Semiotics of the End

In place of locusts, plagues and horse riders, the end appears to us as rising sea-levels, nuclear war, or A.I. uprisings. While this impending doom ought to frighten us more, it has become blasé, even comedic, for capital has captured our teleological imaginations, and has sold our demise right back to us; as we suspend our belief in its existence, our entire relationship with the future has changed. 
        Yet, where Mark Fisher’s cancellation of the future leaves us feeling helpless, the work of Alessandro Sbordoni attempts to reverse this hauntological approach through a restoration of the potenza of the future as a nothingness that nonetheless haunts us; feedback from the future guides the present. If there is an end, it is also a beginning, which means the future is still up for grabs. 
        This book contains thirteen essays reflecting on capital’s relationship with its own end, from cultural analyses of Britney Spears, Donnie Darko or the Internet’s Backrooms, to strategic theories that frame culture as a series of weapons to be used to subvert and change the cultural hegemoy of our time, and ward off the ghosts of the past.”

Having been originally published, in its first edition, by Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, Becoming Press has prepared, at the author’s request, a second edition of this work, which includes an afterwork written by Matt Bluemink, to whom we attribute the term “anti-hauntology”. This is still the second edition of the book, but a new version of it which mainly involved a redesign of the book to be in line with Becoming's 2025 style.