Network Notion #1
Semiotics of the End: On Capitalism and the Apocalypse
Alessandro Sbordoni
The end of the world is just another sign of semiocapitalism.
Semiotics of the End is a collection of thirteen essays about the end of the world and its representation in XXI-century culture. The apocalypse as such will not take place because it is already finished. Today, there is no longer any difference between the end of the world and capitalism itself: from Britney Spears’ Till the World Ends to The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time, from Avengers: Endgame to Donnie Darko, and all the way down to the internet’s Backrooms, the world never ends but is reproduced again and again according to the semio-logic of capital.
In contrast with Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism, Semiotics of the End is a manifesto for the imagination of another relationship with the end. If it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, as Slavoj Žižek, Fredric Jameson, and Mark Fisher put it, it is only because we have not imagined anything yet. The end is just the beginning.
Alessandro Sbordoni was born in Cagliari in 1995. He is the author of The Shadow of Being: Symbolic / Diabolic (2nd edition, Miskatonic Virtual University Press, 2023). He is an Editor of the British magazine Blue Labyrinths and the Italian magazine Charta Sporca. He lives in London and works for the Open Access publisher Frontiers.
Author: Alessandro Sbordoni
Cover design: Alex Walker
Production: Chloë Arkenbout, Tommaso Campagna
Printing and binding: GPS Group
Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2023.
ISBN: 9789083328249
Institute of Network Cultures
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA)
Email: info@networkcultures.org
Web: www.networkcultures.org
This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommerical ShareAlike 4.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit www.creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-sa/4.0
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