The Cult of Yesterday

Capitalism, Necromancy, and the Dark Side of Nostalgia

River Quintana

Feb 09, 2024

Some of the sources of Pop Art VI, Peter Blake

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Capitalism, it seems, can’t let go of the past. Like a necromancer, it reanimates the corpses of bygone trends, ideologies, and aesthetics, then sells them back to us at a markup. This... See more

But this obviously contributed to a feeling of decline in the long-run, because mass culture continued to do the thing it always does: avoid artistic innovation in order to maximize profit. But once poptimism established that only the mainstream "mattered," it set up audiences to judge the health of culture on its least artistic output. If we have... See more

In Jameson’s formulation, postmodernism registered an economic and cultural vibe shift, rippling through a world whose final barriers to global capital circulation were crumbling. Under so-called late capitalism, an alchemy of multinational finance and postindustrial consumer fantasias powered a cultural regime of ahistorical pastiche, defanged... See more