The twilight zone: a space where light and shadow intersect, where day ceases to be day and night ceases to be night. It is a transitional area, an unstable interval where everything can acquire a new meaning.

In the twilight, perceptions shift. What once appeared solid turns into a mystery, and what was dismissed reappears in a different form.

To dwell in that zone requires embracing ambiguity. It involves understanding that what is useful and what is obsolete can interchange at any time. This is where potential futures start to take shape.

The path begins at that threshold. You can start the crossing now by watching the episode, or later by letting the words prepare you. Either way, the goal remains the same: to enter The Twilight Zone.

Watch the full episode here.

The Twilight Zone emerged during the Cold War era, reflecting fears of nuclear destruction, anti-communist sentiment, and a growing technocratic outlook that influenced American politics and culture. It acted as a symbolic platform for exploring collective anxieties that couldn’t be openly addressed publicly. Each episode functioned as a testing ground for dramatizing conflicts between individuals and the government, freedom and conformity, and human values versus technical reasoning. As a widespread and household medium, television became a subtle venue for critiquing the promises and dangers associated with scientific progress.

In the early 1960s, television in the United States reached nearly every household, with over 90% owning sets. It became a platform where entertainment blended with moral and political lessons. Rod Serling, a Jewish-American screenwriter and WWII veteran, emerged as a prominent voice on American TV. Recognized for his sharp writing and distinctive voice during episode introductions, he created works that combined social criticism with narrative innovation. Serling used science fiction and fantastical stories to explore television’s potential, circumventing the censorship and self-censorship still prevalent in post-McCarthy America. Fantasy TV became a vital space to discuss issues like racism, totalitarianism, and nuclear fears indirectly. Meanwhile, the space race and belief in scientific progress fueled a futuristic imagination, oscillating between visions of technological utopias and dystopian nightmares. “The Twilight Zone” navigated this frontier, telling stories about the hopes and dangers of an era where technology both promised and threatened everything.

One of the most iconic episodes is “The Obsolete Man” (1961), where a librarian faces execution for being considered useless by a totalitarian regime. This brief but powerful TV play explores themes of human dignity, the importance of words, and the limits of political authority. It succinctly captures the anxiety of the era—the risk that human lives could be regarded as expendable in the face of advancing technology. Its symbolic significance remains relevant today, as it transcends political, religious, economic, technological, and anthropological boundaries.

The episode’s aesthetic emphasizes its philosophical depth. The staging is almost theatrical, featuring stark sets, rigid geometries, and a minimalist courtroom that serve as a symbolic stage. Bodies act as signs of authority or vulnerability, occupying space with gestures that carry existential significance. Intense lighting and close framing foster a confining, claustrophobic mood, as if every line spoken bears the weight of a sentence. This minimalist set approach echoes German Expressionism, seen in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, where grand architecture reduces humans to mere cogs. It also evokes Beckett and Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd, which uses sparse spaces to focus on human fate, and brutalist architecture by Le Corbusier and Paul Rudolph, where raw concrete enforces a disciplined form. Even the TV graphics reflect Swiss Modernism and Bauhaus aesthetics, emphasizing simple forms and geometric precision.

This visual device becomes even more powerful when it integrates into the televisual modernism of CBS studios. The production design of The Twilight Zone relied on simplicity: few sets, geometric typography, and high-contrast black-and-white imagery. Each element gained symbolic weight, making the series a total exercise in design. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media, described television as a medium that requires active viewer participation, despite its low resolution. “The Obsolete Man” leverages this trait: its sparse scenography invites the audience to fill in the gaps with their own unease. Raymond Williams, in Television: Technology and Cultural Form, viewed television as a continuous flow, but Serling challenged this by creating self-contained parables that encapsulate ethical and political issues. John Corner’s research on televisual aesthetics shows how post-war television was a space for formal experimentation, and The Twilight Zone exemplifies this through its philosophical storytelling, crafted with limited resources and visual discipline. In “The Obsolete Man,” the blend of material minimalism and formal refinement transforms the staging into a choreography of the obsolete: a few elements with maximum semantic impact, forming an architecture of images that uphold the parable of human dignity.

The word “obsolete” originates from the Latin obsolescere, meaning “to wear out through use,” “to fall into disuse,” or “to lose freshness.” It implies slow attrition—a state where something remains but no longer has a recognized function, like the shadow of a former utility. Serling illustrates this liminal state: the librarian is still alive, learned, and devout, yet his existence no longer aligns with the utility criteria set by the State. This creates a suspended value—a presence that unsettles because it embodies memories and beliefs the dominant order seeks to erase.
Walter Benjamin viewed ruins as spaces where the past intrudes into the present, revealing layers of time that defy the haste of modernity. Derrida, in “Archive Fever”, describes a “remainder” as what persists beyond erasure—what escapes the archival gesture. Obsolete concepts embody this: a living ruin, a remaining voice still speaking, a presence reminding us of our own perishability. Its power lies precisely in this paradox—what no longer functions as intended becomes a symbol of memory and a promise of future reinvention—the obsolete endures.

The modern economy structurally organizes obsolescence. The prevalent narrative around automation predicts a future where intelligent machines replace human workers, portraying a nearly messianic vision: machines as new deities that either free or enslave humanity. Aaron Benanav, in “Automation and the Future of Work,” challenges this view by arguing that the true driver of obsolescence is the stagnation of global economic growth. The decline in demand for labor is due to saturated industrial sectors and sluggish service industries, leading to a persistent surplus of workers.
This perspective builds on earlier insights. Karl Marx, in “Capital,” described the “reserve army of labour,” consisting of workers kept on the edges to pressure those who are employed. The surplus of workers is not accidental but a functional part of capitalism. David Graeber, in “Bullshit Jobs,” further updates this idea by showing that much of modern work no longer produces real value but merely mimics activity to sustain the social order. The idea of humans being obsolete, as portrayed in Serling, anticipates this logic: lives considered useless because they do not meet the productivity standards, despite containing knowledge, memory, and creativity. Capitalism actively creates obsolescence.

This passage shifts the focus. The perception of humans as obsolete isn’t caused by unstoppable technological acceleration but by an economic system unable to harness the social energies it once mobilized. Precarious employment, underemployment, and long-term unemployment define this reality. The concept of planned obsolescence, discussed by Tony Fry in ‘Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy,’ takes on an anthropological meaning here: lives designed to expire, careers meant to end, and knowledge prematurely rendered useless. The 21st-century economy functions as a spectacle of artificial scarcity—technology appears plentiful, yet stable jobs are hard to create, and wealth concentrates excessively. Design exacerbates this by producing products meant to become obsolete and promoting a culture of replacement. Fry argued that design preemptively erodes the future by anticipating its ruin. Georgina Voss extends this idea in ‘Systems Ultra,’ analyzing how future technologies are staged in fields like military defense, sexuality, and digital arts. Major tech events, such as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, showcase prototypes not just as products but as visions of possible worlds that set expectations for their immediate successors.

Design acts as a performative act that orchestrates obsolescence. For example, testing military drones, introducing sexbots promising mechanical intimacy, or displaying generative art installations all share a common language: they matter less for what they currently are than for the future they imply. Design fosters desire for what’s not yet real, making the present feel inadequate.

This logic also affects bodies. Voss shows how technological systems project futures onto life itself—bodies altered by prostheses, automated intimacy, and the promise of biotechnological extensions. Design no longer only shapes objects but also influences behaviors, routines, and desires. Humans are becoming prototypes, living in constant updates.

In this context, preserving the obsolete is a form of political resistance. Instead of succumbing to relentless replacement, archiving what remains and highlighting discarded elements turns the spectacle of innovation into a critical act. Design can choreograph obsolescence but also reveal it, transforming residues and failures into materials for the future.

This attitude toward expiry is clear in everyday digital life. Smartphones and computers are engineered to age fast; updates force users to abandon older versions. Obsolescence extends beyond technology to include languages, interfaces, and usage habits. The current focus on generative AI perpetuates this trend by claiming to replace human skills, fostering the idea that jobs, knowledge, and even writing methods are dispensable. Design thus teaches us about obsolescence.

In this context, the library positions itself as a space that opposes the flow of obsolescence. Springer and Turpin, in Fantasies of the Library, describe it as a stage for curatorial creativity, where each book represents a fragment of future possibilities. Umberto Eco, in La memoria vegetale e altri scritti di bibliofilia, viewed his collection as an experimental space, emphasizing that a library’s value is as much in what has been read as in what remains unread. Jorge Luis Borges, in “The Library of Babel,” elevated this idea to myth: an infinite universe of signs, both a promise and a maze of human memory.
The present introduces a significant tension. Artificial intelligence and digital archives offer ubiquity and the promise of endless access, yet they depend on fragile, dependent technical infrastructures. Derrida, in Archive Fever, reminds us that every archive contains a death drive: it preserves while also eliminating, holding on and preparing for disappearance. This tension becomes clearer when we consider real instances of loss and destruction. Digital archives multiply quickly, but their permanence relies on servers, file formats, and indexing systems that are inherently transient. The 2009 shutdown of GeoCities erased millions of pages that documented 1990s internet culture. Academic databases have become inaccessible when companies close down or change licenses, turning knowledge into a technical void. These episodes expose the structural fragility of the digital promise. Conversely, the physical library endures through time with remarkable durability. Fires at the National Library of Brazil in 2018 and at the Sarajevo Library in 1992 illustrate cultural tragedies; yet, they also show how the materiality of books allows fragments to be preserved, collections to be rebuilt, and memory to be re-established. During the 2012 war in Timbuktu, medieval manuscripts were saved and hidden in private homes, illustrating that the resilience of written culture depends on its tangible presence.
The printed book echoes the tension of the archive but adds the strength of its physical presence: it withstands political regimes, power outages, and technological changes. The material library embodies a permanence that surpasses any digital system. Serling’s librarian advocates for books, defending material permanence against total disappearance. Each volume ages gracefully, accumulating layers of interpretation, turning this accumulation into a reservoir of meaning.
The library resists obsolescence and actively preserves it. The act of collecting, archiving, and reinterpreting forgotten books transforms remnants into new opportunities for the future. Publishing, in this context, involves re-inscribing the discardable, transforming residues into critical material, and turning the obsolete into a platform for reinvention. The library endures because it both preserves and creates.

The imagination of the obsolete extends beyond economy, politics, or technique. It takes the form of myth, a symbolic language of transformation that translates the condition of the remainder into narrative. Karl Kerényi and C. G. Jung, in their essay “Essays on a Science of Mythology,” saw in the myth of the divine child a figure of renewal: a child exposed or excluded, yet a bearer of the future. The obsolete shares that liminal condition, presenting itself as a ruin that guards a promise and as a creative interval that opens space for metamorphosis.
Aby Warburg deepened this logic through his notion of the Nachleben der Antike: the survival of the ancient in new cultural forms. For Warburg, images and gestures return when culture gives them space, carrying latent symbolic energy. The obsolete can be read in that key: a presence kept in suspension until it finds its proper time again. Greek mythology confirms this intuition. Cronus, dethroned by his children, becomes the foundation of the order that follows; Prometheus, punished for giving fire to humanity, survives as a marginal figure whose gift founds civilisation. In the Hellenic tradition, the obsolete appears as a subterranean power that ensures continuity through loss.
The Confucian tradition offers another horizon. The sage removed from court, even without exercising direct power, continues to guide by the force of example. In the Analects, Confucius describes virtue as an energy that persists beyond immediate presence. The obsolete, in this context, becomes a moral archive: a reservoir of orientation that retains value even when the human figure seems already withdrawn from the scene.
In African societies marked by structural precarity, this dynamic assumes a material, everyday form. In Lagos or Kinshasa, objects discarded in the global North become vital materials for reinvention: cars are recomposed from discontinued parts, old computers are turned into laboratories, and used clothing is refashioned into local fashion. The informal economy functions as a living archive of the obsolete, where each residue feeds collective practices of survival and creation. In rural communities, orality prolongs this process: proverbs and narratives passed down by elders maintain symbolic grammars that accompany social transformation.
Derrida described the archive as a space of tension between preservation and disappearance. The obsolete fully expresses that ambiguity: a vulnerable vestige that carries a promise of return and metamorphosis. Jacques Rancière, in The Edges of Fiction, added that fiction creates places of voice for what had remained silent. The obsolete thus becomes a political category: to give form and time to what was rejected, to institute a stage for residual lives. Between myth, archive, and fiction, human obsolescence reveals itself as a critical language that turns the margins into a horizon for reinventing the common. Every myth affirms what is worth remembering.

The conclusion of “The Obsolete Man” illustrates the principle of reversibility. The Chancellor, who sentences the librarian to death, ultimately becomes a victim of the same system he supported. Totalitarian regimes reveal their weakness by turning the punishment back on the accuser. Rod Serling concludes the episode with the tone of a parable: the power that determines the value of life is just as replaceable as what it deems obsolete.

This gesture offers a political and ontological lesson. The outdated views mark a turning point, where exclusion transforms into return and erasure into survival. By embracing death, the librarian becomes a mediator; although the books seem to consume him, his act creates room for renewal.

In his essay “La mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh,” Georges Bataille interprets the painter’s act as a rite of sacrifice. Self-mutilation functions as an offering, turning violence into a bodily inscription that is expressed through language. Van Gogh’s act of cutting off his ear serves as a testament to excess, an archaic gesture that endures in the modern body as an extreme means of communication. The body acts both as a support and a medium, transforming the useless into a meaningful message.

Serling’s librarian exists within that same sacrificial realm. By embracing death, he transforms the act of execution into a form of resistance: both his body and books disintegrate simultaneously, yet this act becomes a enduring symbol. Similar to Van Gogh’s ear—famous as a legendary remnant—the librarian’s death emerges as a sacrificial statement, illustrating that even the obsolete can have a future.

Bataille views sacrifice as part of a broader economy of expenditure (dépense), where energies, wealth, and affects require consumption without expectation of return, beyond mere utility. In “The Accursed Share”, sacrifice functions as sovereign expenditure that derives meaning through the destruction of value. Van Gogh’s ear presents itself as pure excess; the librarian’s execution becomes an act of extreme giving. In both scenarios, loss establishes language: the gesture quashes the coin of utility, and through this waste, a deeper truth is revealed.

This reasoning aligns with the approach of releasing futures. Publishing the obsolete involves establishing a community from what exists without strategic planning, turning leftovers into collective archives, and deriving meaning from expenditure. Similar to sacrifice, which invites participants to confront limits, publishing the obsolete builds community by sharing losses, remnants, and leftovers. Therefore, publishing acts as a sacrificial act: what no longer serves practical use is offered to the community, and from this waste, a new future emerges.

The ear also symbolizes attention and law. Removing the ear interrupts obedience and redirects focus to the sacred, art, or inner voice. In “The Obsolete Man”, the librarian performs a sacrament of the word, embracing the explosion as a final affirmation of meaningful attention—specifically, to Scripture and books. Like Van Gogh, the body communicates a message: the cut transforms into writing, and death becomes a form of publication.

Another Bataillean route traverses the informe—the formless: the aspect that dissolves formal hierarchies and destroys the structure of authority. The room’s explosion dismantles the State’s strict design into ruins and dust. Serling’s minimal set design sets the stage: totalitarian architecture appears in sharp lines only to dissolve back into simple matter. The formless allows the world to undergo transformation once more. From the debris, new forms of life, fresh interpretations, and a new community emerge.

In Inner Experience, Bataille describes an experience that reaches the limits and fosters community through shared risk. The concluding scene exemplifies this unity: spectators, readers, and believers see themselves in the gesture that crosses boundaries. “Publishing the obsolete” takes on a Bataillean significance: to publish is to share loss, transform expenditure into meaning, and create archival futures from what is given freely, without calculation.

The relationship between technology, magic, and religion is once again brought into focus. Modern technologies—ranging from automation to digital archives—embody a comparable ambivalence. While they offer the promise of replacement, they also pose the risk of disappearance, yet simultaneously open opportunities for reinvention. Similar to how the librarian’s sacrifice transforms loss into knowledge, machines designed to replace writing or human thought can serve as catalysts for rethinking creation, archiving, and sharing.

Publishing the obsolete involves making space for what was once considered discardable, archiving remnants, and giving voice to residues. Within this perspective, publishing futures emerges as a vital practice that preserves through reinvention and safeguards by shifting the obsolete from passive ruin to a realm of reinvention.

In Serling’s style, the epilogue serves as a warning:
“Man claimed his eternity and turned to dust. He considered the book outdated and received his fate within it. He thought God was silenced and ended up surrounded by silence. This is the paradox of this twilight zone: what is discarded comes back, what is condemned persists, and what is obsolete shapes the future.”

References

Benanav, A. (2020). Automation and the future of work. Verso.

Bataille, G. (2021). La mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh. Éditions Allia.

A. Stoekl (Ed. & Trad.), Visions of excess: Selected writings, 1927–1939 (pp. 61–72). University of Minnesota Press.

Bataille, G. (1988). The accursed share: An essay on general economy. Vol. I: Consumption (R. Hurley, Trad.). Zone Books.

Bataille, G. (2014). Inner experience (L. A. Boldt, Trad.). SUNY Press.

Borges, J. L. (1998). The library of Babel (A. Hurley, Trad.). Em Collected fictions. Penguin.

Confucius. (1979). The Analects (D. C. Lau, Trad.). Penguin Classics.

Derrida, J. (1996). Archive fever: A Freudian impression (E. Prenowitz, Trad.). University of Chicago Press.

Eco, U. (2011). La memoria vegetale e altri scritti di bibliofilia, Bompiani.

Jung, C. G., & Kerényi, K. (1963). Essays on a science of mythology: The myth of the divine child and the mysteries of Eleusis (R. F. C. Hull, Trad.). Princeton University Press.

Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy. Volume 1 (B. Fowkes, Trad.; E. Mandel, Introd.). Penguin Classics.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill. 

Rancière, J. (2019). The edges of fiction (S. Corcoran, Trad.). Polity. 

Springer, A.-S., & Turpin, E. (Eds.). (2016). Fantasies of the library. MIT Press.

Voss, G. (2024). Systems ultra: Making sense of technology in a complex world. Verso. 

Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and cultural form. Fontana/Collins. (Edição de referência moderna: Routledge, 2003).