Forty years ago, these days, the story ended, modernity ended and the twentieth century stopped beating, as we had known it until then. The name that indicated this leave or this collapse, it quickly went viral: postmodernity. It was called The postmodern condition Jean-Francois Lyotard’s epoch-marker, released in 1979 which opened the dance and the escape from history and the ideology of progress. The postmodern it did not just designate an artistic conception, but it marked the liquidation of the furious century, of ideologies and great stories, the end of public spirit, the return of the private individual who was then called Reflux, which today only has a gastro-esophageal meaning. In postmodernity, the ancient returned in false guise, like a grandfather disguised as a grandson, it was the short circuit of history, communism became phlegmy and then showed the sign of its defeat, political terrorism was ending its golden age which then culminated in the Years of Lead. The twentieth century of two world wars was now buried, great revolutions and civil wars, irruption of the masses and genocides. “With history I light my pipe” announced Roland Barthes. Then it was Gianni Vattimo who certified in thought "the end of modernity".
Commercial TV and private radio exploded, the rebellious spirit of '68 turned to sex, customs and consumption. From a collective he became single. And in the world, Reagan e Thatcher on the one hand and the vigorous Polish Pope on the other, opened up new economic and media scenarios, political and ecumenical. Deregulation was born, the escape from socialism and statism began, mentre ad est, Solidarnosc triggered the impulse that would later infect the entire Soviet bloc. Since then the revolution ceased to be a political program to indicate only the revolution of goods, of the markets, of objects. Technology replaced ideology, economics took the place of history, the century went from totalitarian to global. Everyone felt freer and more alone, interconnected but uprooted, disoriented nomads in search of a private paradise rather than a historical paradise. No one thought more than an idea, a movement, a party, could give meaning and happiness to a life, to a people, to a country. It felt like a liberation, a release of energy; hedonism and lightheartedness reigned supreme.
But on closer inspection, something important, something decisive was happening and we weren't entirely aware of it. That process of which we are experiencing the most visible effects today was beginning: the future was disappearing. Everything was here, Now, the fleeting moment, take life on the fly; It matters how I feel, Now. Previous years had declared war on the past, parricide, liberation from everything that came from history and tradition; ancient stood for backward, back, aunt. But now the second half of the parable was fulfilled. The future also ended. There were no more waiting horizons, utopias were no longer cultivated, revolutionary paradises on earth, redemptions announced. The future suddenly lost all attraction, he bent on the present. Then the dictatorship of the present was born, that infinite global present in which we have been immersed since then, seamless and perspective. The boundaries between art and advertising were lost, between thought and communication, between philosophy and sociology. The past reappeared in light guise, like vintage and fragment. Even modernity, getting older, it became modern. There were those who invented archaeo-futurism.
What does "disappearance of the future" mean?? It means that we no longer project ourselves further, no long projects, investments in generations to come, works destined to last. Indeed, the future generates anxiety, dismayed, fear. Why? If you remove all expectations for the future, the future remains only the time of our old age and then of our death. O to world catastrophes, ecological, technological, or linked to the overcrowding of the planet. In short, factors that dominate human will and generate the age of anxiety, the kingdom of anguish. So, better to remove the future, better chase it away, don't think about it.
Only technology tells us about the future. Future is today only the 5 G, l’i-phone 11, the new generation i-pad. The future is only the path of technology. The global structure cannot be questioned, the economic-social system, the dominant trend, public “values” and history as we have been taught, everything is fixed and unalterable, the path to tomorrow is one-way; the world can only mix, hybridize, enlarge, without changing direction and meaning; and as for expectations, we can only wait for the improvement of the technique or the market. The future disappears in politics and entrepreneurship, in religion and culture, in the family and at work. Everything overflows. If modernity marked the supremacy of time over being, postmodernity marked the primacy of "my" perception of time over sequence and historical narrative. Everything became contemporary, extemporaneous, subjective. Splinters of the past, slivers of the future, emotional thrills, been passengers. Capitalism became neo, then turbo, tecno, global, financial, but it replicates infinitely, with no way to overcome it. Except for refreshment oases, between degrowth, localism and ecological islands.
This has been the parable of postmodernism in these forty years. And now?
We cannot remain only posterity, aftereffects and hairpieces, cling to today endlessly. In order not to fear the future, we need to change our outlook, change the direction of life, be reborn to new life, found and impregnate tomorrow, wait for the gods. Name what comes after postmodern, otherwise he won't turn around.
MV, Panorama, n.8 2019
source – http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/paura-del-futuro/