Spectres of Pessimism : A Cultural Logic of the Worst

This book argues that philosophical pessimism can offer vital impulses for contemporary cultural studies. Pessimist thought offers ways to interrogate notions of temporality, progress and futurity. When the horizon of future expectation is increasingly shaped by the prospect of apocalypse and extinction, an exploration of pessimist thought can help to make sense of an increasingly complex and uncertain world by affirming rather than suppressing the worst. This book argues that a cultural logic of the worst is at work in a substantial section of contemporary philosophical thought and cultural representations. Spectres of pessimism can be found in contemporary ecocritical thought, antinatalist philosophies, political thought, and cultural theory, as well as in literature, film, and popular music. In its unsettling of temporality, this new pessimism shares sensibilities with the field of hauntology. Both deconstruct linear narratives of time that adhere to a stable sequence of past, present and future. Mark Schmitt therefore couples pessimism and hauntology to explore the spectres of pessimism in a range of theories and narratives―from ecocriticism, antinatalism and queer theory to utopianism, from afropessimism to the fiction of Hari Kunzru and Thomas Ligotti to the films of Camille Griffin, Gaspar Noé, Denis Villeneuve and Lars von Trier. Acknowledgements 5 About This Book 7 Contents 8 Chapter 1: Introduction: “Being for Being Against”: Pessimism and the Cultural Moment 9 A New Pessimism 10 A Haunted Conjuncture: Pessimism and Temporality 16 Pessimist Onto-Epistemologies 18 A Conjunctural Pessimist Text: Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill 22 Spectres of Pessimism 28 Chapter 2: From Pessimism of Theory to Radical Utopianism: Gramsci, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies 35 Political Pessimism 36 Theory and Practice: Horkheimer and Adorno’s Critical Theory 39 Cultural Studies: Stuart Hall’s Conjunctural Analysis as Pessimist Method 45 Hope After Pessimism? Utopia Today 51 Notes 54 Chapter 3: Undoing Better Worlds: Anti-Utopianism from Cioran to Afropessimism 59 Against Utopianism 60 Utopianism Versus Pessimism 63 Afrofuturism and Afropessimism 68 Pessimist-Utopian Care? 76 Notes 77 Chapter 4: The Kids Will Not Be Alright: Grievable Futures and the Ethics of Reproductive Pessimism 81 The Child as Figuration of the Future 82 From Reproductive Futurism to Reproductive Pessimism 83 “I Knew My Destination”: Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival 88 Time Destroys All Things: Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible 91 Ethics, Grief and Representational Form 99 Notes 102 Chapter 5: Embracing the Apocalypse: Extinction, Cosmic Pessimism and Ahuman Futures 106 Against Life 107 Thinking Extinction 110 Affirmation of the End: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia 116 Taking the Exit: Camille Griffin’s Silent Night 119 Ahuman Futures 123 Conclusion: Cultural Studies, Prefigurative Thought and the (Ab)Uses of Pessimism 128 Bibliography 133 Index 140 "This book argues that philosophical pessimism can offer vital impulses for contemporary cultural studies. Pessimist thought offers ways to interrogate notions of temporality, progress and futurity. When the horizon of future expectation is increasingly shaped by the prospect of apocalypse and extinction, an exploration of pessimist thought can help to make sense of an increasingly complex and uncertain world by affirming rather than suppressing the worst. This book argues that a cultural logic of the worst is at work in a substantial section of contemporary philosophical thought and cultural representations"--Page 4 of cover