Generation Bubble

Do the Collapse: Mark Fisher on the Death of Pop Music

Fisher’s notion of the decalibration of technology from cultural form goes some way toward describing the current iteration of a development first identified by Benjamin, but it obscures a very important material condition. The “stalling, stagnation and retardation of culture” are not dialectical consequences of an unreflective technophilic flight forward into technology, nor do they simply herald the arrival at some entropic limit to human creativity. Rather, what Fisher has hit upon is the shadowy concomitant of current labor conditions: the very technology that has sent pop music and other cultural forms hurtling toward the void have also extended communication to one’s home, car — indeed, to one’s pocket or purse — and by their intrusion have effectively eliminated excuses for not working. One can no longer “get lost,” can no longer escape the workplace precisely because the workplace no longer observes firm brick-and-mortar limits. Work has virtualized, and, in so doing, has metastasized, settling in unwonted crannies of their lives until it achieves a seeming omnipresence.