Work, progress, and convention are no longer essential requirements. Economists, philosophers, and sociologists all agree that, even within a linear view of history, these structures have had their day. Prometheus is under suspicion.

Unproductive Play

There is no point in going back to Prometheus except to find support for a description of what will replace the defunct god. The themes of liberation and energeticism have become questionable. They will doubtless reemerge—their birth and death occurs many times throughout human history—but for the present, as a result of saturation, there is a new dawn and other constants are now being proposed; their outlines remain unclear, but the observer of society cannot remain indifferent to them. Thus the return of what has been repressed: unproductive exertion, in other words orgy, is set to replace energetic progres-sionism.

It is in this sense that one may say that...