Ross Barkan (2017)
Award-winning novelist, journalist, and new romantic
According to the American writer Ross Barkan, the times they are a-changin' and we are about to witness a romantic backlash to technology as the younger generation discover that it is in fact possible to live offline: "A rebellion, both conscious and unconscious, has begun." [1]
Having said that, the truth is Barkan isn't sure about this coming cultural upheaval. After all, the future cannot be predicted, so he is merely putting forward a hypothesis (i.e., hazarding a guess) in order to produce an interesting end of year column for The Guardian.
Thus, whilst he insists that this nascent new romanticism echoes "in its own way, a great shift that came more than two centuries ago, out of the ashes of the Napoleonic wars", he still qualifies his argument by placing it in the non-space between maybe and might.
Personally, I doubt that this rebellion against digital order and technology's enframing of existence will amount to very much. Those whom Barkan calls the young may be superstitious and in search of spiritual meaning - may indulge in nostalgia for a time they never knew and amuse themselves by constructing retro-futures - but I don't see them switching off their smartphones.
Indeed, when I spoke to a small group of pagan witches a few months ago in praise of silence, sececy, and shadows [2], they were receptive to the ideas, but it was also clear that, as Barkan points out, the digital era has permanently changed the way people view the world and interact with one another:
"For thousands of years, mature human beings knew how to be alone in their own thoughts and tolerate boredom. The smartphone's addictive entertainments immolated attention spans."
And that's the problem, is it not?
The changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were certainly significant and wide-ranging, but the poets, painters, and philosophers of Romanticism had not had their attention spans immolated, their imaginations captured, or their brains rewired. And so they could still think, feel, and dream in a recognisably human manner. I'm not sure, however, that's still the case today.
For, arguably, the thing which the Romantics feared most has happened; not merely the enslavement of flesh and blood to the iron machine, but technology's "encroachment on the human spirit" and the emergence of an inhuman (and transhuman) future.
Betraying his own romantic optimism, Barkan ultimately hopes, like Nietzsche, that art will prove to be the counternihilistic force par excellence [4]; art, that is, made by a creative class of men and women who, although beleagured, have retained something of their humanity and are ready to rise up - not the mediocre art produced by AI.
If, for now, smartphones are ubiquitous and the tech giants still own and dominate the present, it is not clear whether they will own and dominate the future [3]. For generational change is coming, says Barkan, and "romanticism won't hold still; it promises, at the minimum, a wild and unsteady flame" that might illuminate the world to come in an unexpected manner: "Perhaps we are ready to be surprised and amazed again." [5]
Yeah, perhaps ...
Notes
[1] Ross Barkan, 'The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms', The Guardian (28 Dec 2023): click here. All lines quoted in this post are from this article by Barkan, unless otherwise indicated.
[2] See 'In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Ocuultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency' (9 Sept 2023): click here.
As a matter of fact, Barkan holds out even less hope than I do in the power of magic; it will take more than spells and incantations to challenge the digital world order and irrationality, on its own, is no virtue:
"Embracing the paranormal or believing, wholeheartedly,
that star positions can determine personalities can be harmless fun –-until the delusions become life-consuming and despair takes hold when
they inevitably do not deliver on their promise."
[3] Writing in a slightly different version of his piece in The Guardian published on his substack (Political Currents), Barkan says:
"Facebook and Twitter are losing their grip. TikTok rises, but will last only so long. Instagram hums through its strange middle period, no longer a place for genuine photography, reflecting unreality back to us. None of these platforms will vanish. But I would bet they will all matter less in ten years."
See Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' (28 Dec 2023): click here.
[4] For Nietzsche, if we are ever to move beyond the impasse of the present and give birth to new forms and ways of being, then "unheard-of-artistic powers will be needed". For art alone is the "great means of making life possible [...] the great stimulant of life". I think we might do well to question such romanticism with respect to the potential of art as means of cultural rehabilitation (and, indeed, Nietzsche will himself later insist on tying his own aesthetics to a form of Dionysian pessimism).
The lines quoted from Nietzsche can be found in 'The Philosopher: Reflections on the Struggle between Art and Knowledge', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 9, and The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 452, respectively.
[5] Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' ... click here.
