The Digital States of Exception of Late-Capitalist Modernity: Hyperreality and Consumption, Intellectual Spaces in Crisis and Demographic Transition
Introduction: The Fragments of Modernity
Part I: Political Legitimacy, Ethics, and the Paradox of Expediency
Spain’s Principle-Based Politics: The Mask of Ethics
The Corruption Scandal as Structural Symptom
Economic Imaginaries in the AI Era
Political economy: growth, resources and the politics of legitimacy
Part II: Demographic Transition, Immigration, and Social Integration
Spain’s Wager on Immigration in an Aging Continent
The Nationalism Paradox
Cultural infrastructure as soft power (and its contradictions)
Part III: The Intellectual Commons in Crisis and Reimagination
The Death of the Literary Café and Its Resurrection
Spatial Theory and the Crisis of Chance Encounter
The Urban and Cultural Commons in Transformation
Part IV: Violence, Courage, and the Fragility of Civil Society
The Bondi Beach Massacre and the Question of Heroism
Biopolitics, State Exception, and Civil Resistance
Civic life, security and the public realm: Bondi as mirror
Geopolitical Tensions and the Unraveling Consensus
Part V: Hyperreality, Luxury Markets, and the Simulacra of Distinction
Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi: The Globalization of Luxury as Sign
Cultural Capital and Cosmopolitan Reproduction
The Contradiction Within Luxury: Craft and Authenticity
The cultural economy: luxury, experience and the new retail theatre
Part VI: Architectural Legacy, Temporal Crisis, and Unfinished Worlds
Frank Gehry’s Mortality and the Toronto Towers
Somerset’s Transformation and the Rural Cultural Turn
Part VII: Media, Technology, and the Crisis of Democratic Discourse
AI and the Erosion of Editorial Integrity
The BBC and the Reproduction of Elite Culture
Part VIII: Synthesis and Philosophical Implications
The Question of Authenticity in Late Modernity
Against Nostalgic Resolution
The Fragility of the Common World
Conclusion: Reading Between the Lines
Between Fragility and Resilience
References
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.
[Written, Researched, and Edited by Pablo Markin. Some parts of the text have been produced with the aid of Grok, xAI, Comet, Perplexity, Qwen, Alibaba, and ChatGPT, OpenAI, tools (December 20, 2025). The featured image has been generated in Canva (December 20, 2025).]
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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Pablo Markin (December 20, 2025). The Digital States of Exception of Late-Capitalist Modernity: Hyperreality and Consumption, Intellectual Spaces in Crisis and Demographic Transition. Open Access Blog. Retrieved April 16, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15ehb