The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
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The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
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Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#2Do checkout "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", It's a concise book that talks about capitalism and its effects on culture and public thought. I haven't read lost futures yet but I found this really good video discussing Mark's idea by Cuck Philosophy called "Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#3Do checkout "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", It's a concise book that talks about capitalism and its effects on culture and public thought. I haven't read lost futures yet but I found this really good video discussing Mark's idea by Cuck Philosophy called "Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
Capitalist Realism is an incredible read. Since discovering him just a couple years ago, his ideas and his work have impacted me probably more than any other cultural/political theorist has. His death was a real loss, but his work is more vital than ever. Can’t recommend his work enough, and I’m excited to have seen his name pop up a couple times on HN over the last few days.
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#4Do checkout "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", It's a concise book that talks about capitalism and its effects on culture and public thought. I haven't read lost futures yet but I found this really good video discussing Mark's idea by Cuck Philosophy called "Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
Reading Capitalist Realism really helped pull me out of a depressive rut, tbh. Highly recommended, and it really is short, something like 80 pages. The part where he talks about how on the surface, the students in his classroom appear to be hedonically satisfied, but then he introduces the term “depressive hedonism”, really stuck with me.
edit: another part that really stuck with me was how there is a modern tendency to privatize the burden of stress; consider how mental illness is the individual's burden so it must be handled at the individual level, etc etc. Fisher wrote an article in the Guardian about this, "Why mental health is a political issue" in 2012 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#5Excellent, thoughtful review of one of the great modern social theorists. I really enjoyed Capitalist Realism, and will be diving into this one, too!
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#6Do checkout "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", It's a concise book that talks about capitalism and its effects on culture and public thought. I haven't read lost futures yet but I found this really good video discussing Mark's idea by Cuck Philosophy called "Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
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Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#7The opening paragraph of this piece mentions (but does not link to) Fisher's 2013 piece "Exiting The Vampire Castle". If you haven't read it, you probably should: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam....
It's a critique of the progressive liberal left from the traditional far left. Central to Fisher's thesis is that by emphasizing race and sex, class identity (which he feels is crucial) is ignored: "I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’ Castle uses an ultimately liberal understanding of race and gender to obfuscate class."
What I find particularly interesting is how similar this critique is to the alt-right's criticism of neo-liberalism. I think it's a fine example of the "horseshoe theory" of politics, where the far-left and far-right share certain commonalities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory.
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#8The opening paragraph of this piece mentions (but does not link to) Fisher's 2013 piece "Exiting The Vampire Castle". If you haven't read it, you probably should: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam... . It's a critique of the progressive liberal left from the traditional far left. Central to Fisher's thesis is that by emphasizing race and sex, class identity (which he feels is crucial) is ig…
The critiques are similar insofar as they are both critiques, but differ vastly in their content.
Mark Fisher, and the 'traditional left's' critique of neoliberal identity politics calls for a centering of class -- that is the power relations inherent in capital modes of production. This, many would argue is not an identity, but a _material position_: a specific stance or relationship to the productive forces in society.
The Alt-Right tends to believe societal conflicts arise from 'culture wars' between ethnicities, nationalities, religions, etcetera. In this way, they share an 'identitarian' analysis of political force with the liberals they aim to critique!
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#9As a fan of Fisher, it's interesting to read an open-minded review of his work from someone on the right. But the bit about Islam can't be left unchallenged. The reviewer says:
>>> I would not claim that Islam is monolithically malign, of course, but someone less constrained by their unconscious sense of ideological appropriateness would ask why interpretations of the faith lead people towards evangelistic violence and puritanical tyranny so much more than interpretations of other faiths.
But here in America we still have Christians practicing evangelistic violence and working to enforce puritanical tyranny. There's nothing unique about Islam in this regard, unfortunately. Like nearly any religion, it can be mustered to support incredible love or horrific cruelty.
Re: The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
#10The opening paragraph of this piece mentions (but does not link to) Fisher's 2013 piece "Exiting The Vampire Castle". If you haven't read it, you probably should: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam... . It's a critique of the progressive liberal left from the traditional far left. Central to Fisher's thesis is that by emphasizing race and sex, class identity (which he feels is crucial) is ig…
The critiques are similar insofar as they are both critiques, but differ vastly in their content. Mark Fisher, and the 'traditional left's' critique of neoliberal identity politics calls for a centering of class -- that is the power relations inherent in capital modes of production. This, many would argue is not an identity, but a _material position_: a specific stance or relationship to the productive forces in soci…
In total agreement, and I would add that Fisher's position is only acceptable in the left because it is founded in 'class reductionism' - which is sometimes used derogatorily - the idea that capital is the root struggle, because it is in part or in whole the cause of all other struggles.
It is also possible to try to position yourself on the traditional far left while also simply being racist or sexist, but that would be Third-Positionism, which is seeming more and more common in the alt-right. A Third-Positionist would find nothing that they could agree with in EtVC, because they would assert that "comradeship" across a 'cultural boundary' is a communist ideal.