Undead

“The way contemporary cultures seem to revel in the aesthetics of the mid-late ‘80s isn’t just conservative escapist disengagement or a retreat into childish nostalgia; it’s a reconsidering of the story of the forging of the neo-liberal consensus that was ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher, but also by MTV, the Roland TR-808, Michael Jackson, Nintendo, AIDS, ‘valley girls’, anime, the rise of fast-food, political correctness, the Amiga 500 and even the goddamn Rubik’s Cube. It’s not that the present is now haunted by the hazy, half-remembered ghosts of the circumstances of the ‘80s, but that these circumstances never really died. By resurrecting the ghosts of the birth of neo-liberalism we discover just how little has changed, how much of the ideology of the 1980s has remained unchallenged for the last quarter of a century. This is particularly the case with the generation under 30 who’ve grown up entirely in a world dominated by these ghosts, because looking at their origins reveals just how circumstantial they are – it places the experience of neo-liberalism, of the end of history, back into history. ”

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