A Précis of Contemporary Pessimism

Thinking about the future can give one a headache—it seems rather bleak. Everything circles around the questions of what to do, how to act, how to prevent. In returning to such questions, we analyze the present for the possibilities of improvement while still looking toward a future that has increasingly slipped through our fingertips. The hope for the new year to be better—or at least a little less of everything that currently is—escapes us. Our thoughts, the stumbling steps we undertake, do not seem to take us anywhere. Amidst collective stagnation we become entangled in words; in ways of narrating and translating the future. 

We belong to a continuously accelerating system of technical automation and globalization, one that no one is able to fully grasp anymore. Global capitalism is slowly moving towards self-destruction as a tiny minority have successfully exhausted our common planetary resources for profit. Hence, the security and predictability of the future have become the desired motive for political narration. Fear and distrust in the neoliberal system have created a common emotional ground upon which those on either side of the political spectrum can base their decision-making. This is a fear that, however, causes us to drift apart from each other rather than connecting us in a collective fight against an unjust reality. A rising tide of global fascism and the strengthening of nation states under the auspices of safety and individual self-fulfilment have been one creeping result of this growing division. A hesitant feeling remains as such pessimism spreads, and more radical protest groups—most recently climate action groups¹—are either criminalized, violently policed, or pushed towards compromise. 

Such compromises draw radical efforts into a limbo of (already-weak) established narratives, at a time when action is urgently needed. This is the burnt soil on which we walk. Nevertheless, sowing new seeds and watering this soil, and striving for a narrative to replenish it, can only occur through the here and now. Ultimately, the present acts as the point of origin from which utopia must emerge—to establish the radically different.² 

Techno Saviors 

The now presents itself to us as an all-encompassing story in which capitalist consistency and safety deliver the hopeful promise of a whole collection of future scenarios and automated utopias, representing any alternative to its preferred scenarios as dystopian. Work and exploitation are deemed basic necessities for this Western-made, globally enforced mode of storytelling. The exploitation of colonized land and people, as well as the outsourcing to cheap sources of global labor, allow capitalism to maintain its ever-accelerating speed, constructing a tale of endless resources from which it can extract. This has enabled the dependency on work, according to which most people must work in order to survive. Additionally, work is advertised as an identity-shaping prophecy through which one is able to create one’s own future. Fundamentally, subjectivism and the prospect of self-agency therefore combine to present capitalism as an already-determined future.³ From now on the future is supposed to develop according to a singular timeline, created through innovation—where technology equals hope. Probability calculation and promissory wealth are the languages adopted to cheer up the ever-more-tired workforce. 

While it seems that in this climate of ecological and economical failure this predetermined future could be easily dismissed, it nevertheless persistently remains and is continually being adapted to suit other future translations. Technology in the guise of a hero is the overarching framework for these. This narrative presents itself as a classic hero’s journey—a mythological narrative structure derived from the writing of Joseph Campbell.⁴ In times of crisis, a hero figure embarks on an adventurous path to fight against an obstacle. With a specific goal for prophecy in mind, the storyline then develops straight towards the overcoming of this obstacle, until the hero returns to the place from which he departed. As a similar linear-teleological—constantly goal-oriented—pathway, technological automation is often presented to us with a clear beginning striving toward a goal, its fixed end. It therefore fits right into the narrative that everyone is the author of their own future: with ideas such as “techno-salvation”⁵ or “longtermism,”⁶ gaining widespread acceptance. In particular, the hero’s story of techno-salvation repurposes the Christian idea of paradise, replacing God as a savior figure to “establish a sort of technical theocracy.”⁷ As a storyline that feeds into the longing for predictability, it works with the rigidity of one fixed timeline. Italian philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi emphasizes in his book Futurability how it is these very “techno-linguistic implications”⁸ that function to make capitalism seem at once natural and everlasting. Hence this familiar language continues a claimed factual reality in which the superiority of Man is symbolized through man-made technology. It is an easy narrative to follow as it moves away from colonial conquest and thereby disguises is as main protagonist for superiority and Western Triumph while not demanding for an entirely new way of narrating the present. 

Though the present is in itself a formally created story, it is one that has sunk so deeply into the bedrock of our reality that compromise and adaptation to existing conditions function to suppress the possibility of actual change. What counts for “hope” on the political left has diminished through a narrative of “non-alternatives” cynically shared through Mark Fisher memes.⁹ The narrative that “There is No Alternative” (TINA) is further distributed through mainstream Hollywood sci-fi apocalypse and disaster movies in which narrative of the future is clearly structured through a beginning and end in which every sequel sticks to the current economic system. Horrifying, apocalyptic scenarios are emerging so abundantly and so quickly, that we find ourself asking the very real question of how many apocalypses can happen at once. It is through this uncomfortable resemblance of science fiction to reality that the heroes of these Hollywood fantasies, mainly male characters mimicking themselves, seem rather pathetic. Consider Don’t Look Up (2021) or The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) for instance. However, as the true apocalypse only happens when the neoliberal reality is broken—many of those movies remain great advertisements for the now. Again, a straight line, a single timeline is thrust towards progress like a javelin. It’s either triumph or tragedy, and it all depends on a single person or event. This hero’s journey, building upon an everlasting base of fictional stories, permeates our current historiography and becomes symbolic of a society that has been pushed into individualization. Thus, a storytelling problem occurs on different political sides, in which one side is not able to depart from the indispensable starting point of the present to engage in new storytelling and the other is not able to stabilise the present.

Kill your Darlings: The Carrier Bag as Counter-narrative  

In her famous essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”¹⁰ Ursula K. Le Guin questions the concept of the hero examined above. In particular, she scrutinizes the representation, in both science fiction and historiography, of the predominantly male protagonists as saviors. Looking at how the unfolding of human civilization in prehistoric times has been narrated, she rejects the idea of the spear and the male hunter as maintaining human civilization through the violent act of killing. This pedestal, built to maintain the patriarchal order through the emphasis on a singular event, is presented against sustaining acts of gathering—which is commonly thought of as female occupation. The spear is then privileged over the gathering bag. The slow process against the quick event; the collective against the individual; the human as superior against inter-species dependency. The stories she proposes, created through collective organization, linger in the bag—influencing each other and creating an opposition to the violent history of the hero and his journey.

I highlight Le Guin’s account of our prehistoric past to recall that in order to create a narrative that enables a collective solidarity into the future, from which more than just a small group of people can benefit, it is essential to refurbish and rethink the past. While this should not create impotence through a collective feeling of despondent melancholia, it can provide a multiplicity of timelines—existing and relating to each other at the same time.  We blank out the open wounds of the past when we suggest that the current moment is the only timeline we can draw upon when thinking toward utopia.¹¹ When the past is presented as having already been overcome—as rather a burden than part of the present—techno-patriarchal redemption prophecies are easily established and the self-image of Western capitalism can continue to thrive. Take Germany’s remembrance culture (“Erinnerungskultur”) as an example. The forms of superiority upheld through this narration include German military involvement in the Global South and the strengthening of border governance under the rubric of safety (a recurring narrative) and the elimination of terror. Of particular note are Germany’s military operations in Afghanistan (starting in 2002) and especially the 2009 Kuduz airstrike, as well as the violent military involvement in Syria (starting in 2015). The rewriting Ursula K. Le Guin proposes, could be a starting point from which to dismantle the neoliberal structure constantly presented to us and also to reformulate the visions and actions we wish to retain from its demise. Many left movements have taken on the same teleology of single events accumulating in a steady, linear progress that often entails a moralizing, individualizing language—one that eventually leads to reciprocal surveillance and stagnation. 

Neoliberalism in Western Movements

One example of the adoption of neoliberal strategies in and by Western movements, rather than their dismantling, can be found in what Françoise Vergès calls “civilizational feminism” in her book A Decolonial Feminism.¹² This designates a white feminism, one largely ignorant of racial justice and class struggles, established especially in Europe, which is deeply involved with the sustaining of capitalism. By working according to accepted frameworks and timelines—with the goal of achieving full equality of men and women by reducing struggle to the private and individual effort—it does not consider larger structural injustices both within and between the sexes. Through playing along with the idea of private ownership over the future it further fuels the neoliberal ideal.¹³ Not only in feminist movements, but in climate movements and other social struggles, the goal has so often been not to abolish categories—such as gender—which are claimed as part of a natural system, but rather to agree with compromises, giving authorities the possibility of creating future visions which entail for example “feminist” slogans while in fact only further enforcing oppression. The example Vergès brings up to illustrate this are the ongoing forms of legal and social discrimination against racialized and in particular Muslim people, justified under the protection of white women.¹⁴ Such a narrative can similarly be adopted to aid the discrimination of, and laws against, trans people by naturalizing gender binaries or the criminalization of sex work by criminalizing the worker rather than rethinking labor itself. It involves the most privileged trying to save their own position within society, as rejecting this position would also mean allowing a change in the societal order. This narrative adoption complicates the outcry for literal change, as it is often used to present the changes happening within neoliberal narratives as revolutionary and for everyone. 

This appropriation of movements is possible when individualization and the focus of individualism dominate the retelling of struggles and fights—mirroring the atomization that automation and global-capitalism has wrought. In acknowledging the interconnectedness between us, but also our relation to non-human species and nature, we can begin thinking about a story that layers several timelines to go beyond the exploitative system of capitalism. As Le Guin puts it, “The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.”¹⁵ Urgency demands action and sometimes mere storytelling won’t save us. However, unionizing, organizing in friendships, and forms of global solidarity allow for stories beyond the limits of progress that challenge the status quo. 

Disruption through Persistence

Disruption remains necessary, as until we abolish the ideas capitalism has induced in us, a just future won’t be possible. Rather than trying to disrupt through one singular, quickly-forgotten event, we should seek an ongoing process of happenings and resistance that helps to build a persistent solidarity.¹⁶ Persistency also allows us to think beyond one generation and across all living spheres, rather than automatically centering the human as the main protagonist.

The British feminist activist and critic Lola Olufemi has written of how our historical moment has “created narrative totality out of the stuff of nightmares.”¹⁷ Language cannot do everything, but the narratives that are presented through a totality such as neoliberalism can and must be problematized. Action is needed to reject its “natural orders.” Holding each other is needed equally as much. To understand and describe the colonial origins upon which capitalism is built, is to allow to become a tool for reimagining action. It has been the work of minoritized, indigenous, racialized, and transgender communities to enable such small disruptions in the unjust totality of  “Nature.”¹⁸ Hence, in order to reimagine we need to allow the fictional, the intimate, and the ephemeral to intersect with the archives that we form our stories and actions, from a timeline that has never been either singular or straight.¹⁹ Rather than only asking how we can find new ways of imagining and narrating the future, we should also ask who needs to be saved from whom—and from which futures.

Footnotes

1. For example the latest protests and climate action in Lützerath, Germany, wherein there have been increasing protests against the eviction of the village Lützerath for the mining and burning of coal through the energy company RWE. ↑

2. Bini Adamczak, Beziehungsweise Revolution. 1917, 1968 und kommende, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017, p. 45. ↑

3. Ann Cvetkovich, Depression A Public Feeling, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013, p. 190ff. ↑

4. See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008/1949. ↑

5. The idea that technology and technological innovation will be able to “save” humankind. ↑

6. Theory coined by the Oxford philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord, inspired by the writings of Nick Bostrom. Decisions for the future are supposed to be made on the basis of often fascist trade-offs of innovation relevance (part of which is also Elon Musk and his idea to colonize Mars), driven mainly by the super-rich. See William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future, New York: Basic Books, 2022. ↑

7. Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Futurability. The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility, London: Verso, 2019, p. 58. ↑

8. Ibid., p. 18. ↑

9. Based on Mark Fisher’s essay Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, London: Zer0 Books, 2009. ↑

10. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, London: Ignota Books, 2019/1986. ↑

11. Pluto Press, “Françoise Vergès, Lola Olufemi - A Decolonial Feminism | Pluto Live” (video), YouTube (uploaded 20.04.2021), www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE9FR1jfo5U&t=305s. ↑

12. Françoise Vergès, A Decolonial Feminism, London: Pluto Press, 2021. ↑

13. Ibid., p. 23. ↑

14. Ibid. p. 51. ↑

15. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, p. 33. ↑

16. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, London: Verso Books, 2015, p. 180. ↑

17. Olufemi, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, p. 94. ↑

18. Angela Davis, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Nikita Dhawan, “Planetary Utopias,” Radical Philosophy vol. 205 (Autumn 2019): pp. 67–78, online, www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/planetary-utopias, accessed January 11, 2022. ↑

19. “Straight time” is a term used by José Esteban Muñoz in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York: New York University Press, 2019. The term was originally established by Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York: NYU Press, 2003. ↑