The American essayist Fredric Jameson died recently. One of his most famous quips (sometimes wrongly attributed to me) holds today more than ever: it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. What if we apply the same logic to Jameson himself? His entire way of life was much closer to what the French call les palissades, the stating of the obvious attributed to the mythical figure of Monsieur la Palice, like: ‘One hour before his death, Monsieur la Palice was still fully alive.’