Capital is nothing if it is not parsimonious, and for the last thirty years it is has sustained itself by relying on readymade forms of existential affiliation. This reliance on already already-existing forms of identification—all those nationalisms and religions, with any number of archaisms ready to crawl out of the crypt—is what postmodernism has been. There are no ‘pure’ archaisms, nothing ever repeats without difference, and ISIS is properly understood as a cybergothic phenomenon which combines the ancient with the contemporary (beheadings on the web). It faces not a confident capitalist modernity, but a capitalism that has retreated from the present, never mind the future. Left to its own resources—or rather, left to the resources it retains from previous forms of exploitation—capital can never come up with anything new. Postmodernism was its ideal form, and the naturalised postmodernism of capitalist realism was its optimal solution to political and cultural antagonism. The UK has specialised in developing the steampunk model: Victorian social relations, but now with iPhones.

This reliance on already-existing forms of identification - all those nationalisms and religions, with any number of archaisms ready to crawl out of the crypt - is what postmodernism has been.