How to describe decadence? It is easier to agree on its features than to arrive at a consensus conceptualization: economic decline, low productivity growth, withered state capacities, and a social landscape characterized by high inequality and crumbling infrastructure—but also fused with high-tech innovations, often directed to surveillance and control. But what could it all mean, other than “down”? The concept du jour is premised on the notion that we are leaving capitalism and enterin...
