The Age of Cultural Personalism: A Critical Look at Anna Kornbluh’s Concept of Too Late Capitalism

The article is devoted to the discussion of the concept of immediacy as a cultural style of too late capitalism by the American philosopher and researcher of contemporary culture Anna Kornbluh. The significant contribution of this concept to understanding the dynamic transformations of modern culture is noted. According to Kornbluh, today’s capitalism is characterized by the acceleration of circulation processes, as well as the growing role of social networks and Internet platforms. The acceleration of circulation affects the sphere of culture, which is increasingly characterized by immediacy — avoidance of intermediaries and mediating forms, intimacy and immanence, personalism and individualism. In literature, the genre of autofiction is increasingly noticeable, cinema is increasingly characterized by immanence, and philosophy is flooded with autotheories. According to Kornbluh, immediacy is a problem for critical understanding of the contradictions of modern society, since any serious theory requires mediation — elevation above empirical visibility and a systemic view. However, the article challenges the capitalist determination of the cultural trends identified by Kornbluh. In order to properly reveal them, a shift from political economic to anthropological optics is necessary. The main vulnerability of Kornbluh’s concept is that it is an attempt to remove responsibility from leftist theories for what they have led to. Accordingly, the conclusion is made that the root cause of immediacy as a cultural style should be sought not so much in capitalism as in the countercultural tendencies generated by left criticism, which contributed to the undermining of class analysis, the fragmentation of society and the fixation on the problems of race, sex and gender, which partly led to the personalization and immanentization of culture.