Notes on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: Lecture Four

 

Image via the Acid Horizon 

YouTube channel [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Okay, Lecture Four of Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire [b] - 'Union Power and Soul Power' - a little bit of American labour history (do try and stay awake at the back). 

 

Have y'all done your preliminary reading since I published the post on Lecture Three, the key text being Jefferson Cowie's book Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (The New Press, 2010), particularly the chapter 'Old Fashioned Heroes of the New Working Class' (pp. 23-75)?

 

Well, don't worry, neither have I; but I'm confident Fisher will bring us all up to speed ... [c]  

 

 

II.  

 

How does group consciousness practically develop in the historical moment? And what might we learn with reference to our own time?

 

These are the questions Fisher wishes to address here. Along with: why did it all fail; why was there no working class revolution in the US in the late 1960s / early '70s? 

 

Or to put it another way, why did Nixon win - and win big - in '72 and why have the neoliberal Right in the shape of the Republican Party continued to win, often with popular working-class support (think Reagan and Trump, for example)?   

 

I think the answer is pretty clear - though not one the Left will ever concede; as a rule, working class people do not like countercultural hippies and radical activists who want to destroy the American way of life - liberty, the pursuit of happiness, apple pie, etc. They don't want "unprecedented ferment" and "diverse leftism" (154). 

 

Some left-wing commentators say this makes certain elements of the working class reactionary and resentful (deplorable as Hillary Clinton would say). Today, young white working class males are invariably demonised as racist and misogynistic. 

 

To be fair to Fisher, however, he never bought into this. Indeed, he frequently pushed back against condescending stereotypes and rejected broad, pejorative characterisations - such as the term chav - arguing that left-leaning intellectuals needed to empathise a little more and moralise less [d]. 

 

Having said that, he does not deny working-class resentment as the "driving force of reaction" (156) in the 1970s and after, defining the term as "a form of anti-solidarity" and "anti-consciousness" (156) that keeps people divided.  

 

 

III.     

 

The idea that there's no class system now - that we're all either middle-class or, in Lawrence's view, one vast proletariat that has become quite literally robotic [e] - is interesting and worth looking at a little more closely. 

 

Technically speaking, Fisher is right that we can't all belong to the middle - "That is an impossible typology" (157). He's amused, however, by the doubleness of the idea: 

 

"It's both disavowing class at the same time as it's assuring the impossibility of completely overcoming it. Because if we're all in the middle class then, really, there is no such thing as class struggle anymore. But hold on! We're still talking about class [...] we still have to use the term class but in the very attempt to eliminate the concept." (157) 

 

That's true, I suppose, but doesn't really say a great deal and I feel as if Fisher has forgotten his Deleuze and Guattari from back in the day when Anti-Oedipus was his main point of reference. If one turns to the section titled 'Capitalist Representation' in chapter 4, one finds a detailed explanation of how a simple idea of class no longer cuts the conceptual mustard:

 

"That the State is entirely in the service of the so-called ruling class is an obvious practical fact, but a fact that does not reveal its theoretical foundation [...] from the viewpoint of the capitalist axiomatic there is only one class, a class with a universal vocation, the bourgeoisie. [...] This proposition contains something other than an ideological blindness or denial. Classes are the negative of castes and statuses; classes are orders, castes, and statuses that have been decoded." [f]

 

What I think that means is that there is no fundamental difference between the banker, the baker, and the candlestick maker; they are subjugated as functionaries into one and the same flow of capital. And ultimately, only the bourgeoisie remains as the decoding and decoded class. Deleuze and Guattari continue (and I'm quoting several paragraphs at some length here as it seems to me important): 

 

"The generalized slavery of the despotic State at least implied the existence of masters [...] But the bourgeois field of immanence [...] institutes an unrivaled slavery, an unprecedented subjugation: there are no longer even any masters, but only slaves commanding other slaves [...] The bourgeois sets the example [...] more utterly enslaved than the lowest slaves, he is the first servant of the ravenous machine." [g]  

 

"It will be said that there is nonetheless a class that rules and a class that is ruled [...] the distinction between the flow of financing and the flow of income in wages. But this is only partially true, since capitalism is born of the conjunction of the two [...] and integrates them both in the continually expanded reproduction of its limits. So that the bourgeoisie is justified in saying, not in terms of ideology, but in the very organization of its axiomatic: there is only one machine, that of the great mutant decoded flow [...] and one class of servants, the decoding bourgeoisie, the class that decodes the castes and the statuses [...]" [h]     

"In short, the theoretical opposition is not between two classes, for it is the very notion of class, insofar as it designates the 'negative' of codes, that implies there is only one class. The theoretical opposition lies elsewhere: it is between [...] the class and those who are outside the class [les hors-classe]. Between the servants of the machine, and those who sabotage its cogs and wheels. [...] If you will: between the capitalists and the schizos [...] at the level of decoding [and desire], in their basic antagonism at the level of the axiomatic [...] [i] 

 

 

IV.

 

Now, I've no idea why Fisher - who must know this material intimately - didn't bother to refer to it and discuss it with his students. By his own admission in week one, although not on the official reading list, Deleuze and Guattari remained the spectres behind the course - so why not summon them here?

 

Perhaps he simply felt it was time to move on with his thinking; to find more practical points of reference and prioritise different conceptual frameworks - more socio-historical and a little less theoretically sophisticated. 

 

In his late work, as he formulated his ideas around acid communism, Fisher seems keener to figure out the material reasons why the liberatory potential of the late-60s and early-70s collapsed rather than re-engage with the philosophical abstractions of poststructuralism. 

 

And so, if for strategic (and pragmatic) reasons only, Fisher remains committed to the idea of class: class struggle, class solidarity, and the raising of class consciousness - regardless of what Messrs. Deleuze and Guattari write [j]. 

 

Though Fisher also wants to tie class to other things, such as race and gender, and promote the possibility of "an intersectional class politics" (158). Class structures may no longer really exist thanks to the capitalist axiomatic doing away with all traditional social and cultural codes and forms, but it can be reproduced in order to create a little unity and solidarity. 

 

Ironically then, it's communism - not capitalism - that wants to keep class in place; for class "goes against the actual dominant tendencies" (159) of capitalism: to decodify and deterritorialise and to ensure all that is solid melts into air [k].     

  

 

V. 

The danger, of course, is if you bring class back - particularly in an intersectional form - you reify it and it becomes identitarian - that is to say, "defined not by its consciousness or by its agency but by particular identity characteristics that are prescribed to it" (160). 

 

Fisher wants class back in the picture. And he wants intersectionality. But he doesn't want identitarianism. The question is: can he have the first two things without the third today, when everyone is obsessed by identity politics? I doubt it. And he seems a little naive in hoping that people will see that class consciousness is all about working people recognising they share a common position and have common interests "in spite of whatever cultural, personal, subjective qualities"(161) they possess. 

 

For Fisher, it isn't that class is "more important than those other forms of identification or forms of struggle" (160), it's just that "when class is no longer there [...] the given picture is necessarily incomplete" (160) and everything is fatally distorted. 

 

But, for my next door neighbour, being a Muslim matters more - way more - than anything else; including acid communism. Fisher might say that this shows a concern only with his present and his past [l] - that my neighbour lacks a form of consciousness that is "different from identity" (165) and which is about the subject's future becoming as it has a transformative dimension and has hyperstitional effects. 

 

Unfortunately, my neighbour - newly arrived from Pakistan with his wife, parents, children, and brother - probably wouldn't understand wtf Fisher was talking about and would care even less. He just wants to extend his kitchen and perform his obligatory daily prayers (Salah - the second pillar of Islam). 

 

What is more, I suspect that if you were to ask him what needs to be done to resolve the crucial antagonisms that divide society he would doubtless argue for the imposition of Sharia - again, I'm pretty sure he'd not call for acid communism. 

  

 

VI. 

   

Fisher closes Lecture Four with a series of what ifs ... 

 

"What if "countervailing forces hadn't managed to assert themselves in the Seventies?" (170) What if a "new alliance of workers, the counterculture, etc., had come together in a sustained way?" (170) What if neoliberalism hadn't triumphed and everyone had demanded the abolition of work?    

  

To me, this is pretty desperate stuff - but Fisher feels these are some of the key questions of our age and which open up a vision of the future and a "potential route into postcapitalism" (170). 

 

Does anybody remember the scene in an episode of The Inbetweeners [S2/E3] when Will, exasperated by the views and behaviour of French exchange student Patrice, launches into an anti-French rant? Challenged by Simon on its racist content, Will exclaims: "He's made me racist!"

 

Well, that's kind of how I feel when reading Fisher at times: I don't want to be cynical - but he's made me cynical! 

 

"What if there was no 1973? What if there was no recession?" (170) What if we could turn back time and reverse the conditions of the late 1960s and early '70s into the current moment? Arrgh! So many hypotheticals on one page! 

 

Posing such questions is not a sign of resistance - more a sign of political hopelessness and philosophical exhaustion. Fisher has nothing else to say other than what if and nowhere else to go other than yesterday; no wonder he suddenly starts listening to The Beatles when all his troubles seemed so far away.   

 

 

VII. 

      

Actually, Fisher does have one additional point to make in Lecture Four - and it concerns aesthetics ... 

 

Fisher thinks that what carried the revolutionary forces along and sustained the necessary conditions for change was the counterculture; "and the counterculture the was primarily driven through music" (171). It was pop music - as much as politics - that offered the "vision of a liberated world" (171) [m]. 

 

As Dewey Finn taught his students at Horace Green: One great rock show can change the world! [n] 

 

Or as Fisher puts it, music feeds into the revolutionary struggle, man; and the revolutionary struggle feeds into the music, creating a "positive feedback loop" (171) and a "vector for the dynamics of transformation of the social world" (171) - which is nice, but nowhere as catchy and explains why his career as a Hollywood script writer never really took off. 

 

For Fisher, culture leads the way; "in lots of ways" (172) and the counterculture is "not just a counter-politics; it's a range of forms of cultural expression" (172) that allowed us "to imagine a completely transformed world" (173) in an act of performative anticipation. 

 

As Miss Brodie would say, in her best Edinburgh voice: For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like. [o]   

 

But for those like me, made cynical - and yes, even a little irritated by Fisher's utopianism - this is just tiresome. Particularly as he knows as well as I do what happened: 

 

"It failed. It went wrong. There were moments of rupture. There were glimmers. There was a sense of something that could have been different. But it didn't work out that way." (172)

 

And rock 'n' roll rebellion - whether led by hippies wearing Afghan coats or punks in their leather jackets - was just as commodifiable as anything else.  

 

Nevertheless, we are, I suppose, encouraged to try again (for if at first you don't succeed ...) - to desire anew and find our mojo once more (or transformational libido as Fisher calls it). And that means turning to Jean-François Lyotard and falling back into French theory ... 

 

See you for Lecture Five ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This podcast from the Acid Archives - Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures of Mark Fisher (Full Episode) - was uploaded to the Acid Horizon YouTube channel in December 2022, but first put out in September 2020. Matt Colquhoun guest stars. Those who would like to listen can click here.  

 

[b] Mark Fisher, Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures, ed. with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun (Repeater Books, 2021). All page references to this book will be given directly in the post.   

 

[c] Amusingly, when Fisher asked his class to share their responses to Cowie's book he was met with silence, which tells us either they were naturally reticent, or that quite a few of them hadn't read it either.   

 

[d] See, for example, his important essay 'Exiting the Vampire Castle' (2013), which can be found in k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018), pp. 659-667. 

      I believe that Fisher got a lot of shit from some readers for this text, in which, amongst other things, he champions Russell Brand and sticks up for Owen Jones. It can be read online here. See also my post on Torpedo the Ark (30 Sept 2023) in which I discuss this essay. And readers who are interested might like to also check out Em Colquhoun's xenogothic website where they have mounted a spirited defence of the piece on several occasions. 

 

[e] In the second version of his final novel, Lawrence writes: 

      "There was no longer any such thing as class. The world was one vast proletariat. Everything else had gone. The true working class was gone, as much as the honourable bourgeoisie, or the proud aristocracy [...] a vast homogeneous proletariat made up the whole of humanity." 

      See The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 492.   

 

[f] Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press Ltd., 1984), pp. 253-254.  

 

[g] Ibid., p. 254.  

 

[h] Ibid.

 

[i] Ibid., p. 255.

 

[j] Actually, Deleuze and Guattari would support him in this as a matter of praxis. The task, they write, of any revolutionary socialist movement is to organise a "bipolarity of the social field, a bipolarity of classes" and to both embody the idea of class interest in consciousness and actualise it in an organised political party "suited to the task of conquering the State apparatus" (Anti-Oedipus, 255). 

       

[k] This phrase - 'all that is solid melts into air' - is famously found in Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto (1848). 

      Funnily enough, this was Nietzsche's main gripe against capitalism too; that it made society and culture impossible. From his earliest writings, such as 'The Greek State' (1871/72), Nietzsche argued that capitalism undermined the 'internally sturdy and sensitive bonds' that existed between rulers and ruled in noble society. This essay can be found in On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 176-186.

          Readers might like to note that I examined Nietzsche's critique of capitalism in my doctoral thesis, Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000), written during the same late-90s period in the philosophy department from which Fisher himself emerged.

 

[l] Fisher says that if minority race and religious groups understand themselves only by the features which they already possess, this is a form of reification: "You are already what you identify with." (167)

      Unfortunately, it's not these features - as positive as they may be - that define a people as a revolutionary class: "It's their structural and antagonistic position and the potential for transformation that occurs once consciousness develops that makes them potentially revolutionary agents." (167) 

      This, I think, explains why it is the radical Left likes to flirt with Islamists and secure the Muslim vote; it sincerely believes that one day the Muslims will see that their best interests are not served by Muhammad but by Marx. It's a fantasy, of course, and - ironically, one might even say a form of false consciousness.   

 

[m] So you see, my remark about The Beatles with which I closed section VI wasn't just inserted to be humorous or to take a pop at Fisher for the sake of it.    

 

[n] As I'm sure most readers will know, this line is from the film School of Rock (dir. Richard Linklater, 2003), starring Jack Black as Dewey Finn.  

 

[o] As I'm sure most readers will know, this is a line from Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Macmillan, 1961).  

 

Notes on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: Lecture One can be read here.

 

Notes on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: Lecture Two can be read here.

 

Notes on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: Lecture Three can be read here. 

 

 

Musical bonus: The Beatles, 'Revolution', B-side of 'Hey Jude', a single release from 1968: click here.

 

  

Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk: We Are Not Here to Entertain You

 

 'All cultures have understood that being a blogger 

is to be a tortured monkey in Hell ...' 

 

 

I. 

 

Having taken a short break from my engagement with Mark Fisher, I'm diving back into k-punk - his collected and unpublished writings (2004 - 2016), edited by Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018) - and all page references given here (in round brackets) refer to this work (while additional notes are indicated by letters in square brackets). 

 

Let's pick things up in part six with an early post published on his famous blog to do with Spinoza and neuropunk ...

 

 

II.   

 

According to Fisher, being a Spinozist is "both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world" (622):

 

"Easy, because it is simply a matter of acting in such a way as to produce joyful encounters. Hard, because the defaults of the Human Operating System are [...] set against this." (622)

 

The problem lies in the oversized human brain and its complexity; the fact that the reptilian and mammalian layers are covered with a thin, folded third layer that is responsible for the so-called higher functions. 

 

It's this hominid layer responsible for language and consciousness on the one hand, that causes us also to desire that which is harmful to us - addictive and destructive forms of behaviour. Were it not for our unique brains, then we might not have art - but we might also have been spared the "unremitting misery, hatred and violence that have characterised human history" (623).  

 

What can be done about this? Well, short of blowing our brains out à la Kurt Cobain, we can attempt to become-inhuman via a cybernetics of organic disassembly. Fisher is keen to be clear on this point: 

 

"You don't disassemble the human organism by replacing its parts with metal or silicon components. [...] What matters is the overall organisation of the parts. Do the parts operate as hierarchically organised and functionally-specified 'organs' within a cybernegatively construed interiority or do they operate as deterritorialised potentials pulling from/towards the Outside?" (623)

 

The latter - as everybody now knows - is what Deleuze and Guattari (following Artaud) designate as the Body without Organs; a concept that Spinoza would have loved. 

 

Anyway, the point is this: becoming-inhuman via the building of a BwO is in our best interests if we want to be free and happy and escape our "enslavement to a vast immiserating machine" (622) that is the human brain. It's for this reason that Fisher is able to declare that "k-punk is also neuropunk: an intensive rewiring of humanity's neural circuits" (624).  

 

And you thought it was just a blog ... [a]

 

 

III. 

 

Like Fisher, I'm not keen on hostile and abusive narcissists who choose to "air their resentments, ill-thought bile, and tedious ego-defence opinionism" (628) in the comments sections of blogs. Although, unlike Fisher, I don't operate any kind of policy regarding who can say what on TTA, nor do I delete negative remarks. 

 

So, even when I am faced with "clinically deranged second-stringer stalker-obsessive autists with delusions of relevance" (630), I try to smile, stay calm, and move on. 

 

IV.  

 

Like Fisher - and this is probably a punk thing [b] - I despise hippies; their hedonic infantilism and its "pathetic legacy in New Age zen bullshit" (23). 

 

As fundamentally "a middle-class male phenomenon" (234), there was never really anything countercultural about the counterculture, nor sensual about its hazy-lazy aesthetic: 

 

"The hippies' sloppy, ill-fitting clothes, unkempt appearance and fuzzed-out psychedelic fascist drug talk displayed a disdain for sensuality characteristic of the Western master class." (235)

 

And like Fisher, I also despise the hippies' drug of choice: dope. 

 

In a k-punk post dated 03 December 2004, he writes:

 

"What is supposed to be good about dope? The problem with it is not just the resultant psychosis but the ACTUAL STATE it puts people into in the first place - chronically demotivated, lethargic, filled with [...] idiot porcine self-satisfaction ..." (632)

 

Dope, Fisher continues, reduces people to the status of unthinking zombified consumer dreamed of by late capitalism. 

 

Only those who are dissatisfied want to read and think; not those enslaved to the pleasure principle. It's politically expedient, therefore, to have effectively decriminalised the consumption of cannabis (even if, in the UK, laws technically remain in place controlling the possession, sale, and production).   

 

 

V.

 

Does all this - his refusal to enter into dialogue, his hatred of hippies, his opposition to dope-smoking - make Fisher an intolerant dogmatist? 

 

Probably. 

 

Indeed, he admits as much in a k-punk post dated 17 February 2005, dismissing those who defend or advocate for tolerance, debate, respect for otherness, etc., as bourgeois liberals.

 

Now, I have to admit, I was similarly fanatic when younger. But I don't recall ever actually declaring myself to be an out-and-out dogmatist committed to the view that there are Truths (with a capital T) and that there is such a thing as the Good (with a capital G). 

 

And by the time I was Fisher's age when he was writing this - thirty-six - I was a long way removed (philosophically and politically) from my position during my punk, pagan and eco-fascist days and no longer wished to kill the bothersome fly. 

 

Fisher would doubtless say I had become a cynical PoMo-puppet, lost in sceptico-relativism and thus unable to act with conviction or affirm the future with hope and uncurbed enthusiasm. But I'd rather be a grey vampire [c] than end up arguing in all sincerity that dogmatism is religion in the best sense - in that it allows for an unapologetic assertion of universal values - thereby inviting people to spit on me. 

 

 

VI.

 

Moving on ... I was amused to read this: "I'm of course delighted to have been shopped to the commissars of commonsense who compile Private Eye's 'Pseuds Corner'" (643).  

 

Because, like Fisher, I too was once assigned a place in the above: one of Ian Hislop's lackeys deciding to mock my 2007 lecture series titled Zoophilia at Treadwell's Bookshop and finding the paper on Eve's encounter with the serpent discussed in relation to transhuman futures and sexual congress with snakes particularly worthy of ridicule [d].

 

Fisher is spot-on, of course, to say that the function of 'Pseud's Corner' is "to punish writing that in some way overreaches itself, that gets ideas above its station or gets carried away" and that "the effect on any writer who internalises the critique is to be intimidated into colourless mediocrity" (643). 

 

Luckily, I never internalise anything, so that wasn't an issue for me - and I do hope Mark didn't take being called self-serious and pretentious too much to heart. 

 

 

VII.   

     

I've never been a big fan of Morrissey: I like some of his songs, but have never bought any of his records. But Fisher does a good job of making Morrissey sympathetic to me, if what he writes here is true: 

 

"Morrissey represented the desire for a proletarian bohemia at the moment when - after the Sixties, after glam, after punk and post-punk - that possibility was being closed down." (653)

 

Fisher calls this Wildean defiance and writes of how the aspiration to enter into bohemia "was always the wrong kind of ambition from the perspective of a certain working-class way of thinking" (654). 

 

Like Mark, I also know what it's like to have family members who regard writing as a hobby and put pressure on me to get a real job.

 

 

VIII.     

 

'Exiting the Vampire Castle' (2013) remains one of my favourite pieces by Fisher - perhaps because it was one of the first things by him that I read. But it's also a piece I have written about in an earlier post, so  readers who are interested can click here.

 

That, then, just leaves the unfinished introduction to Fisher's proposed new book - Acid Communism - to discuss; a text from 2016 that comprises part seven of k-punk ...

 

A friend of mine - who, as a matter of fact, likes Fisher's work more than I do - nevertheless admits that Capitalist Realism (2009) might be regarded (somewhat ungenerously) as Fredric Jameson for beginners. 

 

And one can't help wondering if Acid Communism wouldn't have been a far more readable, updated sequel to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964) ...

 

Fisher's unfinished introduction certainly lends itself to this view, as it opens with a long quote from Marcuse and Fisher regrets the "declining influence of his work in recent years" (674) - work which "vividly evokes, as an immediate prospect, a world totally transformed" (675). 

 

Fisher continues:

 

"It was no doubt this quality of his work that meant Marcuse was taken up so enthusiastically by elements of the Sixties counterculture. He had anticipated the counterculture's challenge to a world dominated by meaningless labour. The most politically significant figures in literature, he argued in One-Dimensional Man, were 'those who don't earn a living, at least not in the ordinary and normal way'. Such characters, and the forms of life with which they were associated, would come to the fore in the counterculture." (675) 

 

Critics will dismiss this as an outmoded Romanticism. But it's worth pointing out, as Fisher does point out, that "as much as Marcuse's work was in tune with the counterculture, his analysis also forecast its ultimate failure and incorporation" (675). 

 

He, Marcuse, wasn't naive or a starry-eyed dreamer - and neither is Fisher. Both see quite clearly the way in which even the most radical art can be quickly and effectively neutralised:

 

"A major theme of One-Dimensional Man was the neutralisation of the aesthetic challenge. Marcuse worried about the popularisation of the avant-garde, not out of elitist anxieties that the democratisation of culture would corrupt the purity of art, but because the absorption of art into the administered spaces of capitalist commerce would gloss over its incompatibility with capitalist culture. He had already seen capitalist culture convert the gangster, the beatnik and the vamp from 'images of another way of life' into 'freaks or types of the same life'." (675)

 

So, let's return to Marcuse - and let's return to the Sixties! Of the two, it's perhaps the later which is the most surprising move after all that Fisher once wrote about hippies and the counterculture (see section IV above). But, says Fisher, Marcuse allows us to see why the Sixties continue to exert a crucial influence on the present:

 

"In recent years, the Sixties have come to seem at once like a deep past so exotic and distant that we cannot imagine living in it, and a moment more vivid than now - a time when people really lived, when things really happened. Yet the decade haunts not because of some unrecoverable and unrepeatable confluence of factors, but because the potentials it materialised and began to democratise - the prospect of a life freed from drudgery - has to be continually suppressed." (675)    

 

It's not so much that Fisher is now encouraging us to trust the hippies after all, rather, he's attempting to re-narrate the past [e] and salvage the utopianism of the 1960s counterculture and divorce psychedelic consciousness from both New Age escapism and capitalist commodification. 

 

As we saw earlier (section II), Fisher wants to rewire the collective consciousness in such a manner that misery and depression no longer seem part and parcel of the human condition - that we have the right to demand joy (be that Spinozan or bohemian in nature). 

 

Acid communism was Fisher's term for the ultimate neuropunk experiment - "a provocation and a promise" (677) to blow minds and raise consciousness - although whether it would also result in red plenty, universal liberation and happiness all round is something I remain unconvinced of. 

 

And I'm really not about to start listening to The Beatles, FFS, or take up residence in some psychedelic shack alongside The Temptations [f].

  

 

Notes

 

[a] Fisher had high hopes for blogging (at its best) when he started k-punk: "What has begun to emerge on the most destratifying elements of the blogosphere is a depersonalising, desubjectifying network producing more joyful encounters in a positive feedback process ..." (624)

      I rather suspect, however, that were Fisher still with us he would say of me what he says of fellow blogger Marcello Carlin in this k-punk post of 13 August 2004: "a morbidly compelling example of how not to be a good Spinozist" (624); someone who engages with "their own frozen images" (624) rather than directly and sensitively with the world and displays a "pathetically resentful hunger for attention" (624). I don't feel I show enough loyalty to the Kollektive to appeal to someone like Fisher.    

      Although you never know, he may have found something to his liking on TTA, just as Fisher's critical view of Carlin radically changed over the following decade, transforming their relationship from public conflict into one of deep, mutual respect. 

 

[b] Johnny Rotten hated hippies for their complacency as he saw it. And Malcolm McLaren famously warns Helen in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) to never trust a hippie. 

 

[c] For Fisher, a grey vampire is an individual who attaches himself to passionate, creative people, only to slowly drain their energy by constantly equivocating and sneering. If outwardly they appear charming, humorous, and intelligent, they are all the time seeking to undermine, demoralise and curb enthusiasm. Forever promising they are about to produce a major piece of work themselves, their perpetual procrastination ensures they fail to ever finish anything of value or substance.

      See his k-punk post 'Break Through in Grey Lair' (16 August 2009), pp. 645-648, where he describes grey vampirism as a symptom of mental illness as well as characteristic of postmodern scepticism. He also posits a family resemblance between grey vampires and trolls, both of whom find a home in the Academy.

      Here, of course, I am adopting the term grey vampire ironically and self-deprecatingly. And whereas Fisher viewed the grey vampire as a deeply negative, energy-sapping symbol of late capitalism, my text uses it to defend a model of scepticism contra dogmatism.  

 

[d] Unfortunately, I cannot recall the number or date of the issue of Private Eye in which I featured in Pseud's Corner. However, Gary Lachman wrote of it in an article for the Independent (16 September 2007) and this can be read online here.

 

[e] According to Fisher: "The past has to be continually re-narrated, and the political point of reactionary narratives is to suppress the potentials which still await, ready to be re-awakened, in older moments." (676) 

      I suppose the point is there's much more to the Sixties than the simulated version we are presented with by the media; i.e., "the reduction of the decade to 'iconic' images, to 'classic' music and to nostalgic reminiscences" (676) which neutralise the real promise of the era. 

 

[f] Fisher refers us to The Beatles track 'Tomorrow Never Knows' on Revolver (1966) and to 'Psychedelic Shack' by The Temptations (from the album of the same name, 1970) and argues that in these songs and the counterculture that inspired them you can hear the promise of acid communism: a new humanity, a new way of thinking, a new way of loving; "music such as this was an active dreaming which arose out of real social and cultural compositions, and which fed back into potent new collectivities [...] which rejected both drudgery and traditional resentments" (689). 

      Again, I'm not convinced, but anyone who wants to tune in and drop out can click on the links supplied.    

 

 

Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk: A Little Bit More Politics (Sections I - VI)

Mark Fisher photographed in 2011 at 

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona 

 

'Politics is the last great sentimental indulgence of mankind and it has never achieved anything 

except a deepened idiocy ... Quite naturally we are bored of it to the point of acute sickness.' 

                                                                                                                     - Nick Land (1992)

 

 

I. 

 

Having read the first fifty-odd pages of Mark Fisher's political writings collected in k-punk (2018) [a] and having commented on them in a previously published post - click here - I must confess I'm increasingly sympathetic to Nick Land's position stated above.

 

However, once I start reading a book, I'm like the proverbial dog with a bone ... And so, here are some more fragmented remarks on Fisher's political writings, as I once more pick out those things that either inspire or irritate; delight or disappoint ...   

 

 

II.  

 

For Fisher, Damien Hirst is the artist of capitalist realism par excellence. Thus, whilst he's "not interested in rehearsing [...] discussions of Hirst's merits as an artist" (444), he is interested in Hirst's "symptomatic status as a figure who embodies capital's penetration into all areas of culture" (444). 

 

Personally, I think it a little ridiculous to even mention Hirst in the same sentence as Andy Warhol, but Fisher claims that the former is, in fact, "the Warhol of capitalist realism" (444) albeit one who has "none of Warhol's blank charisma" (444) - or genius. 

 

Fisher writes:

 

"In place of Warhol's android awkwardness Hirst offers a blokish bonhomie. Warhol's studied banality has become the genuinely ultrabanal. Or, rather, the Hirst phenomenon typifies the way in which, in late-capitalist art and entertainment culture, the ultrabanal and the super-spectacular have become (con)fused." (444-445)  

 

For Fisher, Hirst's work lacks any ambiguity: it is what it is, no more, no less, and in its flat realism it "leaves no space for commentary" (445). His dead animals in formaldehyde "cannot be re-imagined, transfigured or changed" (445) - just like the political system and the culture which produced them. 

 

 

III. 

 

Torpedo the Ark wasn't a thing back in the summer of 2012, but, if it had been, I'm pretty sure that what Fisher says of the London Olympics is what I would have said: they were designed to be a massive distraction; "the antidote to all discontent" (449).  

 

Sit back, relax, forget all your worries, and enjoy the show - brought to you by McDonalds and Coca-Cola. 

 

Just to be clear: you can hate the greed and cynicism of the corporate sponsors and hate the media who broadcast the event with professional enthusiasm - or hysterical PR delirium as Fisher describes it - and still love the sport (though, in my case, I don't give a shit about sweaty athletes competing for medals and breaking records). 

 

Fisher nails exactly what's going on:

 

"The point of capital's sponsorship of cultural and sporting events is not only the banal one of accruing brand awareness. Its more important function is to make it seem that capital's involvement is a precondition for culture as such. [...] It is a pervasive reinforcement of capitalist realism." (450)

 

Amusingly, Mark isn't a fan either of the ArcelorMittal Orbit - that 376-ft sculpture and observation tower designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond and intended to be a lasting legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. My mother described it as an eyesore, but Fisher says it's the perfect symbol of the inertia and sterility of capitalist realist culture.     

 

 

IV.

 

Capitalist realism is both a belief and an attitude: we believe that it is the only viable option (that there is no alternative); and we therefore resign ourselves to this with a mixture of defeatism and depression - politics is over, history has terminated, and now we're all in it together. 

 

Fisher thinks the only hope is to raise consciousness among the young; get them to see that there can be an alternative modernity (only don't confuse this with postmodernism, which, like Fredric Jameson, he hates and believes to be the cultural logic of late capitalism). 

 

The other thing to do is get the young to engage with mainstream forms and institutions (despite what the anarchists say); "the idea that mainstream culture is inherently coopted, and all we can do is withdraw from it, is deeply flawed" (466) [b]. That is perhaps the most liberal-sounding thing Fisher ever wrote, although, arguably, it is entirely consistent with his radical politics (later named acid communism).   

 

Where I do not agree with Fisher, however, is on the question of success and failure. In a revealing passage, he writes:

 

"There is too much toleration of failure [...] If I ever have to hear again that Samuel Beckett quote, 'Try again, fail again, fail better', I will go mad. Why do we even think in these terms? There is no honour in failure, though there is no shame in it if you have tried to succeed. Instead of that stupid slogan we should aim to learn from our mistakes in order to succeed next time. The odds might be stacked in such a way that we do keep losing, but the point is to increase our collective intelligence. That requires, if not a party structure of the old type, then at least some kind of system of coordination and some system of memory." (467)  

   

My goodness me! Anyone wishing to know how, where, and why k-punk differs from TTA might be advised to start with this passage ... 

 

First of all, no matter what Fisher seems to think, even if we can learn from our mistakes, we don't learn how to succeed in the future. At most, as Beckett indicates, we learn only how to fail better. For as much as we may wish to believe that endurance, struggle and sacrifice will eventually pay off, success is never an option: we are destined and doomed to fail; such is the tragic character of existence (it takes what Nietzsche calls a pessimism of strength to affirm this and find in it a source of dark comedy) [c].   

 

Secondly, unlike Mr Fisher, I do not think in terms of honour and shame and I would not wish to belong to the kind of collectivist culture which subscribes to this way of thinking (and judging); i.e., the kind of culture where breaches of social or religious norms that threaten to bring shame (or dishonour) upon a family or community often lead to ugly acts of violence.

 

Linking these notions to a system of coordination, memory, and collective intelligence sounds suspiciously like the imposition of a bureaucratic superego to me and one fears that even the most acidic form of communism would invariably result in increased surveillance, control, and conformity [d]. Prioritising the collective over the individual and thinking in terms of honour and shame obliges us to align with party goals and justifies the State using public humiliation to punish deviants and deter dissent [e].

 

Obviously, Fisher wouldn't want this to happen. But the language he uses in the passage above makes me more than a little uncomfortable ...    

 

 

V.

 

For me, Fisher is at his best when at his most outrageous; as he is in the piece entitled 'Suffering with a Smile' (2013), in which he describes how the division between life and work no longer exists and that even CEOs are servants of the Machine. 

 

Now workers are not only stretched to their physical limits, but obliged to smile and show how much they love their jobs:

 

"Being exploited is no longer enough. The nature of labour now is such that almost anyone, no matter how menial their position, is required to be seen (over)investing in their work. What we are forced into is not merely work, in the old sense of undertaking an activity we don't want to perform; no, now we are forced to act as if we want to work." (473)

 

And yet ... that's not quite right: "The subjugatory libidinal forces [...] don't want us to entirely conceal our misery. For what enjoyment is there to be had from exploiting a worker who actually delights in their work?" (473)

 

And so, in order to understand the sadistic game being played now in the world of work, one must consider the pornographic practice of bukkake:

 

"Here, men ejaculate in women's faces, and the women are required to act as if they enjoy it [...] What's being elicited from the women is an act of simulation. The humiliation is not adequate unless they are seen to be performing an enjoyment they don't actually feel. Paradoxically, however, the subjugation is only complete if there are some traces of resistance. A happy smile, ritualised submission; this is nothing unless signs of misery can also be detected in the eyes." (474)

 

That's a brilliant insight into the staging of desire and reminds one of how cruelty remains one of the oldest pleasures of mankind ...[f] 

 

   

VI. 

 

One of the ironies of punk was that although it protested against boredom, it was in fact born of such and derived much of its impetus and inspiration from the fact that everything in the mid-1970s seemed so bloody boring to many teenagers looking for emotional rages as TV Smith would have it [g].

 

Fisher understands that and regrets the manner in which smartphones have effectively eliminated boredom via constant distraction. Now, young people are anxious and depressed, but never bored. 

 

Amusingly, he writes that he almost feels nostalgic for the "dreary void of Sundays, the night hours after television stopped broadcasting, even the endless dragging minutes waiting in queues or for public transport" (485). The smartphone provides a vast array of features and applications offering instant, on-demand entertainment - who could ask for more?

 

Fisher, for one - and I'd second him here: "Boredom was ambivalent; it wasn't simply a negative feeling that one simply wanted rid of. For punk, the vacancy of boredom was a challenge, an injunction and an opportunity ..." (485)    

 

In neutralising boredom and dispersing our attention, capitalism has made everything boring! 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018). Please note that all page references to this text will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] In the article 'How to Kill a Zombie: Strategising the End of Neoliberalism' (2013), Fisher writes: "Neo-anarchist doctrine maintains that we should abandon mainstream media and parliament - but our abandoning it has only allowed for neoliberals to extend their power and influence." (478). 

      Similarly, Fisher argues that the anarchist emphasis on direct action "conceals a despair about the possibility of indirect action" (478), yet it is only via the latter that "the control of ideological narratives is achieved" (478).  

      And later, in 'Limbo is Over' - a k-punk post from April 2015 - Fisher even breaks ranks with his then hero Russell Brand and encourages people to get out and vote: "It's hard not to have some sympathy with Brand's disdain for voting [...] But the problem is that popular disengagement from parliamentary politics suits the right more than us." (490) I don't know if that's true, but I tend to share Sartre's position on this question and agree that whilst it might make sense to sometimes vote against, one should never vote for.   

 

[c] See my post on Beckett's phrase from Worstward Ho (1983) dated 11 June 2013: click here.    

 

[d] Fisher would obviously challenge this. Indeed, in 'How to Kill a Zombie' he does precisely that, writing that whilst he doesn't want a return to "old-school Leninism", he would like to see the left get a little more organised and "overcome certain habits of anti-Stalinist thinking" (479), so that it might impose an effective programme of change and take seriously the task of actively dismantling neoliberalism. 

      In other words - and Fisher is explicit about this - the task for those on the left is not merely to rethink questions of solidarity, but retrain in the art of class war. I'm afraid this is all a bit too militant for my tastes.   

 

[e] Readers will recall how, in the Soviet Union, prorabotka sessions were held in workplaces and universities; or how, in Maoist China, class enemies were forced to publicly confess misdeeds and wear derogatory signs, thereby creating a culture of self-censorship and fear, wherein individuals closely monitored their own actions to avoid being labelled a regime opponent.

 

[f] In Daybreak (I. 18), Nietzsche argues that cruelty should not be viewed as a perverse aberration, but, rather, as one of the "oldest festive joys of mankind". In his view, the ability to inflict or witness suffering was historically not only a source of deep delight, but also an act via which "the community refreshes itself and for once throws off the gloom of constant fear and caution". 

      I am using R. J. Hollingdale's translation in the 1982 Cambridge University Press edition of Nietzsche's book originally published in German as Morgenröthe - Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile (1881).    

 

[g] I'm referencing the song 'Bored Teenagers', written by TV Smith of punk group The Adverts (which featured as the b-side of their hit single 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' (Anchor Records, 1977): click here to watch them play the track live on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, Feb 1978). 

      And here's another classic punk track on the theme of boredom - written by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks and included on their Spiral Scratch EP (New Hormones, 1977): click here. 

 

 

This post continues here.   

 

Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk: A Little Bit of Politics

 

 Mark Fisher: illustration by Amreetha Lethe

 

'It is beginning to look as if, instead of being the end of history, capitalist realism 

was a thirty-year hiatus. The processes that began in the Sixties can now be resumed. 

Consciousness is being raised again.' 

                                                                                                  - Mark Fisher (2015) [a] 

 

 

I. 

 

I would guess that I'm not the only reader of Mark Fisher's work to find his cultural criticism more interesting than his political analysis. It would be foolish, however, to try and draw a hard and fast distinction between the two. 

 

For like Nietzsche, Fisher understands how philosophy and literature have a "profound and congenial relation to each other" [b] and part of the appeal of his text is that he promiscuously draws upon all manner of considerations, including those previously regarded as irrelevant to serious investigation.

 

In fact, I would argue that Fisher's devising of a charmingly idiosyncratic literary-philosophical mode of language and thought and his application of such to a wide range of contemporary concerns is one of his finest achievements. Fisher demonstrates how writing - at its best - is capable of providing a sense of solidarity; i.e., "fill the conditions of a collective enunciation that is lacking elsewhere" [c]. 

 

Fisher's work therefore demands - and deserves - to be read in the round; from the early k-punk pieces to his later stuff on all things weird and eerie via his seminal (but overrated) text Capitalist Realism (2009). 

 

That being said, when tasked with editing Fisher's collected and unpublished writings from the thirteen-year period 2004 - 2016, Darren Ambrose does separate out the political writings as best he can and it is part four of k-punk (2018) that I'd like to comment on here - picking out those things that either inspire or irritate; delight or disappoint.      

 

 

II. 

The lines quoted at the top of the page from Fisher are found in a short piece that is included in part three of k-punk - writing on music - and not in part four containing his political writings. But these lines pretty much sum up Fisher's attitude: neoliberalism bad; acid communism rooted in the countercultural ideas of the 1960s, good [d].

 

Such revolutionary optimism contrasts sharply with my own rather more cynical and pessimistic philosophy; i.e., the kind of ironic nihilism that Fisher equates with postmodernism and which he despises as a form of reflexive impotence preventing radical change or commitment and thus ultimately complicit with capitalist realism.

 

And so, unfortunately, Fisher's political writings, combining psychedelic utopianism, pulp modernism and ghostly lost futures, more often than not cause me to sigh rather than nod in agreement - but at least they allow for a (hopefully amusing) collision of perspectives ...  

 

 

III.  

 

The danger when you produce work that is very much up to the minute - full of names in the news and references to contemporary pop culture - is that your writing is instantly dated. 

 

And Mark Fisher's political writings are full of such names and references, although, reading his work now, in 2026, produces the rather strange effect of making the period in which he was active (2004-16) feel even further in the past than my own childhood. 

 

Tony Blair ... Gordon Brown .... David Cameron ... I know who they are - I remember them - but they seem to have less reality than Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, and Edward Heath.     

 

I'm not sure why that is: perhaps Mike Yarwood was a better impressionist than Rory Bremner. Whatever the reason, it perhaps helps to explain the following sentence: "There was a time when elections at least seemed to mean something." (377)

 

And it also helps us understand what Fisher is getting at here: "Realism has nothing to do with the Real. On the contrary, the Real is what realism has continually to suppress." (380) [e] 

 

That's a sentence that resonates with Baudrillard's philosophy, although the latter refers to raw, unmediated experience as the symbolic rather than the Real and, being a cultural pessimist, he sees it as something that is gone forever - an extinct category - rather than something that continues to threaten realism and thus still needing to be repressed. 

 

I might be wrong, but I get the impression that Fisher thinks we can return to the Real if only we all raise consciousness, join hands, and leap together into a lost future [f]. Baudrillard would regard this as a nostalgic delusion.  

 

 

IV.

 

According to Fisher, Islamofascism is a pseudo-concept: 

 

"There are any number of reasons to consider the idea that there is such a thing as Islamofascism a nonsense. Here are two. First of all, fascism has always been associated with nationalism, but, like global capital, Islamism has no respect for nationality; the first loyalty of the Islamist is to the global Umma. Secondly, fascism is about the State - Islamism has no model of the State, as could be seen in Afghanistan under the Taliban. (390)

 

To be fair, they're quite good reasons - though in response to the first, one might wonder then if Fisher would be more approving of the term Islamocommunism ...? [g]

 

What puzzles me, however, is how he then happily uses the term Islamophobia which is another highly contentious neologism and equally a pseudo-concept; one designed to stifle legitimate criticism of the religion masquerading as a term that operates within an anti-racist framework. 

 

Christopher Hitchens - not an author referred to by Fisher and not one I would imagine him liking - is often associated with the description of Islamophobia as a word 'created by fascists and used by cowards, to manipulate morons' [h]. 

 

And the French writer Pascal Bruckner - one of the so-called nouveaux philosophes who came to prominence in the mid-late 1970s - wrote a famous article on the origin of the term for Libération in January 2011, arguing that it was invented by Iranian fundamentalists with the aim of declaring Islam inviolate [i].    

 

It would seem to me, that either both terms should be avoided, or both should be free to use (whilst open to interrogation). What you can't do is declare the legitimacy of one whilst dismissing the other as a pseudo-concept [j].   

 

 

V.  

 

As a nihilist, Fisher's call for "new kinds of negativity" (432) is something I can get behind. 

 

I'm not quite sure how we square such with his eternal optimism, but let's leave that to one side for a moment. The key thing is to abandon faith in those older forms - such as art - which some on the left still believe to be full of vital revolutionary potential; people such as the Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri ...

 

"Art, Negri maintains, is intrinsically rebellious and subversive. Even though Negri himself recognises the dangers of taking too much consolation in art, he ends up retaining faith in it." (432)

 

As Fisher points out, Negri's praising of art as a source of freedom and transformation seems strangely nostalgic - and not just nostalgic, but laughably naive: "For the era of capitalist realism has also seen all kinds of synergies between art and business, nowhere better summed up than in the concept of the 'creative industries'." (432)    

 

It's to his credit that Fisher rejects (or at least challenges) the argument that the art that dominates within capitalist realism is somehow fake art; "a betrayal and dilution of art's inherent militancy" (432). 

 

Why not, says Fisher, simply push Negri's own logic of negativity to the point at which one recognises that "there is no readymade, already-existing utopian energy; that there is nothing which, by its very nature, resists incorporation into capital" (432).

 

Recognise this, and one is obliged to drop the idea that art is opposed to capitalism and that power only restricts and denies creativity (is only ever repressive). As Foucault pointed out, power is itself inventive and creative; it produces new forms and discourses, induces new pleasures [k]. Thus, overcoming capitalism "will not involve inventing new modes of positivism, but new kinds of negativity" (432).   

 

Zarathustra would go along with that [l] - and I go along with that.  

  

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, 'No Romance Without Finance', in k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018), p. 373. The piece, dated 9 Nov 2015, originally appeared in Bamn: An Unofficial Magazine of Plan C. 

      All further page references to k-punk (2018) will be given directly in the main text.  

 

[b] Nietzsche, 'The Struggle between Science and Wisdom', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 134. 

 

[c] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 18. Whether this in turn opens up the possibility of a new becoming or provides a genuine alternative to the reality principle shaped by neoliberalism, is debatable. 

 

[d] I'm aware of the fact that the idea of acid communism was a late development in Fisher's work and that all that remains of a proposed new work with that title is the (unfinished) introduction. Nevertheless, I'm going to use the term here, somewhat anachronistically, as I don't believe Fisher would object to such retro-intertextuality or prochronism.  

 

[e] Fisher will later describe realism as "not a representation of the real, but a determination of what is politically possible" (380-381).  

 

[f] If Fisher does not in fact think of the Real as a location to which we might return, then he certainly does like to imagine the Real as some kind of external limit in much the same way as Deleuze and Guattari imagine schizophrenia. Or  as "an event completely inconceivable in the current situation, but which will break in a re-define everything" (383).    

 

[g] Today, we are witnessing a strange marriage of convenience between Islamists and those on the far-left; Zack Polanski and the Green Party are playing a dangerous game as they flirt with religious sectarianism on the one hand and political populism on the other. 

 

[h] Apparently, this was actually said by Andrew Cummins and is therefore misattributed to Hitchens - understandably so, as it closely reflects his own view of a term he dismissed as stupid and one designed to suggest that fear and prejudice lie behind perfectly reasonable concerns about a powerful and aggressive religion.  

 

[i] The English translation of this article by Bruckner - titled 'The invention of Islamophobia' (03/01/ 2011) can be found on signandsight.com - click here.  

 

[j] Without wishing to put words into his mouth, I suspect that Fisher would argue that Islamophobia is a legitimate sociological term identifying a factual well-documented phenomenon, whereas Islamofascism is a category error, designed to morally and politically justify Western interventionism and the War on Terror. 

      In other words, the former describes an effect of power (structural racism); the latter is a historically illiterate claim made by power to reduce complex geo-political issues to a simple struggle between good and evil.  

 

[k] See Michel Foucault, 'Truth and Power', in Power, vol. 3 of the Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley et al (Penguin Books, 2002). 

 

[l] For Nietzsche, only braying donkeys nod their heads all the time and only camels say yes to even the heaviest burdens - the lion, however, dares to say no and this saying no is a creative foundational act, not merely a refusal; it is, if you like, the active negation of the negative. 

      See 'Of the Three Metamorphoses', in part one of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and see also what Nietzsche writes in Ecce Homo on the importance of No-saying as a necessary first step toward a revaluation of all values.