouse which emulates silver age cinema, and Spiderverse which emulates retro comic books. Though it may seem like we are in a relative creative stasis, I think drawing from the past and crossbreeding different art forms and inspirations has always been a tool for innovation. Even futuristic breakouts from the past draw from other eras, like Star Wars with Samurai Japan, and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) Dune with older middle eastern civilizations. I haven't really consumed a lot of futuristic media from recent times, but it seems stories like WallE, albeit released over a decade ago, have been successful in creating new unique futuristic identities.
Of course, '50s nostalgia was rampant throughout the '70s and '80s, as seen in everything from Happy Days, to Back to the Future, to the music of Elton John, Billy Joel, etc.
Culture = shared practices. Every new technology changes how people act, thus changing culture. Look at texting, RUclips, and online dating. These have created huge changes in shared practices, thus creating "new culture". Just because there are throwbacks to nostalgic moments doesn't mean we live in a repeating future. Nostalgia may be driven by the fact that things are changing TOO FAST and people are looking back to simpler times.
Very true. Cannot fathom why people whine about historical cultures that were bona fide autocracies. Inf act new cultures and subcultures are being created at a much faster rate because of easier information transmission. Some may be getting extinguished too, just as quickly, but there doesn't seem to be an 'cultural deficit'.
How are these new futures? That's what's being talked about, no one is saying that new art isn't being made anymore, the argument is that we've stopped inventing new futures.
This was extremely useful as an in point to Fisher and ties together some things I have been considering but was unable to quite link up. Thank you so much.
I have already watched most of your videos and look forward to them. When I see these topics by others, I feel frustrated and feel it is very pretentious. But when you do it, I feel understanding and appreciative of the ideas, even if I don't always agree with them. I am a huge fan.
wow...really interesting. Nothing I didn't already know or sense, but nice to hear it all put together. videos are looking nicer and more engaging too. well done.
I'm glad I found this channel and this video specifically. I often pondered this "cancelled future", without actually being aware of the term. This lack of positive vision for a future beyond our lifetime seems to me so obvious, not only from the 80s nostalgia but also from the fact, that visions of the future in mass media tend to be set quite close to our present and tend to be of a dystopian nature. I think this is especially true today. In contrast, I have seen old movies and cartoons from both the eastern and the western block, which seem almost ridiculously optimistic. And finally, I haven't met one person in my life, that believes that mankind will exist for another 100, let alone 1000 years. And some of those people I talked to have kids or plan on having kids, which might actually still be alive in 100 years. It's quite sad.
I call it "Timepunk" it's what happens when you give kids and young people unlimited access to the past 100+ years of popular culture and allow them to pick and choose the things they like and dislike, and to use those things to constitute their own personalities and create the broader cultural landscape
Great video, i've subscribed! Yet, there's a crucial aspect that's not addressed, in my opinion we haven't even started to explore these "retro" spaces and their possibilities! This is the "explore vs exploitation" problem encountered in so many areas: how do we know when to stop relentlessly exploring and fully exploit what we have? Mindless explorers are likely enjoying a cocaine frenzy preventing them to fully inhabit an esthetic experience - i'm not saying we're in this situation, but this can happen at the level of a culture. Irrespective of the new genres (that will inevitably come) i hope that these "lost futures" will be explored further for a long time to come. I have a feeling that in 20 years time AI will allow us to see a gripping psychologically-twisted story starring Humphrey Bogart or an intricate adventure drama staring Tom & Jerry. We're nowhere near at extracting what retro characters like "Sam Spade" or retro esthetics can offer.
This video's meditations on the perception of past, present and future made me think of Fukuyama's concept of "The End of History". In my opinion, the extent to which it haunts public consciousness can hardly be overstated. Basically, most people have come to believe that a version of the future that is radically different from the current situation cannot be conceived and is hardly even imaginable. (hence Fredric Jameson's famous quote) So if we think that the present is bad and are convinced that a different/better future cannot be built, what can we do? Find solace in the past, perhaps even try to bring it back - it must have been better, right? Translated into political terms, this state of mind can explain the rising popularity of ideologies such as conservatism and fascism (an ideology obsessed with the past) and provide an explanation for the otherwise awkward phenomenon that the poorer a region is, the greater the popularity of these is (For instance, the fascist wave sweeping over Eastern Europe).
Irony is too delicious here :) I live in Eastern Europe, have spent my whole life here and what I am talking about is unfolding right before my eyes. Are you from Eastern Europe, too, I wonder. Or are you someone who has gotten all his knowledge of the world from PJW's channel and accuses others of ignorance.
First of all, to put it as brief as I can, fascism is an authoritarian ideology that is (at least to a certain extent) left on economic issues and hard right (or patriotic-conservative, as you like to put it) on society issues. Apart from its liking of the past, other key features of its include its rabid hate of genuine left-wing ideologies and its distaste for individual human rights. But perhaps you can come up with a definition of your own, to demonstrate how I do not understand it ;) Second of all, cliches such as "right wing populist" do not reliably describe what someone such as Orban is nowadays. 15 years ago he was hard right on economic issues, almost a Friedmanite. Now he is employing social policies that my own austerity-crippled country could be yearning for. Definitely more to the left than he used to be, at least in economic/social aspect. Third of all, of course most people in this part of the world like invertedcommaspatrioticconservative ideas and vote for invertedcommaspatrioticconservative parties. Otherwise, the invertedcommaspatrioticconservative wave would not be a thing I would be talking about. Fourth of all, "as much as I might hate it" I am describing what I see with my own eyes as objectively as an imperfect human being could do. Situation is bad enough for me to need to "smear" invertedcommaspatrioticconservative political forces and ideas. Peace out.
The one thing I could take away from your last comment is - apart from the oh so pleasant patronizing tone of yours - that apparently the military uniform of the leader is the key factor deciding ideological leanings. But of course. What you fail to grasp is that I have been primarily talking about sentiments among the masses, rather than about party programs . But since you were trying to defend certain parties by labeling them populist - well there you have it. They try to answer to these sentiments. It is a process rather than a static point - token right wing parties of Eastern Europe moving little by little away from classical rightism towards the f-word over the course of recent years (Then again, since you mentioned textbook fascism, how would you describe FIDESZ' beloved coalition partner) Funny enough, in my country the same is applicable for the biggest mainstream "left-wing" party. But as I said, I was focusing on mass sentiments. What I see around me in my country is that the 80 per cent, as you put it, tend to be mentally equipped with the all the invertedcommaspatrioticconservative paraphernalia (xenophobia, homophobia, obsession with the past, distaste of human rights etc.), while simultaneously cherishing warm feelings for the social/economic policies of the communist era, and also not being the hugest fans of democracy. Did we tick all the boxes already?
Oh boy, where do I even begin. This comment is such a hodge-podge of all the cliches that can be heard from your lot and at the same time does not address any of the points I made in my last post except for the ironic opening remarks. You act as if I claimed there is a classic totalitarian fascist regime anywhere in Eastern Europe - there is not, of course. (btw expansionism is not an integral part of fascism, isolationism is as easily compatible with it, see Spanish Falangism).What I actually claimed - that "major parties of Eastern Europe are moving little by little away from classical rightism towards the f-word over the course of recent years", you did not disprove. What I also claimed - that the prevailing popular sentiments can only be described as (near-) fascist - you did not even attempt to disprove, you only said "Well, people are like that because..." Followed by a tirade in which ethno-nationalism and conspiracy theorism could easily be detected. Is it a coincidence that these two are characteristic features of the rhetoric of an ideology-I-should-not-because-I-am-a-leftist. Other than that, I only have a few questions. What ideology is being pushed? As far as I know, the only ideology shaping the world today is neoliberal capitalism. Free movement of labor ("open borders") is necessary for the functioning of capitalism. In any case, if anything is being pushed it has nothing to do with leftism. How do you explain the fact xenophobia is more prevalent in Eastern Europe (look up the stats on the attitude towards refugees/immigrants) although there are virtually no refugees, no prior migrants and no terrorist acts happening here? How do you imagine a scenario in which native people become minorities in Eastern Europe. The only possible scenario I can think of is all the local people except for a single Gipsy man emigrating to the West. In any case, that is far likelier than hordes of migrants coming here. What migrant in their right would go to the east of the former Iron Curtain?
This also explains what may seem paradoxical to some people, more "extreme" leftist positions are actually more successful in convincing conservatives, non-voters, and reactionaries than "moderate" positions. Bernie actually managed to gain the support of a lot of right wing people because he offered an actual material improvement to them, whereas more right wing politicians like Biden just sparked outrage. Bernie is just a social democrat but obviously in the US that does seem radical, but the same is true across the world, leftist ideas like communism and anarchism are more successful at countering fascism than liberalism because those ideas do offer a better world. However liberals tend to fight them even more than they do fascism because they oppose capitalism while fascists don't really and usually still argue on the terms of capitalism. The point is compromising with right wingers doesn't really attract them much while offering a better future does, however the latter is a lot harder since you are fighting against a lot of things.
Everyone is getting neck problems looking down at "smart" phones and wishing to live in the past instead. I doubt there will be much nostalgia for this decade, even by people who lived their childhood in it. What will they remember? Fortnite dances? Dub step and mumble rap? The soulless Marvel movie machine? Pop culture has never been more forgettable than right now. 90s kids are nostalgic for the 80s because we saw the highlights of the 80s on 90s TV. TV is gone now. Centralized programming is gone. The nostalgia of the 2010 kids will be too diffuse to produce a common theme. Perhaps they will have no choice but to dream about the future, since their past is a blur.
The 3 guys that replied to your comment are either ingenuous or blind. People will ALWAYS be Nostalgic for their childhood/teenage years, it's doesn't matter what culture was like then. I remember in the early 2010s a lot of people loved to mock the 2000s, and now the 2000s are coming back in full swing. Anyways, here's a forum page from a guy in the early 2000s talking about how people were starting to romanticize the 90s: www.inthe00s.com/archive/inthe90s/bbs1/webBBS_1526.shtml
If you can't open the link, here's what he says: " I told you so. I don't want to sound crass and cold hearted during this horrible tragedy that has befallen America. Nevertheless I will sound like a jerk with what I am about to say. Remember me? I'm the guy that complained about people rose coloring the past, especially the '80s and "sugar coating" things. I said the '90s would be sugar coated and people here laughed. They said it was absurd. The '90s would never be sugar coated. The '90s were the worst time of all time they told me. Well, IT HAS BEGUN. This tragedy has already made people say, "America just lost its innocence". I thought we lost our innocence when Vietnam happened? Or when JFK was killed? Or when the a-bomb was detonated? Or when Pearl Harbor was bombed? How many times can a country lose its innocence? Now people have already begun longing for the "sweet and innocent '90s". The so called "good ol' days". Like I said before, this is the way the world has always been. Its always been a violent and sex filled world were others use and abuse each other. Accept it. Now the '00s are the worst time imaginable. The '90s look good now don't it? Hey this kind of violent stuff happened in the '90s too, not really in America, but it happened. But people's memories are short lived, they have already began longing for the "sweet and innocent '90s". Whatever. Did you ever think the '90s would be looked at as "sweet and innocent"? Where there was a time of "no evil"? No you say? Well I knew it would happen. It happened to the '80s and every other decade, so it was bound to happen to the '90s. I told you so....."
Love the video, brings up some great points that are food for thought, and I really appreciate getting a great window into influential academic discourses in this way. However, overall I think I disagree with the main conclusion - I don't think our culture is stuck, I think we are undergoing real change and it is at a panicking rate. And I think we are grasping for the nostalgic references for some feigned sense of stability - 'we have imagined this before, so we are ready for it'. For each piece of media you mention that comes clothed in a comforting nostalgic futurism, I'm betting there an acute cultural anxiety it is trying (though perhaps not succeeding) to process. And it be a concept we previously have explored for decades (AI, nature of personhood, technological inequality, political upheaval, etc), but never before with such urgency because now it is right at our door. Your example of ContraPoints really hit it home for me - yes, she is sampling from the full catalog of familiar cultural references, but she is using them to make palatable some of our most uncomfortable current-day topics (confronting the alt-right, personally dealing with online conflict, and gender/lgbt issues). And let's not pretend there isn't any cultural innovation in what she is presenting - making room for transpeople and reinvigorating how we process gender identities is a big fucking change for most people. Blade Runner 2049 brushes up against current day anxieties about emotional entanglement with tech, the surveillance state, and the unbridled influence of individual tech leaders (Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos) that are far more proximal than what could meaningfully be addressed in the original. I haven't seen Ready Player One, but it surely deals with the rapidly changing way we socially assemble - based on relationships with people physically distant to us rather than being able to function limited just to proximate family or classmates; these issues are far more urgent, palpable, and *real* than when the book was first written. So I think we aren't generating new images of the future right now because we are overwhelmed; after all, the very values we would use to to project such an image are in deep contention right now. That doesn't mean that there is no cultural innovation happening, only that it is occuring on such a deep level that we are desperately trying to clothe it in familiar images to keep from panicking.
I failed my first test in my CCNA class today... I studied, but I still deserved it. This video in particular provided me with some comic relief, and the motivation to stay positive throughout the rest of the semester. Thanks for your work. Hope your book ends up well. Will plan on getting it once it hits auditable. Cheers ✌️
Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" also touches on the trappings of the current cultural moment, and is worth a read if anyone is looking for another book suggestion. What I always liked about Fisher was his compassion and how he resisted blaming young people for the problems of the day and instead tried to understand how they responded to the world that grew up around them.
It's telling that even when we do look into the future, the most popular literature produced involves a capitalist authoritarian dystopia or an apocalyptic wasteland.
I have always described my love for Fallout by saying that I loved it's haunted feeling. You have helped me better understand what I mean by that, and I'm very grateful.
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.” - George Sand
Thank God i found your channel suddenly, it's best channel on the RUclips..... thanks for sharing your knowledge on issues which are important for our life.....
IWe need a T-Shirt that says "I read Mark Fisher and Survived" Sidenote: the recent "Twin Peaks: The Return" was haunted by nostalgia. It pulled no punches on just what an awful place this is to be stuck in, and it certainly "cured" me of my old 1990, 17-yr-old self's longing for those halcyon days.
I'm quite sure this is what Lynch was going for, he said it kinda vaguely in some interviews. He didn't want to have TP return just by celebrating or idealizing the past, but wanted more to show a terrible distortion and even darker interpretation of the world he and Frost created 30 years earlier. He said that he was really tired of seeing ideas in media being revived just by catering to nostalgia and not doing anything new with it, so it seems he went in the complete opposite direction. The new TP is drastically different and almost mocking to anyone who goes into it expecting it to cater to nostalgia. It's a big "fuck you" to those people who enjoy these nostalgia revivals or have too much of an idealized view of the original TP (or any old idea, really.) He paces it so it plays with and tears apart your idealistic and nostalgic notions and makes you wait literally hours just to have a tiny glimpse of something that calls back to the old TP, and those only usually last a few seconds on screen, at most.
We are all Cooper and Laura at the end of the return: trapped somewhere familiar but somehow distant, unable to find resolution. On some level we all understand Laura Palmer when she screams into darkness in that last scene.
that's what I loved about the dougie jones character, he was the nostalgic bastardization of cooper, a hollow shell that repeats and gravitates to the iconography of the past (coffee, cherry pie)
The past did a great job at imagining the future, so in essence we are seeking to go "back to the future". The future we imagined and even at some extent promised ourselves would occur. Since largely that future never came to be, it appears that now, for the most part, there is little to no insentive or desire to think and imagine a future.
1. the influencers in Hollywood pushing their visions onto the movie and television screen are mostly from Gen X, and were saturated in this specific aesthetic. Partly they are re-creating their childhood visions. 2. In the ever-expanding confusion and chaos (or, at least, our exposure to it), people look back to the pre-net period with a sense of warmth and comfort. Most of my students have halcyon visions of what it was like back then. Explaining to them at the 80's were incredibly fraught with tensions, and that we are only sold media these days championing the fantasies produced--fantasies eagerly consumed, back then, as an escape--creating a weird simulacra reference point to an entire era. Great vid.
Not often at all does somone present an Idea I had not already thought about at length. Thank you for this as now my mind has somthing to chew on for a good while. I am not sure that it is the case that we have stopped immagining futures different from those immigined in the 80's. Though I agree it feels that way. And you make an excelent point regarding a thing which cannot be destroyed (decay) is by deffinition then incapable of changing. This quote I think is relevant to us feeling like new futures are not being concieved. "I was born too late to explore the world, and too early to explore the universe"
I'd love to see a new wave of futurism in our media, one that represents a more modern perspective of the world we're heading into. Whereas in the 1980s when home electronics were become normalized and people predicted a future of neon colours and artificial environments (both digital and physical), in the late 2010s it seems many people are aspiring to go back the other way, with sustainability and natural/organic environments being placed in high demand (while cities are becoming denser and more populated than ever). Add this aesthetic to the future economic state of the world- perhaps one with an automated workforce and UBI implemented for citizens- and we could create some very fresh, new-futuristic narratives. However I haven't seen this done yet, as unfortunately we tend to revert to dated tropes when wanting to design a "futuristic" world. It will be interesting to see where media goes over the next few decades, hopefully we aren't just stuck in a loop.
Z4X Problem is I don't think postmordern's cynicism must be rejected. It must be accepted and overcome. You can't just ignore the problems that lead to its creation aren't still here. I hope our new sincerty will recognize the human limitations postmodern literature showed.
@Yankee UBI is the logical conclusion of a capitalist society when tech progress reaches the point where human labour is thoroughly out-compete by automation. As jobs disappear without being replaced by an equal or greater number of opportunities, unemployment levels will increase. With high levels of unemployment, aggregate demand for goods and services will decrease and companies with workforces that are almost entirely automated will suffer as nobody can afford to purchase their output. Thus, at this point there are two options: 1. Give money to the masses, who are unemployed, to maintain demand (i.e. have most people on welfare) 2. Give money to everyone (i.e. UBI). The third option is to do nothing and let the whole system collapse, plunging billions of people back into poverty, anarchy and violence until they adopt a new liquid asset and the whole thing starts again. Personally I don't *like* the idea of living under UBI, as I believe our modern lives are inefficient at providing utility to our brains, which are optimized for much more primitive times. For example, feeling productive and meaningful in your society are necessary to well-being. However, as explained before we don't have many options, and thus UBI will almost definitely be a part of our future lives
I don’t think that were stuck in the past and can’t create our own future/culture. It’s just that every decade seems look at the 2 decades before it as inspiration. If you look at popular 80’s culture you could see that there was some fascination with old 50’s, like with movies with Grease as an example. Right now our culture is looking back the 90’s for nostalgia, you can see it in fashion and music. It’s natural for humans to see the past culture as boring so as a way to revolt what happens is the opposite of what the past culture wasn’t becomes the new. The Romanticism of the 1800’s was followed up by Realism which the polar opposite of Romanticism. The colorful and neon 80’s was proceeded by the grunge styled 90’s.
Here are three points that it seems like Mark Fisher didn't consider: 1) I can think of quite a few counterexamples to the notion that "the future is cancelled". We might not have the optimistic outlook of the 60s anymore, but is Black Mirror not a hugely popular and influential show about possible futures? 2) I'm not sure the nostalgia Fisher observed can be explained only in ideological terms. It might also (at least partly) be an aesthetic backlash - now that technology can perfectly portray reality, it is just more interesting to see things that are imperfect (pixely computer games, grainy footage, cheesily over-the-top color palettes). Not to mention the very matter-of-fact economic reasons for why blockbuster movies tend to recycle cultural material in 30 year loops... 3) Just looking at high risk, high-reward industries such as blockbuster cinema, computer games or pop music might not be the best way to find creative and daring new kinds of fiction or new uses of technology. What about meme culture, for example? Not very high brow, sure, but incredibly up-to-date, relevant, and continuously developing with endless layers of intertextuality. (Other examples might be phenomena such as Vine, or the very unique visual language of RUclipsrs.) I really quite enjoyed your presentation of the concept of Hauntology though, and I definitely think that it can be a useful idea.
Agreed with 1 and 3, had similar feelings watching this. Of course there is something going on there. Looking at the musical examples - i definitely feel like vaporwave and hypnapop are emerging from a different place than just nostalgia and some of this endless cultural groove is going on there in its own feedback loop. But for the last 10 years or so, i feel like there has been something cooking up in the underground, weird, lgbtq club music that just recently has begun to spill out, and though it offers no singular "vision of the future" - at least from what we can see right now - and while it's indebted to a lot of past stuff, it does definitely feel like its own new Thing. Applying the concepts from this video to all of contemporary culture is broad strokes, but as you said it's definitely a good tool to explain some tendencies
Thank you for this. I came across this after dealing with loops of trying to watch old movies and TV shows over and over with virtually no joy that I originally felt. They diminished to nothing yet I still find myself returning. I wondered why. Like some cage. Endless loop. A kind of hell of your own making. But strangely aware of it
wow, I'm really interested in and fascinated with these concepts and theories lately, and I think you're summing up many aspects in a very nice way. I found the video by chance, but will definitely start following your work.
I don't necessarily agree with neoliberalism causing hauntology. Neoliberalism was already strong in the late 80s, yet it's only from 2010s that we've seen this strong pull to reliving 80s/90s nostalgia. Even then, in media theory there's such a thing as the 30 year cycle, and it has been evident since the fifties. Even in the history of art you can see this 'hauntology' aspect, with Neo classisim being a prime example of pre-Industrial revolution hauntology. I don't agree at all with sci-fi movies being complete rehash of old ideas, either. Sci-fi has never been truly futuristic because it's written and created by artists, not technologists, so their idea of the future is always grounded in current technology. The best example is Blade Runner itself: all the technology shown is clearly analog, created in a time where digital technology was still not as prevalent as it is today. And even today's remakes always reimagine their motifs to look and feel like they're five minutes into the future (example: all the marvel movies). The fact that the future has been cancelled doesn't respond to a lack of originality: it responds to a prevalent post-9/11 cinicism as most media is produced for/by americans, and the americans are experiencing the fall of the american empire. If you look at the religious/artistic production pre-fall of Rome, you'll find similar rehashing of ideas as individual cultures mixed and matched (best example is the incredible amount of religious texts produced around early christian sects, incorporating a milieu of philosophical ideas taken from both east and west, europe, india and africa); a quickening of the culture before a period of fragmentation.
Good stuff man. Fisher wrote that it was the disappearance of the USSR that Neo Liberalism enter a new phase, it lost its only real rival. I think Fisher was far more worried about the state of politics but could not express his views through it directly so he fell back into culture. I think there is a lot of truth in if you take a look at not exclusively through a cultural lens. All these unresolved tensions with in capitalism still have to been relieved. Capitalism has not given birth to a new world but has instead chosen to recycle the past.
Although Neoliberalism may not have caused hauntology they are definatly connected ideas. Neoliberalism as a concept could be seen, in the way that it itself is a "new" liberalism, to be a reflection of the ideas of the past dusted off and given a new coat of paint: an ultimately conservative ideology that presents itself as forward-looking and, perhaps more importantly, as not being an ideology at all.
This video draws a lot from Mark Fischer's Capitalist Realsim and Simon Reynold's Retromania, the former was published in 2009 the latter in 2011 - we have passed peak nostalgia and retromania now, but cultural commentators are still pushing the same talking points. Ironically, in 2018 we now find ourselves stuck in a loop of contemplating that we are stuck in a loop.
idk its just a gut feeling i guess, i feel like media has become interested in sci-fi and futurism again, the wholesome 'indie aesthetic' is pretty passé, pop music seems to be embracing 'the now' more rather than just restyling past eras. I don't get why the mainstream media narrative has become 'the 80s are back!', like, bitch the 80s already came back and left again, if anything i feel like its the 90s/00s that are enjoying the rose-tint right now.
@@nospmohtracso yeah, but it's not a matter of which past aesthetic is revived, it's a matter that it is revivalism nonetheless. Now Y2K aesthetics are all the rage, especially in fashion, but that just expands and strengthens the point made in this video.
nahhh like, i only brought up the Y2K aesthetic to say that IF there is an era being revived right now its not the 80s. I genuinely do think that pop culture is in a forward rather than backward pendulum swing rn. All the things I associate with peak retromania: cutesy polaroid snaps, hip lo-fi cassette tape releases, hip old-timey mens barbers where the staff have 50s greaser tattoos, fixie bikes - these all seem like way less of a thing now.
@@nospmohtracso Yeah, I was really into the whole 80's neo-retro thing myself back in 2012. Whenever I come across people who still use that aesthetic and music in their videos nowadays, it just feels so stale to me. I feel like it's been milked as much as it can be and now it's old hat. The 90's grunge scene has seen a bit of a comeback over the past 2 or so years, but I feel like its days are numbered now and the next big revival will be the early 2000's nu-metal scene, which is fine with me because I grew up in that time and I still like Linkin Park and baggy jeans.
With how tech and culture are shifting at dramatic speeds, reflecting on stories and ideas from a few decades ago is more like exploring stories and ideas from the middle ages. It's recognizing the world is changing so quickly but still wanting to explore music and themes iconic to those times.
In germany, now, there is even a joke proverb about that. "Frueher war alles Besser. Sogar die Zukunft". Meaning "In the past, everything was better. Even the future"
@@lightgrey5365 I'm happy to! The decline of play has to do with several different trends that have lead to childhood gradually becoming more and more fenced-in and managed by adults (urbanization, cars, "stranger danger", et.c.), along with the belief that self-directed play is useless and frivolous. The pedagogy I'm talking about is motivated by concerns about making schooling more "scientific" and of keeping teachers more accountable -- the idea is that this requires learning to be made visible through testing. This means that the focus falls on testable knowledge in the areas that get tested -- as opposed to more murky knowledge, or more fuzzy concepts like curiosity and the joy of learning, independent thinking, creativity, and so on. Playing make believe is a big part of what children do in self-directed play, and the knowledges and competencies you need to think big and crazy about the future are not prioritized in this way of doing school. I think there's a reason why so many more students from democratic schools like Sumerhill or Sudbury valley end up as artists or entrepeneurs. Please just ask if you want me to expand on something else or provide sources for any of this.
Maybe this desire to relive the past is caused by the scientific progress we have made. The world is becoming increasingly complex. Because of our better understanding of the world, the fascinating things about it lose their magic and we are left with explanations of the world that need a lifetime of dedication to fully understand. To have a alternative future in which everything has been solved in familiar and easy to understand ways might be very appealing for the people.
I look inside myself and see the ideas in this video reflected. The repetition, the comfort in the regular. A genre of videogames that reminds me of this idea a lot is Rougelikes, which have also seen a resurgence in recent years, a genre of videogames defined by trying, losing, trying again, and again, and again, slightly different each time but same at the core mechanics. Even these games could be emulating the feel of the arcade game of old, another rehash. Not sure if this has any kind of philosophical value but it is what it is.
We are at the point of time of the future we imagined, but we aren't in the futures we imagined. We are working more than ever, mental sickness is a disease, and all of these cool new technologies that all seemed like the door to freedom either don't exist or not accessible to the everyday person. There also has been no real cultural development, due to both the lacking of our culture as well as the digitalization of our personal lives. That's what "the Future has been canceled" means.
Wow I had no idea what his video was about when I clicked on it, but remember the feelings in the 80s of the hope for the future, which is lost now, and find myself longing for that feeling again and find myself going back to then try to recapture it.
Recently began reading some Marshall McLuhan, and in an interview from 1977, he seems to anticipate Mark Fisher, "... one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were." The nostalgia and hauntological character has greatly accelerated since 1977, but it's fascinating to see it had already begun and some had already begun to notice.
Have you by any chance read Simon Reynold's Retromania? I think you'd love it (and anyone interested in music and our culture cannibalizing our instant past)
"If you've seen my Sonic Adventure 2 analysis-"
what rabbit hole am i falling into
knew someone would catch that
my exact thoughts hahaha
You have to watch it. I don't even play video games, but it's great. This channel is consistently good, if you're into the whole pondering the sense and meaning stuff, of course.
Well... to be fair... video games are the beginning of the ‘computer simulation’ all science fiction cognoscenti are paranoid about 😂
Depends. At least a neat addition to your understanding of marxism and postmodernism in relation to pop culture, but potentially the beuty that is left-tube, philosophy youtube, or even the internet. It all depends on where you are falling from.
It disappoints me how many people commenting here seem to have got the idea of hauntology reversed. It's not that we are now nostalgic for the past, and that this is somehow unique to the present situation. Of course cultures of the past also did this. It's that cultures of the recent past also had an eye looking forward, imagining a different, and better, future. The argument Fisher and others are making is that culture today is unable to create a vision for a near future which we or our children may one day exist in that is any different than our world now, that lifestyle, living conditions, etc aren't going to be different, and that this lack of vision and direction for where we collectively want society to go is expressed through our media, art, music etc
not entirely true. there is a vision for the future. many visions in fact. information overload has obscured a lot of this. the lack of discipline in certain areas of life has also led to the blurring of these visions. again, we do not lack the ability to progress, we are just in a far more chaotic world of information at the moment, and who knows where that will go.
I don't know I seem to disagree with this hauntologie perspective look at Washington DC why are the Egyptian obelisk and classical architecture that looked back to Europe of past. It is because they admired that culture as human beings we read history and all have nostalgia for time and cultures we have never been to and that past helps us create in the present. Japan obsession with its samurai past. I went to Italy and was taken over by the Italy of old with its architecture and if I create I would take inspiration from it. And people on the renaissance took inspiration from Rome. So I see no problem looking fondly to the past to emulate it in the present for at the end of the day in trying to emulate you create something completely new.
@@rozamo2627 You completely failed to grasp what this person was actually saying. They were literally saying that the stuff you're talking about is not what Hauntology is about, your point is entirely irrelevant. No one has ever said that nostalgia hasn't existed before, the point is that while nostalgia has always existed there has also always been a new vision of the future but we seem to be somewhat unable to imagine a new future in the 21st century. The only thing we really imagine is more advanced technology but it tends to look exactly like things look today and it tends to involve people doing the exact same things as they do today. People in the 50s thought that by 2000 we'd only work 4 hours a day, these days you can barely convince people that working 8 hours should give you a living wage. The problem is seemingly right now we only have nostalgia and revival.
@@hedgehog3180 "there has also always been a new vision of the future" while there have been examples of futuristic or speculative fiction since at least ancient Rome, it only became prevalent during the industrial revolution. Before that, most people regarded the near future as a continuation of the present, maybe with some slight differences like new rulers or new religions. The enlightenment laid the basic structure for constant anticipation of futuristic ideas, by introducing new ideas about science, governance, economic systems, human nature etc. and it started developing really fast when the industrial revolution came around. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is generally regarded as the first real example science-fiction.
I understand Fisher's POW, but i have to disagree with him. Progress has never stopped, technology is only going forward and today we can imagine a future we could only remotely suppose back in the 80s.
Today, with environmental, overpopulation and viruses and information spreading much faster than before, humanity has to actually face the future we just used to idealize back in the 80s. Virtual reality, robotics, nuclear fusion, self-driving cars and space colonization are becoming a reality, so now what?
Back when future was so distant we couldn't see its problems, but now that we're getting closer to it, we are understanding how it works.
It's like when you have a dream job vs when you actually get hired and start working on it. It's like when you have a project vs when you actually start modeling it and having to overcome the hardships that stop you from reaching your goal. Even if you like it, you have to face its issues, that it's not all fun and games, and having great tehcnology comes with a lot of responsibility as well.
Responsibility can be a burden, which not many humans are happy to carry all their life - see the rise in "Return to Monke" memes and anarcoprimitivism, but that's a story for another video - and Fisher clearly couldn't bear it.
I've seen the trend of 80s revival and retrofuturism as less "stuck in a loop" or stagnancy and much more as the result of people realizing we're on a timeline now that we're unsatisfied with. Because of this, culturally, we have decided to go back to a more-optimistic, hopeful, or open-ended point in time to make new choices or corrupt the past timeline in order to escape it into a different present and future. We're using the tools available to us in the present to assert power we didn't have 30 years ago on the shape of culture and the world.
we have decided to go back to another time because present entertainment offerings don't appeal to us
So what is the significance of a cultural revival, if there even is such a thing (possible) still remember a cultural revival of the fifties music in the seventies.. (i. e. Movie example: "american graffiti") but it is just a partial rendition, a limited exercise in nostalgia -thats all there is. You folks have to create your own time of culture... I am verry sorry, that present culture really...sucks quite a bit, with all the pc bs going on, all divided and conquered in the head by the social engineers of the "elites" you have to reclaim everything - now theyre taking the web away. 80ies revival? Oh that was a great time, i can fully appreciate it only in hindsight, back then i took it for granted, but thats normal. And btw. We used technology and computers back then already too, not as today, yes the web is significant, just as significant as its absence essential for the eighties was. Back to issue: you have to seize the present, create your own culture - and yes, that is perfectly possible. Sorry, but that is just a heuristic, cultural concept, that "stuck in a loop"thing, popular science lingo, a fad, Nope we are not stuck in a loop, but the effing fascist nwo coming up, if we all dont stop it, creating your bonafide own culture is vital part of it. While the eighties certainly had their problems, They did feel free, almost carefree, freedom of speech was not challenged as today, no SJW, the sexes got along just fine, as in the seventies, some fuxxed it all up by design, take it back, it is your culture alone!
It can be argued that the same thing happened in the 80s with all of the 50s nostalgia then. It's all pretty meta. My theory is that people were getting tired off all the gross hippie stuff from the 60s and 70s and wanted to look back to a more idealistic and clean cut era like the 50s. Same with now, people are getting tired of the negative emo and victim mentality and all of the divisive the SJW snowflake stuff. They want to go back to a more seemingly optimistic and constructive time like the 80s. Again this is just a theory.
...…………………………………………………………….although don't know what was gross about hippie culture but .your description is accurate for some people in the 80's…………..………………………………………..but many people were too young to remember the 50's so they couldn't really be nostalgic about the 50's…………..……………………………………...some just loved futurism and pop music and the combination of the two things that was presented to theme in the 80's...…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..if you were born in 1971 there's no way you could be nostalgic about the 50's so there must have been some other motivation for you…………..…………………………………………………………………….the sci fi movie sales proved that the young like futurism and the chart sales proved that they liked pop music so someone combined the two things they liked and it was successful...………………………………………………………………………………………………………….in 2019 as usual the record industry is trying to ram some type of music down our throats...……………………………………………………………………..that's hip hop and R&B combined and they don't care whether we like it or not...………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..in the late 80's we didn't have much of a choice whether to listen to what they were playing or not but now we have the internet so we don't have to listen to the FM radio so we don't care...………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..we can get any style of music that we want
@@waltrohrbach2459 Someone hasn't heard about the Renaissance...
Just found your channel yesterday, and I'm already treated to a new video. What's amazing to me is the way so many of our works hinge on nostalgia, but are marketed for people who could not possibly be nostalgic for the characters, ideas, or moods presented. I almost feel like we're beyond being haunted, that we are just ghosts. Not just the future, but also the present has been subsumed by the past, and we're just experiencing it eternally, smeared across everything.
Culden1 I agree. I also don't undestand why discussion of characters as if they are real.
Because Gen X lost its connection to the nuclear family and community gave way to individualism and digital proxies. There is no sense of synthesis or organic transmission of culture. So Gen X without the anchors of traditional forms of identity attainment are stuck in a loop of symbols and artifacts, which are only approximations for culture. So cultural progression will be stunted until a sense of mastery has been achieved, which is unlikely within the old paradigms they operate within.
I think fisher once called it the ‘oppressive weight of the past’ I took it to mean the idea that the past now is just inescapable. The old long to return to a place they once were and the young long to return to a place they never knew.
To everyone reading this: pls pls pls read Mark Fisher
this cannot be reiterated enough
And also _New Realism_ by young philosopher Markus Gabriel. REALLY important, he is taking us one step further and out of depression.
Which book?
@@PappyMandarine "Which book?"
Two are listed in description but I would also add Capitalist Realism.
3 quick reasons why please.
RIP Mark. I was in his last class at Goldsmiths. His work is so relevant and eye opening. I recommend "Capitalist Realism" as a must read to anyone interested in philosophy or critical theory.
I'm fasscinated by this term, i will go even deeper now, ty for the video man.
Me too
This is a fascinating analysis -- it hadn't occurred to me that we have largely ceased to imagine new futures, but are instead trapped to rehash our past visions of what the future might be, or simply try to recapture the past aesthetic itself.
Remember those movies? Blade, Underworld, Hellboy, Matrix, End of Days...Those late 90s, early 2000s movies has a certain vibe of "dark and pale city life". I call this vibe "Dark Millennium". And it was gone after iPhone and Iron Man became popular. I'm a writer/columnist and interested in such cultural talks. Maybe we can discuss this further.
That sounds interesting. Do you have an article on the Dark Millennium?
Not really. Nolans "The Dark Knight " (2008) inspired lots of dark mainstream movies.
Senior Adrian dumbass
I miss that dark edgy era in cinema, even tho I didn’t live through it lol. Can’t forget the Crow!
grew up in the 90s and miss those times soo much, that dark unironically cool and futuristic feeling we had going into the new millenium... now everything is scared to take itself seriously, everything has to be ironic
Ever heard of solarpunk?
It's a relatively new aesthetic and cultural movement which attempts to, in a sense, counteract this kind of hauntology; avoiding excessive nostalgia for what's lost by trying to create something genuinely new.
Solarpunk is rooted in the idea that bleak and apocalyptic visions of the future gone wrong - which emerge mainly due to the inability to imagine alternatives to the capitalist state system - need to be combated by hopeful and utopian visions of the future gone right.
It imagines a post-hierarchical tomorrow based on ecological sustainability (the "solar" comes from solar power), political and economic decentralism, egalitarian cooperation, and cultural unity-in-diversity. It's also premised on the rejection of an opposition between ecology and technology, proposing that tech can be used to enrich both humanity and nature, as long as it's used in a mutualistic way, and not a parasitic way as it's used now.
Any notable examples?
solarpunk reminds me of a hayao miyazaki film. i dont think it breaks out of hauntology
I think it breaks out of the prevailing attitude of the future as a dystopia that is what underlines most 80s nostalgia, so I vaguely agree with Eoin O'Connor. I agree that it takes things though from other sources, but it kind of doesn't mimic a more popular narrative . (though you are def onto something with miyazaki comparisons because of the heavy nature vibes)
Also thanks for pointing this out to me. I think it can be rammed into our heads that things will only go to ruin, but it is good to have hope for how we can imagine the future to be.
#GoogleMurrayBookchin
"the future had been cancelled". i feel reminded of the 2000s and the excitement about the internet. it felt like the first time the word "freedom" made sense to me. my online identities seemed independent from my location. pirating copyrighted material seemed like a trivially normal thing in my generation. i remember an older friend of mine buying weed on eBay. an on the horizon there were projects like Freenet that were promising to cement these freedoms against state attacks. censorship was going to die. nationalism was going to die. religion was going to die.
much of it seems like a faint glimmer now, maybe i just lost sight of amazing things happening in this regard. but it feels like, now, posting with your birth name is normal. paying for access to media is normal. censorship is normal. and there come the hordes bringing the dark ages back. okay now it's a slightly hyperbolic. i'm not even that pessimistic, just .. disappointed.
sofias. orange No you are correct. The late 90s and early 2000s had the shimmer of internet opening us all up. Bringing us all closer.
And oddly enough thru smartphones and social media it has now created a world where everyone is afraid to do anything wrong that can be filmed by anyone and then attacked by the masses (thought policing by threat of mob) , everyone veing trackavle 24 7, even thru the same devices being able.to be seen and heard by anyone else who wants to hack and turn on your mic or camera.
Jesus could you even inagine something as simple as google being hacked, and everyones IP adresses (with corresponding Street Adresses) released alongside everyones google history?! The world we know would nearly collapse into something totally diff tomorrow
>nationalism religion
>going to die.
>wew lad
freedom on the internet has actually increased the popularity of those two things
sofias. orange - tails and Tor. The free internet is still alive, just demonized out of fear.
i feel ya
that is why this golden age must return, and it already is, slowly though
sometimes I come back to this one and watch it over again cause it's just such a great video
This topic articulates a notion I've had about scifi since the start of the 2010s. That is, that the future died in the 90s. The late 90s is the last point in time where culture was able to create and explore the future. After that, sci fi became mostly about the past in relation to the future, instead of the future itself. You can hear it in the experimental music and art forms just prior to and after the new millennium. This desperate last plea for the notion of the future and then... silence; the the processing of culture through remixes. A blended nostalgia smoothie of everything great created in the last 100 years, processed to sell
I would argue that the emergence of the iphone and other apple products inspired a future of slick and smooth aesthetics and intuitive interfaces for a while which is unique.
What do you think about shows like Black Mirror or Westworld? I see modern day takes on the future as a much bleaker and darker world than initially anticipated in SciFi. We are beginning to see how techno capitalism is harmful. The concept of retreating more and more into a simulated hyperreality or world is becoming the real thing.
@@godiebeard I think you're right that there was a sorta futuristic vision like that for a while but it didn't exactly lead to any major works of sci-fi. Like what were the highest grossing sci-fi movies in the 2010s? Well it was the rebooted Star Wars series. I can only think of a few fully original pieces of sci-fi which imagined the future in a new way and I think the biggest one is Mass Effect but it didn't really question capitalism or imagine new ways of living and it was based on the designs of Syd Mead not the slick future that was seen in iPhones and other consumer electronics.
Also maybe this is why Cyberpunk is seemingly becoming more and more spot on, like the world is actually starting to kinda look like what we saw in Cyberpunk, giant glass skyscrapers with massive internet integration and shiny lights all over them. Extreme surveillance and being constantly surveilled with little ownership over our own things. Zeerrust was a pretty constant thing but like most cyberpunk works were only really wrong about what the computers would look like but not really the cities or how we live. If the future has been cancelled then it follows that visions of the future also can't get outdated anymore, we'll never imagine a new future where Cyberpunk looks hilariously and awkwardly dated.
I find this discussion really interesting but at the same time, I can't help but think that the whole idea of imagining the future and ongoing "progress" is both very unique to society under capitalism and Eurocentric. Like can we not say the same for a peasant or serf working in the 1500s imagining progress?
What about an aboriginal tribe that have kept their way of life for 1000s of years because progress to them in the way we see it is unnecessary, harmful and not sustainable. I doubt a tribal member would imagine their descendants lifestyles being any different to theirs; two hundred years down the road. Is their vision of the future ruined?
"These 50's diners were really popular in the 80's" There. You made me quote family guy of all things
It actually sums up this video
I think actually this isn’t accurate. It’s not about just nostalgia per se.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Again, just historical pastiche, not a philosophio-cultural marker.
But have you heard about the bird?
The best example of this for me is seeing a nightclubbed absolutely packed with 18/19 year olds dancing to ABBA and the Smiths. They're a cultural sensation.. again.
Don't forget fleetwood mac too haha
I bet Mamma Mia 2 is at play here...
The Smiths were the epitome of musical genius. It's not about nostalgia.. It's just great music that saves us from the carefully-manufactured-for-utmost-profit pop of today.
Neil B a sad outlook. Nothing will be better than the past in your eyes
@@neilb9768 as much as I love the smiths, idk if that’s the sole reason for their surge in popularity, I think it’s part of a larger trend
This is currently the best video essay I've ever watched and I'm grateful for it as it articulated ideas and feelings I've had for a long time. Thanks to you I've discovered the whole aread of hauntology analysis and started reading Fisher (then tumbling down the rabbit whole). Thanks a lot for this
This is an interesting critique of the neoliberal "end of history" phenomenon. Our inability to imagine anything after capitalism serves as both a creator of fundamental apathy and capitalism's greatest defence. If there can be nothing better than capitalism, if imagination about another future cannot exist, then capitalism remains the end state (until it eventually decays or the planet simply become uninhabitable).
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism”
-Slavoj Žižek
@@vitocorleone3764 not really Zizek.
Japan in the 80's was very capitalistic yet futuristic (look at the recent Plastic Love city pop phenomenon). I don't think it's entirely down to capitalism, because it's possible to have a futuristic capitalistic society. One other difference between then and now is that America is demographically completely unrecognizable from just a few decades ago, which could play into it.
@@vitocorleone3764 The quote is from 'Capitalist Realism' by Mark Fisher.
@@avatarion you missed the point: it's not that culture didn't have a vision of the future then ; it's that It doesn't now.
Capitalism has corroded and destroyed visionary thinking: we are incapable of conceptualise a "way forward" that isn't stricly limited by the boundaries set by the system, either directly (for example, the profit motive) or indirectly (climate change and environmental distruction). So then we resort to going back to the last.
Other comments explained It Better than me but here's the gist.
Also, Why do you think demographics have any Role in this phenomenon?
This was a reference for a "Philosophy of history Philosophy of the future" seminar in my first year of my bachelor's in philosophy. Keep up the great work!
Such a great video and super important too! It's a subject that I've been reading up on a lot lately for a video that i'm working on. I think the concept of Hauntology is scarier than any horror story I've ever been exposed to. I think the prospect of being stuck in a 20th century limbo is way more terrifying than any ghost, demon or ghoul.
Another excellent RUclips essay. Really enjoying the Cluck phenomenon. As for my thoughts- probably in a world of accelerating change this constant referencing of the past is an attempt to slow things down. Also given that in the digital age nothing decays (as was said in this essay) and everything is always available for replay, rehashing is a useful way of extending an interesting moment in time. I for one need time to digest images, sounds and ideas. Which is why I'm grateful I can always replay Cluck's RUclips clips!
i think human culture has always been hauntological, think of renaissance, age of enlightnenment, art nouveau, art deco...the technology is the game changer, because i think it accelerates the gain and spread of knowledge, amongst other. we always rehashed or revitalised past culture, we do it now and consume it very fast, almost each decade we revitalise something. i also think we will do this indefinitly, albeit in a very different maner. but i do not think we are condemned to focus mainly on revitalisation. as hauntological beings we will complicate it even further and it brings comfort knowing that
I'm happy to have found this. I've been thinking a lot about just this but haven't found anyone talking about it. The conclusion I arived at was that this phenomenon is more like a mourning for the past. It's not that we can't create new things which makes us long for the past but our love and longing for the past makes it difficult to come to grips with the loss of Golden ages, and that makes us want to relive it.
There may be a simpler explanation for this phenomenon. People in their 30s tend to be a target audience for movies because they go the most and have the money to spend. And nostalgia for one's childhood seems to be almost innate in humans. Thus big media such as major motion pictures and TV shows will try to profit off this by recreating imagery from approximately 30 years earlier. Right now, this means recreating the imagery of the 1980s and 90s. But back in the actual the 1980s and 90s this would have meant appealing to nostalgia of the 1950s and 1960s. And indeed you see this in many films from that era. Think of movies/shows like Back to the Future, Stephen King's It, Stand by Me, American Graffiti, A Christmas Story, Forrest Gump, MASH, The Wonder Years, Happy Days, etc. Stephen King's It is a particularly good example of this trend because both versions of it, the one from the 90s and the one that came out last year, each take place about 30 years prior to their own release date. And not only are these films intended for audiences in their 30s and 40s who are nostalgic for their childhoods in those decades, but the people making the films are also likely making films that remind them of the time they grew up in.
Not to say that this explains everything, but I think it is definitely part of the reason for this trend.
I think the question should be thought why is a nostalgia for one's childhood "innate in humans". I don't think that's the case. I think it is a symptom of our current reality in which adulthood kinda sucks. We miss our carefree childhood days where mommy and daddy took care of us etc. Adulthood by contrast is filled with anxiety and alienation due to the present social conditions of adulthood. But it could be otherwise!
Fair point, before child labor laws many children had to work in factories just like adults, I doubt they'd be nostalgic for that.
I was thinking this the whole time. So many simpler and more obvious explanations for what we are observing. And this video acts like we haven't always been obsessed with our past. The video completely ignores the way early hollywood was OBSESSED with recent Western history such as the wild west frontier. People are always looking to the past and the movie studios have gotten extremely skilled at playing to the masses, hence the constant nostalgic revivals we see. I honestly think videos like this are more symptomatic of narrow minded intellectual culture and its rabid obsession with trying to pin things on capitalism/neoliberalism. It's like intellectual activity is so constrained by what's been laid down by people like Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard that more simple and obvious explanations for phenomena provided by other disciplines are ignored (or even a cursory moments thought based on actual experience and observation rather than application of handed down theory.)
That type of feeling is not exclusive to our time, it has been present everywhere throughtout our history, lots of literature works with this theme, Richard Wagner, for example, in his autobiography talks with such warmth about his childhood that you can almost see yourself there. Adulthood has always been the same, responsability and care is the minimum you should have as one and if i may, i think it was even harsher the more we go back, so i think our ancestors did miss their childhood way more than we do. I think our generation has a problem of alienation from reality, we try to apply our ideal concepts to the world, and let me tell you, the world isn't gonna change because you think it should. Unless what you think is true, not for you and your friends but for all, and for that there is a long way of one's self development to go, and most of the time we are completely wrong. During our childhood we don't even have real conceptions about the world, we just live and let live, so it's definetely a better time, but as an adult you must learn to order your inner chaos to be able to transcend your own human condition and produce something of real value for yourself and the people around you.
well done...following the money is oftentimes the best explanation :)
So retrofuturism is a part of the nostalgia cycle?
Thank you for this. It's really given me new insight into one of my favorite genres, and a new word - hauntology.
R.I.P Mark Fisher! One of the greatest thinkers of our time !
One of my favorite videos of yours. Excellent analysis, sources, and overall video. Keep up the awesome work!
Ghosts of My Past is something I think about almost every day since I read it.
On a personal note: I really loved your original RUclips handle but I am thankful you changed it so I don't have to write a citation that takes my professor to a channel called "Cuck Philosophy".
You did me a big solid my guy. Thank you so much!
shit like ready player one genuinely disgusts me. not only is it a story which doesnt exist without references, but the references -- taken out of their original context -- become meaningless.
I didn't watch it, but I read the book. First 30 or so pages caught my attention, as I felt an expectation of interesting dystopia or very late capitalism. Notion of people spending a lot time in virtual reality, thus not doing anything productive and living on the edge of poverty with bare minimum of needs satisfied made me think critically a lot about universal basic income, though I used to be fond of this idea. Unfortunately the rest of the book was just list of useless references. I didnt know most of them, but I guess even if I did reading this ode to nerdy pride of knowing 50 year old shitty tv productions by heart would be really tiresome. Such a disappointment.
but does it? At the end of the day it's one which give the "avatar" meaning and to every person will have a different meaning. I guess that's part of what makes eastereggs so popular. Saddly there is not a good story making little nods to that idea. Imagine if they did it using the concept of hauntology and avatar/easter eggs having personal meaning, I believe that even relying on heavily on references they could make something special and interesting.
The movie was just awful, it had virtually nothing in common with the book. I grew up in the 80s and it was one of the very best times of my life so all the references appealed to me.
John McShane , I liked the movie villain : HE SHOOTS KIDS AND IS NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING.
@@SpeedStar76 the books are usually better.
Thank you for finally articulating this in a way that clicks with me. This has been a focus of mine for a while now, and I thought to make this a thematic feature in a work of science fiction if I could ever find myself capable of producing it or with the proper collaboration of others.
The 80's actual aesthetic was taken from The Memphis School and Biba and Retro-Art Deco... These ideas were old when they first became general in popular culture!
*70s
I love how you show footage of The Mind's Eye. I got it on VHS and it's one of my fav videos to this day. The music is so good.
Really loving this channel and all your big brain content... I've noticed a really big trend in making PS1-styled video games this year, another example of this retrocoding like with pixel games. In cinema, we've seen recent classics like the Lighthouse which emulates silver age cinema, and Spiderverse which emulates retro comic books. Though it may seem like we are in a relative creative stasis, I think drawing from the past and crossbreeding different art forms and inspirations has always been a tool for innovation. Even futuristic breakouts from the past draw from other eras, like Star Wars with Samurai Japan, and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) Dune with older middle eastern civilizations. I haven't really consumed a lot of futuristic media from recent times, but it seems stories like WallE, albeit released over a decade ago, have been successful in creating new unique futuristic identities.
This video is incredible, thank you so much for putting it all together!
Of course, '50s nostalgia was rampant throughout the '70s and '80s, as seen in everything from Happy Days, to Back to the Future, to the music of Elton John, Billy Joel, etc.
Excellent video, and it's nice to see a completely new idea on 80's nostalgia; the "30-year cycle" has been done many times before.
Culture = shared practices. Every new technology changes how people act, thus changing culture. Look at texting, RUclips, and online dating. These have created huge changes in shared practices, thus creating "new culture". Just because there are throwbacks to nostalgic moments doesn't mean we live in a repeating future. Nostalgia may be driven by the fact that things are changing TOO FAST and people are looking back to simpler times.
But there isn't such a thing as simpler times. That's an illusion.
Of they're grasping for a time that felt 'more real'.
Very true. Cannot fathom why people whine about historical cultures that were bona fide autocracies. Inf act new cultures and subcultures are being created at a much faster rate because of easier information transmission. Some may be getting extinguished too, just as quickly, but there doesn't seem to be an 'cultural deficit'.
How are these new futures? That's what's being talked about, no one is saying that new art isn't being made anymore, the argument is that we've stopped inventing new futures.
@@TheSolarWolf Things were simpler before the invention of the wheel and the sailing ship.
This was extremely useful as an in point to Fisher and ties together some things I have been considering but was unable to quite link up. Thank you so much.
I am very early and that's quite a feat since you now have 20k subscribers!
I have already watched most of your videos and look forward to them. When I see these topics by others, I feel frustrated and feel it is very pretentious. But when you do it, I feel understanding and appreciative of the ideas, even if I don't always agree with them. I am a huge fan.
The future is never cancelled; it is an ongoing subscription of regurgitated editions.
Dude you need more subs. Your content is criminally underrated.
wow...really interesting. Nothing I didn't already know or sense, but nice to hear it all put together. videos are looking nicer and more engaging too. well done.
I'm glad I found this channel and this video specifically. I often pondered this "cancelled future", without actually being aware of the term.
This lack of positive vision for a future beyond our lifetime seems to me so obvious, not only from the 80s nostalgia but also from the fact, that visions of the future in mass media tend to be set quite close to our present and tend to be of a dystopian nature.
I think this is especially true today. In contrast, I have seen old movies and cartoons from both the eastern and the western block, which seem almost ridiculously optimistic.
And finally, I haven't met one person in my life, that believes that mankind will exist for another 100, let alone 1000 years. And some of those people I talked to have kids or plan on having kids, which might actually still be alive in 100 years.
It's quite sad.
I call it "Timepunk"
it's what happens when you give kids and young people unlimited access to the past 100+ years of popular culture and allow them to pick and choose the things they like and dislike, and to use those things to constitute their own personalities and create the broader cultural landscape
Jesus
Your vids are thoughtful. I just shared your KPop vid with a friend yesterday and rewatched it again myself. Excellent content.
Great video, i've subscribed! Yet, there's a crucial aspect that's not addressed, in my opinion we haven't even started to explore these "retro" spaces and their possibilities! This is the "explore vs exploitation" problem encountered in so many areas: how do we know when to stop relentlessly exploring and fully exploit what we have? Mindless explorers are likely enjoying a cocaine frenzy preventing them to fully inhabit an esthetic experience - i'm not saying we're in this situation, but this can happen at the level of a culture. Irrespective of the new genres (that will inevitably come) i hope that these "lost futures" will be explored further for a long time to come. I have a feeling that in 20 years time AI will allow us to see a gripping psychologically-twisted story starring Humphrey Bogart or an intricate adventure drama staring Tom & Jerry. We're nowhere near at extracting what retro characters like "Sam Spade" or retro esthetics can offer.
What a beautiful video essay. Very enlightning and a little chilling at the same time.
This video's meditations on the perception of past, present and future made me think of Fukuyama's concept of "The End of History". In my opinion, the extent to which it haunts public consciousness can hardly be overstated. Basically, most people have come to believe that a version of the future that is radically different from the current situation cannot be conceived and is hardly even imaginable. (hence Fredric Jameson's famous quote)
So if we think that the present is bad and are convinced that a different/better future cannot be built, what can we do? Find solace in the past, perhaps even try to bring it back - it must have been better, right? Translated into political terms, this state of mind can explain the rising popularity of ideologies such as conservatism and fascism (an ideology obsessed with the past) and provide an explanation for the otherwise awkward phenomenon that the poorer a region is, the greater the popularity of these is (For instance, the fascist wave sweeping over Eastern Europe).
Irony is too delicious here :)
I live in Eastern Europe, have spent my whole life here and what I am talking about is unfolding right before my eyes.
Are you from Eastern Europe, too, I wonder. Or are you someone who has gotten all his knowledge of the world from PJW's channel and accuses others of ignorance.
First of all, to put it as brief as I can, fascism is an authoritarian ideology that is (at least to a certain extent) left on economic issues and hard right (or patriotic-conservative, as you like to put it) on society issues. Apart from its liking of the past, other key features of its include its rabid hate of genuine left-wing ideologies and its distaste for individual human rights. But perhaps you can come up with a definition of your own, to demonstrate how I do not understand it ;)
Second of all, cliches such as "right wing populist" do not reliably describe what someone such as Orban is nowadays. 15 years ago he was hard right on economic issues, almost a Friedmanite. Now he is employing social policies that my own austerity-crippled country could be yearning for. Definitely more to the left than he used to be, at least in economic/social aspect.
Third of all, of course most people in this part of the world like invertedcommaspatrioticconservative ideas and vote for invertedcommaspatrioticconservative parties. Otherwise, the invertedcommaspatrioticconservative wave would not be a thing I would be talking about.
Fourth of all, "as much as I might hate it" I am describing what I see with my own eyes as objectively as an imperfect human being could do. Situation is bad enough for me to need to "smear" invertedcommaspatrioticconservative political forces and ideas.
Peace out.
The one thing I could take away from your last comment is - apart from the oh so pleasant patronizing tone of yours - that apparently the military uniform of the leader is the key factor deciding ideological leanings. But of course.
What you fail to grasp is that I have been primarily talking about sentiments among the masses, rather than about party programs . But since you were trying to defend certain parties by labeling them populist - well there you have it. They try to answer to these sentiments. It is a process rather than a static point - token right wing parties of Eastern Europe moving little by little away from classical rightism towards the f-word over the course of recent years (Then again, since you mentioned textbook fascism, how would you describe FIDESZ' beloved coalition partner) Funny enough, in my country the same is applicable for the biggest mainstream "left-wing" party.
But as I said, I was focusing on mass sentiments. What I see around me in my country is that the 80 per cent, as you put it, tend to be mentally equipped with the all the invertedcommaspatrioticconservative paraphernalia (xenophobia, homophobia, obsession with the past, distaste of human rights etc.), while simultaneously cherishing warm feelings for the social/economic policies of the communist era, and also not being the hugest fans of democracy. Did we tick all the boxes already?
Oh boy, where do I even begin. This comment is such a hodge-podge of all the cliches that can be heard from your lot and at the same time does not address any of the points I made in my last post except for the ironic opening remarks.
You act as if I claimed there is a classic totalitarian fascist regime anywhere in Eastern Europe - there is not, of course. (btw expansionism is not an integral part of fascism, isolationism is as easily compatible with it, see Spanish Falangism).What I actually claimed - that "major parties of Eastern Europe are moving little by little away from classical rightism towards the f-word over the course of recent years", you did not disprove. What I also claimed - that the prevailing popular sentiments can only be described as (near-) fascist - you did not even attempt to disprove, you only said "Well, people are like that because..." Followed by a tirade in which ethno-nationalism and conspiracy theorism could easily be detected. Is it a coincidence that these two are characteristic features of the rhetoric of an ideology-I-should-not-because-I-am-a-leftist.
Other than that, I only have a few questions.
What ideology is being pushed? As far as I know, the only ideology shaping the world today is neoliberal capitalism. Free movement of labor ("open borders") is necessary for the functioning of capitalism. In any case, if anything is being pushed it has nothing to do with leftism.
How do you explain the fact xenophobia is more prevalent in Eastern Europe (look up the stats on the attitude towards refugees/immigrants) although there are virtually no refugees, no prior migrants and no terrorist acts happening here?
How do you imagine a scenario in which native people become minorities in Eastern Europe. The only possible scenario I can think of is all the local people except for a single Gipsy man emigrating to the West. In any case, that is far likelier than hordes of migrants coming here. What migrant in their right would go to the east of the former Iron Curtain?
This also explains what may seem paradoxical to some people, more "extreme" leftist positions are actually more successful in convincing conservatives, non-voters, and reactionaries than "moderate" positions. Bernie actually managed to gain the support of a lot of right wing people because he offered an actual material improvement to them, whereas more right wing politicians like Biden just sparked outrage. Bernie is just a social democrat but obviously in the US that does seem radical, but the same is true across the world, leftist ideas like communism and anarchism are more successful at countering fascism than liberalism because those ideas do offer a better world. However liberals tend to fight them even more than they do fascism because they oppose capitalism while fascists don't really and usually still argue on the terms of capitalism. The point is compromising with right wingers doesn't really attract them much while offering a better future does, however the latter is a lot harder since you are fighting against a lot of things.
You are amazing, my friend. Thank you for making complex concepts so digestible. This insight would take countless books to glean without your videos
Why does the English subtitles show the Chinese language?
having just marathoned your whole channel, i think this is your most important idea and would very much like to see it fleshed out a bit more.
The next nostalgia cycle will be interesting when we're replicating the 2010s. :P
Sub Roy remember the future has been cancelled
Everyone is getting neck problems looking down at "smart" phones and wishing to live in the past instead. I doubt there will be much nostalgia for this decade, even by people who lived their childhood in it. What will they remember? Fortnite dances? Dub step and mumble rap? The soulless Marvel movie machine? Pop culture has never been more forgettable than right now. 90s kids are nostalgic for the 80s because we saw the highlights of the 80s on 90s TV. TV is gone now. Centralized programming is gone. The nostalgia of the 2010 kids will be too diffuse to produce a common theme. Perhaps they will have no choice but to dream about the future, since their past is a blur.
The 3 guys that replied to your comment are either ingenuous or blind. People will ALWAYS be Nostalgic for their childhood/teenage years, it's doesn't matter what culture was like then. I remember in the early 2010s a lot of people loved to mock the 2000s, and now the 2000s are coming back in full swing.
Anyways, here's a forum page from a guy in the early 2000s talking about how people were starting to romanticize the 90s:
www.inthe00s.com/archive/inthe90s/bbs1/webBBS_1526.shtml
If you can't open the link, here's what he says:
" I told you so.
I don't want to sound crass and cold hearted during this horrible tragedy that has befallen America. Nevertheless I will sound like a jerk with what I am about to say. Remember me? I'm the guy that complained about people rose coloring the past, especially the '80s and "sugar coating" things. I said the '90s would be sugar coated and people here laughed. They said it was absurd. The '90s would never be sugar coated. The '90s were the worst time of all time they told me.
Well, IT HAS BEGUN.
This tragedy has already made people say, "America just lost its innocence". I thought we lost our innocence when Vietnam happened? Or when JFK was killed? Or when the a-bomb was detonated? Or when Pearl Harbor was bombed? How many times can a country lose its innocence?
Now people have already begun longing for the "sweet and innocent '90s". The so called "good ol' days". Like I said before, this is the way the world has always been. Its always been a violent and sex filled world were others use and abuse each other. Accept it.
Now the '00s are the worst time imaginable.
The '90s look good now don't it? Hey this kind of violent stuff happened in the '90s too, not really in America, but it happened. But people's memories are short lived, they have already began longing for the "sweet and innocent '90s".
Whatever. Did you ever think the '90s would be looked at as "sweet and innocent"? Where there was a time of "no evil"? No you say? Well I knew it would happen. It happened to the '80s and every other decade, so it was bound to happen to the '90s.
I told you so....."
@Maintenance Renegade yeah, then where is this massive 90s revival coming from?
This was super interesting. I ended up taking notes!! Thank you so much for introducing Fisher to me, I'm excited about reading his work.
Love the video, brings up some great points that are food for thought, and I really appreciate getting a great window into influential academic discourses in this way. However, overall I think I disagree with the main conclusion - I don't think our culture is stuck, I think we are undergoing real change and it is at a panicking rate. And I think we are grasping for the nostalgic references for some feigned sense of stability - 'we have imagined this before, so we are ready for it'.
For each piece of media you mention that comes clothed in a comforting nostalgic futurism, I'm betting there an acute cultural anxiety it is trying (though perhaps not succeeding) to process. And it be a concept we previously have explored for decades (AI, nature of personhood, technological inequality, political upheaval, etc), but never before with such urgency because now it is right at our door. Your example of ContraPoints really hit it home for me - yes, she is sampling from the full catalog of familiar cultural references, but she is using them to make palatable some of our most uncomfortable current-day topics (confronting the alt-right, personally dealing with online conflict, and gender/lgbt issues). And let's not pretend there isn't any cultural innovation in what she is presenting - making room for transpeople and reinvigorating how we process gender identities is a big fucking change for most people.
Blade Runner 2049 brushes up against current day anxieties about emotional entanglement with tech, the surveillance state, and the unbridled influence of individual tech leaders (Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos) that are far more proximal than what could meaningfully be addressed in the original. I haven't seen Ready Player One, but it surely deals with the rapidly changing way we socially assemble - based on relationships with people physically distant to us rather than being able to function limited just to proximate family or classmates; these issues are far more urgent, palpable, and *real* than when the book was first written.
So I think we aren't generating new images of the future right now because we are overwhelmed; after all, the very values we would use to to project such an image are in deep contention right now. That doesn't mean that there is no cultural innovation happening, only that it is occuring on such a deep level that we are desperately trying to clothe it in familiar images to keep from panicking.
I failed my first test in my CCNA class today... I studied, but I still deserved it. This video in particular provided me with some comic relief, and the motivation to stay positive throughout the rest of the semester. Thanks for your work. Hope your book ends up well. Will plan on getting it once it hits auditable. Cheers ✌️
Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" also touches on the trappings of the current cultural moment, and is worth a read if anyone is looking for another book suggestion.
What I always liked about Fisher was his compassion and how he resisted blaming young people for the problems of the day and instead tried to understand how they responded to the world that grew up around them.
Fascinating! Utterly fascinating!
Thank you---will be heading to Patreon in a few. Pleaee-- some more like these💝
It's telling that even when we do look into the future, the most popular literature produced involves a capitalist authoritarian dystopia or an apocalyptic wasteland.
I have always described my love for Fallout by saying that I loved it's haunted feeling. You have helped me better understand what I mean by that, and I'm very grateful.
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”
- George Sand
"Art is what makes life more interesting than art."
- Robert Filliou
New Realism. A new wave of philophers are attempting to overcome relativism, constructionism and postmodernism. Search for *Markus Gabriel.*
anyone else read this in Leonard Nimoy's voice
Being natural is just a pose.
-Oscar Wilde
Being Ernest is natural (to me)
-Edgar Alan Hemingway
@@OmbreDunDouble Art is more interesting than life. So much so that many people spend all their life there.
Thank God i found your channel suddenly, it's best channel on the RUclips..... thanks for sharing your knowledge on issues which are important for our life.....
IWe need a T-Shirt that says "I read Mark Fisher and Survived"
Sidenote: the recent "Twin Peaks: The Return" was haunted by nostalgia. It pulled no punches on just what an awful place this is to be stuck in, and it certainly "cured" me of my old 1990, 17-yr-old self's longing for those halcyon days.
I'm quite sure this is what Lynch was going for, he said it kinda vaguely in some interviews. He didn't want to have TP return just by celebrating or idealizing the past, but wanted more to show a terrible distortion and even darker interpretation of the world he and Frost created 30 years earlier. He said that he was really tired of seeing ideas in media being revived just by catering to nostalgia and not doing anything new with it, so it seems he went in the complete opposite direction. The new TP is drastically different and almost mocking to anyone who goes into it expecting it to cater to nostalgia. It's a big "fuck you" to those people who enjoy these nostalgia revivals or have too much of an idealized view of the original TP (or any old idea, really.) He paces it so it plays with and tears apart your idealistic and nostalgic notions and makes you wait literally hours just to have a tiny glimpse of something that calls back to the old TP, and those only usually last a few seconds on screen, at most.
Music is pretty important, too. David Lynch does the sound design on most of his movies, i think
We are all Cooper and Laura at the end of the return: trapped somewhere familiar but somehow distant, unable to find resolution. On some level we all understand Laura Palmer when she screams into darkness in that last scene.
that's what I loved about the dougie jones character, he was the nostalgic bastardization of cooper, a hollow shell that repeats and gravitates to the iconography of the past (coffee, cherry pie)
@@aeugnewtype Agreed, and well put.
This video is really good. I’ve been noticing something just like this phenomenon, I just haven’t had the words to explain it. Good job
The past did a great job at imagining the future, so in essence we are seeking to go "back to the future". The future we imagined and even at some extent promised ourselves would occur. Since largely that future never came to be, it appears that now, for the most part, there is little to no insentive or desire to think and imagine a future.
1. the influencers in Hollywood pushing their visions onto the movie and television screen are mostly from Gen X, and were saturated in this specific aesthetic. Partly they are re-creating their childhood visions.
2. In the ever-expanding confusion and chaos (or, at least, our exposure to it), people look back to the pre-net period with a sense of warmth and comfort. Most of my students have halcyon visions of what it was like back then. Explaining to them at the 80's were incredibly fraught with tensions, and that we are only sold media these days championing the fantasies produced--fantasies eagerly consumed, back then, as an escape--creating a weird simulacra reference point to an entire era.
Great vid.
I love vaporwave and synthwave. I've been listening to a lot of it in the last couple months. Really strange how it suddenly became popular.
Probably because of stranger things
Not often at all does somone present an Idea I had not already thought about at length. Thank you for this as now my mind has somthing to chew on for a good while. I am not sure that it is the case that we have stopped immagining futures different from those immigined in the 80's. Though I agree it feels that way. And you make an excelent point regarding a thing which cannot be destroyed (decay) is by deffinition then incapable of changing. This quote I think is relevant to us feeling like new futures are not being concieved. "I was born too late to explore the world, and too early to explore the universe"
I'd love to see a new wave of futurism in our media, one that represents a more modern perspective of the world we're heading into.
Whereas in the 1980s when home electronics were become normalized and people predicted a future of neon colours and artificial environments (both digital and physical), in the late 2010s it seems many people are aspiring to go back the other way, with sustainability and natural/organic environments being placed in high demand (while cities are becoming denser and more populated than ever). Add this aesthetic to the future economic state of the world- perhaps one with an automated workforce and UBI implemented for citizens- and we could create some very fresh, new-futuristic narratives.
However I haven't seen this done yet, as unfortunately we tend to revert to dated tropes when wanting to design a "futuristic" world. It will be interesting to see where media goes over the next few decades, hopefully we aren't just stuck in a loop.
LeagueUnionSevens Black Mirror?
I haven't seen one which quite fits in with the theme I'm talking about, however I haven't watched the last one or two seasons
Z4X Problem is I don't think postmordern's cynicism must be rejected. It must be accepted and overcome. You can't just ignore the problems that lead to its creation aren't still here.
I hope our new sincerty will recognize the human limitations postmodern literature showed.
I was just reading here in the comments about "solarpunk", idk if that's what you're looking for.
@Yankee UBI is the logical conclusion of a capitalist society when tech progress reaches the point where human labour is thoroughly out-compete by automation. As jobs disappear without being replaced by an equal or greater number of opportunities, unemployment levels will increase. With high levels of unemployment, aggregate demand for goods and services will decrease and companies with workforces that are almost entirely automated will suffer as nobody can afford to purchase their output.
Thus, at this point there are two options: 1. Give money to the masses, who are unemployed, to maintain demand (i.e. have most people on welfare) 2. Give money to everyone (i.e. UBI). The third option is to do nothing and let the whole system collapse, plunging billions of people back into poverty, anarchy and violence until they adopt a new liquid asset and the whole thing starts again.
Personally I don't *like* the idea of living under UBI, as I believe our modern lives are inefficient at providing utility to our brains, which are optimized for much more primitive times. For example, feeling productive and meaningful in your society are necessary to well-being. However, as explained before we don't have many options, and thus UBI will almost definitely be a part of our future lives
Outstanding video. I have to say we need a dude like you on youtube. Extremelly insightful video with spot-on contemporary references. Kudos
I don’t think that were stuck in the past and can’t create our own future/culture. It’s just that every decade seems look at the 2 decades before it as inspiration. If you look at popular 80’s culture you could see that there was some fascination with old 50’s, like with movies with Grease as an example. Right now our culture is looking back the 90’s for nostalgia, you can see it in fashion and music. It’s natural for humans to see the past culture as boring so as a way to revolt what happens is the opposite of what the past culture wasn’t becomes the new. The Romanticism of the 1800’s was followed up by Realism which the polar opposite of Romanticism. The colorful and neon 80’s was proceeded by the grunge styled 90’s.
Just hearing the concept of Hauntology, and it's quite fascinating! Now the only question is whether to start looking into Derrida or Fisher, first!
Here are three points that it seems like Mark Fisher didn't consider:
1) I can think of quite a few counterexamples to the notion that "the future is cancelled". We might not have the optimistic outlook of the 60s anymore, but is Black Mirror not a hugely popular and influential show about possible futures?
2) I'm not sure the nostalgia Fisher observed can be explained only in ideological terms. It might also (at least partly) be an aesthetic backlash - now that technology can perfectly portray reality, it is just more interesting to see things that are imperfect (pixely computer games, grainy footage, cheesily over-the-top color palettes). Not to mention the very matter-of-fact economic reasons for why blockbuster movies tend to recycle cultural material in 30 year loops...
3) Just looking at high risk, high-reward industries such as blockbuster cinema, computer games or pop music might not be the best way to find creative and daring new kinds of fiction or new uses of technology. What about meme culture, for example? Not very high brow, sure, but incredibly up-to-date, relevant, and continuously developing with endless layers of intertextuality. (Other examples might be phenomena such as Vine, or the very unique visual language of RUclipsrs.)
I really quite enjoyed your presentation of the concept of Hauntology though, and I definitely think that it can be a useful idea.
Agreed with 1 and 3, had similar feelings watching this. Of course there is something going on there. Looking at the musical examples - i definitely feel like vaporwave and hypnapop are emerging from a different place than just nostalgia and some of this endless cultural groove is going on there in its own feedback loop.
But for the last 10 years or so, i feel like there has been something cooking up in the underground, weird, lgbtq club music that just recently has begun to spill out, and though it offers no singular "vision of the future" - at least from what we can see right now - and while it's indebted to a lot of past stuff, it does definitely feel like its own new Thing.
Applying the concepts from this video to all of contemporary culture is broad strokes, but as you said it's definitely a good tool to explain some tendencies
Thank you for this. I came across this after dealing with loops of trying to watch old movies and TV shows over and over with virtually no joy that I originally felt. They diminished to nothing yet I still find myself returning. I wondered why. Like some cage. Endless loop. A kind of hell of your own making. But strangely aware of it
That's my relationship with music videos.
Another great vid
Es ist nicht einmal falsch.
wow, I'm really interested in and fascinated with these concepts and theories lately, and I think you're summing up many aspects in a very nice way. I found the video by chance, but will definitely start following your work.
I think people are looking back more than forward because subconsciously we are aware our future is dark.
Yeah we are careening towards something for sure
Your BEST work yet!
Only wish it was longer 😀
I don't necessarily agree with neoliberalism causing hauntology. Neoliberalism was already strong in the late 80s, yet it's only from 2010s that we've seen this strong pull to reliving 80s/90s nostalgia. Even then, in media theory there's such a thing as the 30 year cycle, and it has been evident since the fifties. Even in the history of art you can see this 'hauntology' aspect, with Neo classisim being a prime example of pre-Industrial revolution hauntology. I don't agree at all with sci-fi movies being complete rehash of old ideas, either. Sci-fi has never been truly futuristic because it's written and created by artists, not technologists, so their idea of the future is always grounded in current technology. The best example is Blade Runner itself: all the technology shown is clearly analog, created in a time where digital technology was still not as prevalent as it is today. And even today's remakes always reimagine their motifs to look and feel like they're five minutes into the future (example: all the marvel movies). The fact that the future has been cancelled doesn't respond to a lack of originality: it responds to a prevalent post-9/11 cinicism as most media is produced for/by americans, and the americans are experiencing the fall of the american empire.
If you look at the religious/artistic production pre-fall of Rome, you'll find similar rehashing of ideas as individual cultures mixed and matched (best example is the incredible amount of religious texts produced around early christian sects, incorporating a milieu of philosophical ideas taken from both east and west, europe, india and africa); a quickening of the culture before a period of fragmentation.
30 year cycle = adults want to revisit and investigate the things they loved or aspired to but didn't understand as children
And that's all it is.
Good stuff man. Fisher wrote that it was the disappearance of the USSR that Neo Liberalism enter a new phase, it lost its only real rival. I think Fisher was far more worried about the state of politics but could not express his views through it directly so he fell back into culture. I think there is a lot of truth in if you take a look at not exclusively through a cultural lens. All these unresolved tensions with in capitalism still have to been relieved. Capitalism has not given birth to a new world but has instead chosen to recycle the past.
Although Neoliberalism may not have caused hauntology they are definatly connected ideas. Neoliberalism as a concept could be seen, in the way that it itself is a "new" liberalism, to be a reflection of the ideas of the past dusted off and given a new coat of paint: an ultimately conservative ideology that presents itself as forward-looking and, perhaps more importantly, as not being an ideology at all.
Very well made, I’ll be looking into more of your content!
This video draws a lot from Mark Fischer's Capitalist Realsim and Simon Reynold's Retromania, the former was published in 2009 the latter in 2011 - we have passed peak nostalgia and retromania now, but cultural commentators are still pushing the same talking points. Ironically, in 2018 we now find ourselves stuck in a loop of contemplating that we are stuck in a loop.
How did we pass peak nostalgia?
idk its just a gut feeling i guess, i feel like media has become interested in sci-fi and futurism again, the wholesome 'indie aesthetic' is pretty passé, pop music seems to be embracing 'the now' more rather than just restyling past eras. I don't get why the mainstream media narrative has become 'the 80s are back!', like, bitch the 80s already came back and left again, if anything i feel like its the 90s/00s that are enjoying the rose-tint right now.
@@nospmohtracso yeah, but it's not a matter of which past aesthetic is revived, it's a matter that it is revivalism nonetheless. Now Y2K aesthetics are all the rage, especially in fashion, but that just expands and strengthens the point made in this video.
nahhh like, i only brought up the Y2K aesthetic to say that IF there is an era being revived right now its not the 80s. I genuinely do think that pop culture is in a forward rather than backward pendulum swing rn. All the things I associate with peak retromania: cutesy polaroid snaps, hip lo-fi cassette tape releases, hip old-timey mens barbers where the staff have 50s greaser tattoos, fixie bikes - these all seem like way less of a thing now.
@@nospmohtracso Yeah, I was really into the whole 80's neo-retro thing myself back in 2012. Whenever I come across people who still use that aesthetic and music in their videos nowadays, it just feels so stale to me. I feel like it's been milked as much as it can be and now it's old hat. The 90's grunge scene has seen a bit of a comeback over the past 2 or so years, but I feel like its days are numbered now and the next big revival will be the early 2000's nu-metal scene, which is fine with me because I grew up in that time and I still like Linkin Park and baggy jeans.
I wish I had seen this sooner, but am thrilled to have seen it now. Thank you for this thought provoking information.
I love the english subtitles
With how tech and culture are shifting at dramatic speeds, reflecting on stories and ideas from a few decades ago is more like exploring stories and ideas from the middle ages. It's recognizing the world is changing so quickly but still wanting to explore music and themes iconic to those times.
Great video, love your content
This is one of the best videos I've ever seen. I'm using it to build my company. Thanks!
In germany, now, there is even a joke proverb about that. "Frueher war alles Besser. Sogar die Zukunft". Meaning "In the past, everything was better. Even the future"
one of the best written youtube videos i've seen. thanks for this
I think it has to do with the decline of play in childhood, and the rise of "find the correct answer"-pedagogy.
love this. never thought of it this way.
please expand on this!
@@lightgrey5365 I'm happy to! The decline of play has to do with several different trends that have lead to childhood gradually becoming more and more fenced-in and managed by adults (urbanization, cars, "stranger danger", et.c.), along with the belief that self-directed play is useless and frivolous. The pedagogy I'm talking about is motivated by concerns about making schooling more "scientific" and of keeping teachers more accountable -- the idea is that this requires learning to be made visible through testing. This means that the focus falls on testable knowledge in the areas that get tested -- as opposed to more murky knowledge, or more fuzzy concepts like curiosity and the joy of learning, independent thinking, creativity, and so on.
Playing make believe is a big part of what children do in self-directed play, and the knowledges and competencies you need to think big and crazy about the future are not prioritized in this way of doing school. I think there's a reason why so many more students from democratic schools like Sumerhill or Sudbury valley end up as artists or entrepeneurs.
Please just ask if you want me to expand on something else or provide sources for any of this.
@@KRIGBERT wow that’s really interesting
One of my favorite youtube videos ever.
the mosdt beautiful video ive ever seen.
Wow, I've never heard that definition of hauntology but I love the one you explain here, really an interesting perspective
Maybe this desire to relive the past is caused by the scientific progress we have made.
The world is becoming increasingly complex.
Because of our better understanding of the world, the fascinating things about it lose their magic and we are left with explanations of the world that need a lifetime of dedication to fully understand.
To have a alternative future in which everything has been solved in familiar and easy to understand ways might be very appealing for the people.
I look inside myself and see the ideas in this video reflected. The repetition, the comfort in the regular. A genre of videogames that reminds me of this idea a lot is Rougelikes, which have also seen a resurgence in recent years, a genre of videogames defined by trying, losing, trying again, and again, and again, slightly different each time but same at the core mechanics. Even these games could be emulating the feel of the arcade game of old, another rehash.
Not sure if this has any kind of philosophical value but it is what it is.
But we ARE in the present of our culture's imagined future. All the great Futuristic Novels were about now...
We are at the point of time of the future we imagined, but we aren't in the futures we imagined. We are working more than ever, mental sickness is a disease, and all of these cool new technologies that all seemed like the door to freedom either don't exist or not accessible to the everyday person. There also has been no real cultural development, due to both the lacking of our culture as well as the digitalization of our personal lives.
That's what "the Future has been canceled" means.
Yes
@@QuinnArgo The future is a contest between apathy and hope and the vigour of our imagination to overcome the former in service of the latter.
Wow I had no idea what his video was about when I clicked on it, but remember the feelings in the 80s of the hope for the future, which is lost now, and find myself longing for that feeling again and find myself going back to then try to recapture it.
Welcome to the metamodernist society.
Care to elaborate?
Recently began reading some Marshall McLuhan, and in an interview from 1977, he seems to anticipate Mark Fisher, "... one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were." The nostalgia and hauntological character has greatly accelerated since 1977, but it's fascinating to see it had already begun and some had already begun to notice.
Have you by any chance read Simon Reynold's Retromania? I think you'd love it (and anyone interested in music and our culture cannibalizing our instant past)
Thanks for the recommendation, will definitely check it out
this video is just unbelievably good. I've watched it four times now.