Mark Fisher uses the term “capitalist realism” to describe our current age – one that, according to him, has come after postmodernism. Postmodernism emerged at a moment when there was still conceivably an alternative to capitalism. It has now been more than three decades since the concept was originally theorized in cultural, social, and political theory. Today, no viable alternatives to capitalism seem to really exist. Fisher defines “capitalist realism” by referring to the statement often attributed to Jameson and Žižek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.[1] This statement works materially as well as ideologically.

Postmodernism, according to Marxists like Jameson and Žižek, is the cultural logic of late capitalism, which we might also view in relation to the rise of neoliberalism and the dominance of finance capital. It is in terms of finance capital that we can even go further in understanding the logic behind the “breakdown of the signifying chain,” or the “demise of symbolic efficiency,” or even the concept of the postmodern “perpetual present.” Deleuze and Guattari are correct in linking the deconstruction of meaning in late capitalism to the market imperative to transcend barriers that might prohibit or limit exchange in the interest of procuring more profit. Finance capital pushes this even further, particularly mixed with the political logic of neoliberalism, which has as part of its objective the dismantling of state mechanisms that limited possibilities of trade and exchange of financial commodities. With finance capital, it is much truer that “all that is solid melts into air.” But also, what is finance if not a mechanism for borrowing from the future? Finance means that we borrow from our own future (earnings) in order to pay for things in the present. In this way, the future never seems to arise because it has already been borrowed. We end up constantly working toward paying back what we borrowed from our future selves. In this way, we are constantly living in a perpetual present.[2] Blade Runner, in its various different versions, seems to encapsulate this fact of a constant perpetual present in cultural form.

With each new stage in postmodernity, from its post-Keynesian beginning to the “end of history” period, and even today in capitalist realism, the film has received new treatment, marking the historical moment in some way. It is postmodern simulation and simulacra of itself. Every version is a copy without an original. As I discussed at the beginning of [chapter two], it is increasingly difficult to discern which version is the true original. Like Star Wars, Blade Runner never seems to be complete. In this way, then, the film provides a kind of “cognitive mapping” for the postmodern present. What does it mean when someone says “I’ve seen Blade Runner”? Which Blade Runner? The film as a referent to itself is lost. With the announcement of the release of a sequel to the film directed by Denis Villeneuve in 2017, we might well ask the question: sequel to which Blade Runner? How will this new film mark the previous versions of the film? How will this film retroactively re-create Blade Runner? History, it would still seem, is never final; it is neither complete, nor unique. There may be multiple histories (plural), but it is important to remember that the past is sutured by the politics and culture of the present, which itself is defined by visions of the possible future. As a critical dystopia, Blade Runner can still define the capitalist realism of our present. It is a dialectical image that, on the one hand, provides insights into conceptions of the subject, but on the other hand, it is (still) a look ahead into the negative aspects of unfettered multinational capitalism.