Spectres of pessimism : a cultural logic of the worst / Mark Schmitt.
Schmitt, Mark, author.
2023
B829 .S36 2023
Available Online

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Title Spectres of pessimism : a cultural logic of the worst / Mark Schmitt.
Author Schmitt, Mark, author.
ISBN 3031253515 (electronic bk.)
9783031253515 (electronic bk.)
9783031253508
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25351-5
Published Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2023]
Language English
Description 1 online resource.
Other Standard Identifiers 10.1007/978-3-031-25351-5 doi
Call Number B829 .S36 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification 149/.6
Summary 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 narrativesfrom 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 No, Denis Villeneuve and Lars von Trier.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Series Palgrave pivot.
Available in Other Form Spectres of pessimism
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Intro
Acknowledgements
About This Book
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: "Being for Being Against": Pessimism and the Cultural Moment
A New Pessimism
A Haunted Conjuncture: Pessimism and Temporality
Pessimist Onto-Epistemologies
A Conjunctural Pessimist Text: Hari Kunzru's Red Pill
Spectres of Pessimism
Chapter 2: From Pessimism of Theory to Radical Utopianism: Gramsci, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies
Political Pessimism
Theory and Practice: Horkheimer and Adorno's Critical Theory

Cultural Studies: Stuart Hall's Conjunctural Analysis as Pessimist Method
Hope After Pessimism? Utopia Today
Notes
Chapter 3: Undoing Better Worlds: Anti-Utopianism from Cioran to Afropessimism
Against Utopianism
Utopianism Versus Pessimism
Afrofuturism and Afropessimism
Pessimist-Utopian Care?
Notes
Chapter 4: The Kids Will Not Be Alright: Grievable Futures and the Ethics of Reproductive Pessimism
The Child as Figuration of the Future
From Reproductive Futurism to Reproductive Pessimism

"I Knew My Destination": Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival
Time Destroys All Things: Gaspar Noé's Irréversible
Ethics, Grief and Representational Form
Notes
Chapter 5: Embracing the Apocalypse: Extinction, Cosmic Pessimism and Ahuman Futures
Against Life
Thinking Extinction
Affirmation of the End: Lars von Trier's Melancholia
Taking the Exit: Camille Griffin's Silent Night
Ahuman Futures
Conclusion: Cultural Studies, Prefigurative Thought and the (Ab)Uses of Pessimism
Bibliography
Index

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