Ubu has just published Depois do Futuro, by Italian philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi. It is more than timely reading in this Brazil of ours, where tragedies and catastrophes confront us every day. From fires to floods, murders to executions, not to mention the dismantling of public policies on the environment, culture, and education, everything makes us ask: where did the future go?
Berardi’s book was written in 2009, around the centenary of the Futurist Manifesto. It starts by analyzing the twentieth century—the century that believed in the future, in the power of industry and the technological revolution—to understand when this feeling that the future is over began to take hold. The internet economy bubble, the precarization of labor relations, and algorithmic surveillance are strategic elements in this disenchantment with what is to come.
But although everything conspires toward a state of collective depression, the book does not glorify such a response. Without any euphoric illusions, it calls for a critical attitude toward the present, placing its hopes in a post-futurist era.
Berardi does not believe that the new right-wing movements express a return of fascism. For him, the prevailing feeling today is melancholy. He says the old metaphor of the Enlightenment has been turned inside out, and the modern expectation of light’s constant expansion has been replaced by another: a “dark Enlightenment.” According to Berardi, this “dark Enlightenment” best encapsulates “the current perception of the future as something that threatens the humanist program.”
In the preface written especially for the Brazilian edition, Berardi states:
“Since the time of the Futurist Manifesto, sexual potency and political aggression were connected in the fascist imagination. But fascism was an expression of belonging: the mythology of blood and nation was based on a real sense of community. Not anymore. Today, people who vote for nationalist parties grew up in the age of unbridled individualism, trusted the promises of neoliberal selfishness, and found themselves losers. Now it is too late to embrace a new hope, a new imagination: the only thing they can do is share their hatred and their desire for revenge.”
It is our familiar Odiolândia… Hence “nihilism is the name of the emerging culture,” in Bifo Berardi’s words.
Franco Berardi. Depois do Futuro. Ubu Editora.
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