Inaugural Lecture of Professor Oli Mould

The contemporary political and cultural landscape appears trapped in a temporal loop. Saturated with retro aesthetics, rebooted media, and political appeals to idealised pasts, our collective imagination is increasingly unable to project genuine alternatives to late capitalism. This talk investigates how our present conjuncture has become a crisis of culture as much as a crisis of politics, locking us into a state of cultural entrapment and temporal stagnation.

Tracing the evolution of late capitalism from the pivotal global ruptures of 1968 (a moment defined by planetary consciousness and associated radical protests) the lecture explores how capitalist political economy adapted by co-opting counter-culture, flexibility, and creative production. In doing so, it established a debt-driven economy that commodified time and neutered artistic newness in favour of repetition. As Mark Fisher observed, this "slow cancellation of the future" reduced nostalgia from a passive emotion into an actively mined fuel for economic and political dominance.

To break free from this claustrophobic cycle, the talk calls for a deliberate revival of "stranger things"; realities, aesthetics, and socialities that embrace radical difference, openness, newness and a differing view of what it means to construct societies. Drawing upon pluriverse imaginaries ("a world of many worlds"), decolonial frameworks, and radical creative practices, this talk outlines postcapitalist possibilities capable of disrupting present temporalities and fulfilling the unrealised promises of transformative social movements.

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