Day in, day out: pop goes the city

Abstract

Today we are inhabiting an era of accelerated digitized global capitalism, what Slavoj Zizek calls the “new dark ages” and Alain Badiou refers to as the “dialectics of black”. The need is for updated new theorization of this formation and better empirical accounts. This essay looks at the recent development of digital leisure cultures around popular music in Manchester (UK) especially since the global financial crisis, which still permeates our globe in unforseen ways. This understanding of the contours of a rapidly accelerated digitized capitalism utilizes various resources. Building on this idea this article argues that what we see as “claustropolitanism” (the feeling that we want to escape the planet because we are now so foreclosed) is fast becoming a post-crash cultural condition spreading globally. For Paul Virilio, who is claustrophobic, Joy Division’s mantra “feel it closing in” from “Digital” is personal, but the mediatised global pop culture is also experiencing the same feeling. This paper draws on the author’s long-term empirical research into the city of Manchester and its popular cultural history to tease out some theoretical implications for the study of digital society and capitalism in general.