Simon During > Quotes

“As many have noted, modern capitalism promises experiential satisfaction through consumption at the same time as it systematically deprives consumers of the stability, knowledge, and time for full, subtle, thought-filled experiences. In the end, then, in trying to provide a template for a private ethic of catitalism's refusal we are driven to bind together principles that are in contradiction with one another. To live on the system's outer limits is to live ascetically; it is to aestheticize mundane experience; it is to deliver one-self over to temporalities other than those of capitalist production and consumption; it is to acquire the resources from which fully and freely to reflect on a wide range of engagements in the world; it is to engage in protects that have no truck with formally instituted politics.”
― Simon During, Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity