If Fisher were alive today (he tragically died in 2017), he would note that the COVID-19 pandemic was a moment of "future shock" in reverse. For a brief window in 2020, the future did arrive—empty streets, remote everything, a pause button on normalcy. But what did we do? We desperately tried to restore the old normal. We chose repetition over reinvention.
: He focused on how this "cancellation" manifested in the culture industry , particularly in popular music and film, where the sense of "future shock" has entirely disappeared. 2. Key Symptoms of the "Cancelled Future"
Think about fashion, architecture, or movie design. In 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed a white, minimalist future. In 1982, Blade Runner showed a dense, multicultural, rain-slicked future. Now, look at Dune: Part Two (2024). It is beautiful. It is also a revival of 1970s brutalist sci-fi. Fisher would argue that we no longer produce new futures; we only curate old ones. mark fisher slow cancellation of the future
Fisher argued that sometime around the turn of the millennium, society lost its ability to generate new visions of the future. We did not run out of time; we ran out of imagination .
The title "Slow Cancellation of the Future" encapsulates Fisher's argument that one of the most debilitating effects of late capitalism is its ability to undermine our sense of the future as a realm of possibility and promise. This "slow cancellation" refers to how capitalist ideology not only fails to deliver on its promises but also systematically erodes our collective imagination and anticipation of a better future. If Fisher were alive today (he tragically died
Fisher traced the root cause to —the pervasive belief that capitalism is the only viable political and economic system. If there is no alternative to the present, why imagine a different future?
However, Fisher observed that this trajectory stalled sometime at the turn of the millennium. If you play a hit song from 2005 today, it does not sound "old" in the way a 1960s track sounded in 1980. The sonic textures, the fashion, and the visual aesthetics have settled into a plateau. We no longer expect the future to sound or look different; we only expect it to be faster and more high-definition. We desperately tried to restore the old normal
: He argues that the dominance of capitalist realism leads to an impoverished present, where possibilities for change and improvement are foreclosed.
: Fisher draws on Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology to describe how the past continues to haunt the present. In the context of "Slow Cancellation of the Future," hauntology helps explain how failed or abandoned futures (and the futures that were never possible) continue to affect our present, contributing to a sense of temporal dislocation and disorientation.
: "Slow Cancellation of the Future" appeals to readers across various disciplines, including cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and political science.
Look at your social media feed. Look at the new movie trailer. Look at the "aesthetic" you are curating. Ask yourself: Is this new, or is this a memory of something I was told was new twenty years ago?