k-punk on top form
“Azzellini and Ressler’s daring hypothesis is that Latin America is not some atavism, a residual space yet to be subsumed into global capital, but the vanguard – the first area of the world to adopt neoliberalism and the first to seriously propose an alternative to it.”
I’m not sure I’d count this as daring, quite; the collective ability of Latin American populations to see through, around and beyond capitalism is a wonder to behold.
Also:
it is important at this point to stress the aesthetic dimension of capitalist realism, its echoes of socialist realism’s disdain for abstraction and montage, and its similar preference for the homely, the populist, the familiar: that which pushes already-existing emotional triggers.
This is in superficial conflict with the usual understanding of neophilia capitalism in general, and within the culture industry in particular. But at a deeper level, I suspect it really is true; much surface change, but nothing fundamental.