Gramsci Theme Parks - by Sachin - Summer Lightning
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Gramsci Theme Parks<br>The economy of things in the unmaking<br>Sachin<br>Aug 19, 2026
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One of the most useful philosophies for understanding the weirding or polycrisis has been Žižek’s account of cynicism as ideology . According to Zizek, the cynical subject no longer needs to believe in the institutions and machines that surround him. He can recognize their contradictions, see the private interests behind their universal claims, and assume that their official language is largely a fiction, while continuing to participate in them because doing so remains advantageous, necessary, or simply easier than not participating. Paired with the familiar paraphrase of Gramsci’s interregnum –The old world is dying while the new one is struggling to be born…. – Cynicism is one of the ways the old world keeps functioning during the interval.<br>Versions of this diagnosis became more popular in the West starting circa 2015. It has been used to explain support for Trump: voters who treat the obvious artificiality, exaggeration, and grift as features rather than revelations capable of discrediting him. It has appeared in the discourse around bullshit jobs. It can also be used to explain elite overproduction and academia, where participants possess elaborate critiques of credentialism and institutional corruption, while continuing to compete intensely within those systems.<br>What follows cynicism is death . The canonical example for cynicism as ideology is the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. The recurring motif that has been popularized is Vaclav Havel’s shopkeeper who puts up the sign “Workers of the world, unite!”, but does so because he wants to be left alone to do business, not because he believes in it. Much less talked about are the Necrorealist movements and the scary poems popular at that time. In his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, Alexei Yurchak writes about the Necrorealist movement in 70s Soviet Union that was obsessed with making films and performances filled with corpses, zombies, purposeless violence, decomposition, and bodies suspended somewhere between life and death. Yurchak notes that these films and performances did not focus on the horror of death but on its absurdity and fascination with death as a process. This aesthetic emerged alongside an actual gerontocracy whose leaders appeared increasingly ancient and infirm while the political forms surrounding them remained fixed and monumental. The culture began producing images appropriate to a social order that could no longer be comfortably described as either alive or dead.<br>The Necrorealist movement seems to have been largely confined to the artistic class, but Yurchak identifies a popular form among ordinary Soviet citizens: “scary little poems,” strange verses that take mundane aspects of Soviet reality and render them uncannily violent, such as:<br>Alësha was cooking meat stew with no sound,<br>His daddy was legless and crawling around.<br>A little girl found a grenade in the field.<br>“What is this, uncle?” with trust she appealed.<br>“Pull on the ring,” he said, “you will find out.”<br>For a while her bow will be flying about.<br>A little boy Vitya played with a gun,<br>Taking it apart was tricky but fun.<br>His finger by accident pulled on the trigger,<br>His brain sprayed the ceiling with splatter and vigor.
Between these and various other examples Yurchak discusses, there seems to have been a fascination with the process of death as the Soviet Union made its way through the Gramsci Gap.<br>Gramsci’s formulation is useful because, as far as institutions are concerned, death is never a singular event. Political orders often remain recognizable long after the conditions that gave them coherence have disappeared. The Holy Roman Empire survived until 1800s in various strange and thin forms. The Habsburg monarchy lived through successive losses of territory, military defeats, nationalist movements, and changes in the European balance of power. By the time the empire met its end in 1918, its death had been underway for several generations.<br>Institutional death therefore creates a peculiar temporality . The old arrangement no longer possesses liveness; it may be undead as Zizek says, yet its architecture, bureaucracy, and incentives continue to organize everyday behavior. Contenders to replace the system exist but they do not arrive fully formed. People inhabit a world that can feel simultaneously permanent and terminal. The longer cynical participation keeps such an order operating, the longer the dying process can become.<br>As the interval lengthens, culture becomes increasingly interested in death as a process : decomposition, incapacitation, ruin and bodily transformation. Stephen King, writing about horror in Danse Macabre, calls this sensation “things in the unmaking.” We live in civilized societies where actual death and violence are removed from us. The dying are sent to old age...