On the Case of Russell Brand and Mark Fisher

Messrs. Fisher & Brand

 

 

I. 

 

One of the more unexpected consequences of the media storm surrounding the allegations of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse levelled at the comic revolutionary-cum-spiritual wellness guru Russell Brand is that it has reignited an online controversy surrounding a ten-year-old essay by political philosopher-cum-cultural commentator Mark Fisher, in which he openly expresses his admiration for the former ...  

 

Published in 2013, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle' [1] is probably my favourite piece by Fisher, despite the fact - or, if I'm being honest, it's probably due to the fact - that at the time it pissed a lot of people off.

 

Here, I'd like to revisit the essay, particularly those sections that refer to Brand - whose case increasingly fascinates me - and then discuss a retrospective defence of Fisher and his text, written by one of his closest allies, Matt Colquhoun, in response to the present hoo-ha.

 

 

II.

 

Fisher himself concedes that his essay was born out of depression and exhaustion. But that doesn't, of course, lessen its brilliance or weaken its arguments. Tired, fed-up, and bored is often a great combination when it comes to producing work that has a vitriolic edge; happy souls don't always create the best art or have the most interesting ideas. 

 

The trick is to weaponise and affirm negative thoughts and feelings and not wallow in them or allow them to coalesce into bad conscience and ressentiment; i.e., one must learn to hate with a certain gaiety, like Nietzsche, who is very much present in 'Exiting the Vampire Castle'.          

 

Like Fisher, I don't care so much about what an individual has said or done - no matter how objectionable - I worry more about the manner in which they are "personally vilified and hounded" afterwards. It's this that leaves behind the stench of witch-hunting moralism. 

 

This wasn't said by Fisher at the time with Russell Brand in mind, but I repeat it here and now thinking very much of the latter.

 

I'm sure that Brand's behaviour in the past was appalling at times; though whether it was also criminal is another matter. But the behaviour of his critics - many of whom were former friends and colleagues - as they rush to disassociate themselves from him is just as shocking and just as vile.

 

Fisher crossed paths with Brand at a so-called People's Assembly, held in Ipswich. Recalling the encounter, he confesses that he'd "long been an admirer of Brand - one of the few big-name comedians on the current scene to come from a working class background."

 

Then, in an astonishing series of paragraphs, Fisher couples a passionate endoresement of Brand to an excoriating critique of those po-faced puritans on the left of the political spectrum who sneer and wag fingers at him. For Fisher, Brand is not only cool, sexy, and intelligent, but queer "in the way that popular culture used to be". 

 

If, as those on the moralising left claim, Brand is prone to making inappropriate and offensive remarks, thereby breaching "the bland conventions of mainstream media 'debate'", Fisher is prepared to cut him some slack - and I respect him for that. 

 

Yes, Brand should apologise for some of his behaviour and sexist language; but any such apology should be accepted, says Fisher, in a spirit of comradeship and solidarity. And above all Brand should be admired for daring to bring up the taboo topic of class - one that so embarrasses many on the left with their public school backgrounds and ultra-posh accents [2].            

 

Admired too, for standing up to smug and condescending TV interviewers, like Jeremy Paxman, who seem to think celebrities shouldn't express political views and that "working class people should remain in poverty, obscurity and impotence lest they lose their 'authenticity'" [3]. 

 

Fisher writes:

 

"For some of us, Brand's forensic take-down of Paxman was intensely moving, miraculous; I couldn't remember the last time a person from a working class background had been given the space to so consummately destroy a class 'superior' using intelligence and reason. This wasn't Johnny Rotten swearing at Bill Grundy - an act of antagonism which confirmed rather than challenged class stereotypes. Brand had outwitted Paxman - and the use of humour was what separated Brand from the dourness of so much 'leftism'."

Brand, concludes Fisher, is an inspirational figure. That is to say, one who "makes people feel good about themselves; whereas the moralising left specialises in making people feed bad, and is not happy until their heads are bent in guilt and self-loathing" [4].  

 

III.

What then, you might ask, is wrong with anything said here by Fisher in 2013?

 

The answer - as far as I can see - is nothing. The claim that this essay caused lasting damage to his reputation is exaggerated and overlooks the fact that there are some readers, like me, who think highly of Fisher mostly on the basis of this text. Nevertheless, Fisher's essay caused a big fuss then and it's causing a big fuss once again.

 

And this is due to the controversy surrounding the (undeniably charismatic if slightly unhinged) figure of Russell Brand, who, let us remind ourselves is innocent under the law, having not been found guilty of - or even charged with - any crime of a sexual nature and who completely refutes the accusations made against him in the media by several women relating to the period between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame.

 

Despite this, Fisher is once again being painted by some not only as an early (and aggressive) opponent of woke politics and cancel culture, but as an anti-feminist who, in celebrating Brand back in 2013, wilfully turned a blind eye to the latter's already apparent sexism, misogyny, and abuse of power. 

Matt Colquhoun - a writer and photographer known for their work on Fisher's writings and their relationship with the latter [5] - is having none of this, however, and says that such a grotesque caricature makes Fisher "wholly unrecognisable to those who knew him or who are more familiar with his work" [6]. 

 

Colquhoun goes on to argue that post-Vampire Castle and following his death in 2017, Fisher has "too often been reduced to a pawn in an online discourse that obscures the ways in which he moved on from this polemic to build a far more positive project ..." [7]  

 

Fisher's celebration of Brand was, writes Colquhoun, due to his life-long fascination with "people who, at one time or another [...] bridged the gap between the mainstream and the underground" [8] and believed in the revolutionary potential of a (chaotic and often comic) popular modernism, that someone such as Brand seems to personify.  

 

So far, so good: Colquhoun hasn't said anything that I find problematic, although, if I'm being completely honest, the claim that Fisher moved on in order to construct a far more positive project is one that makes me slightly concerned. 

 

But the following paragraph from Colquhoun really rankles, however: 

 

"Then and now, the inclusion of Brand in Fisher's argument stains it overall. The allegations now facing Brand, who was already mistrusted by many for his sexual politics [...] are all the more damning and serious. For some, they also vindicate the ire first directed at Fisher over a decade ago. But whereas Brand is accused of very real crimes, Fisher was only guilty of an intellectual misstep - one that he would spend the next few years trying to remedy." [9]

 

That, I think, is an outrageous statement and I'm almost certain that Fisher would not approve of the language of moral pollution; as if the very mention of Brand's name is tainting. 

 

And what, pray, would Fisher think of the claim that unproven allegations are damning? Or the idea of vindication - a term also drawn from a moral vocabulary? Or that he was guilty of an intellectual misstep - as if a philosopher should always walk carefully along a well-beaten and carefully sign-posted path.

 

I don't doubt that Colquhoun's motives in writing their piece for the New Statesman were well-intentioned and honourable. But I really don't think Fisher needs to have anyone apologise on his behalf, or attempt to justify his work. 

 

And to be reminded once more of the claim made by some of Fisher's online supporters that his "defiant support of Brand, against advice to the contrary, was a product of mental ill-health" [10], is, I think, shameful.    

 

If he has a grave, then I fear that poor Mark Fisher will be turning in it ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mark Fisher, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle', Open Democracy (24 Nov 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Writing about the fragile and fleeting nature of class consciousness, Fisher says:

      "The petit bourgeoisie which dominates the academy and the culture industry has all kinds of subtle deflections and pre-emptions which prevent the topic even coming up, and then, if it does come up, they make one think it is a terrible impertinence, a breach of etiquette, to raise it."

 

[3] Jeremy Paxman did his best to make Russell Brand look a fool on BBC's Newsnight on 23 October 2013, but, arguably, it was the latter who exposed the former for what he was. The full interview can be watched by clicking here. 

[4] The latter, says Fisher, are driven by "a priest's desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant's desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster's desire to be one of the in-crowd" and they inhabit the Vampires' Castle - an institution which "feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities" of the young and lives by "converting the suffering of particular groups - the more 'marginal' the better - into academic capital". This is a hugely important idea and one which I hope to return to and discuss in a future post.

 

[5] Matt Colquhoun is the author of Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher (Repeater Books, 2020). Colquhoun also edited Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire lectures (Repeater Books, 2021). They blog at xenogothic.com: click here.

 

[6-10] Matt Colquhoun, 'Mark Fisher was not Russell Brand', in the New Statesman, (18 Sept 2023): click here. 

      Readers who are not subscribers to this publication and don't wish to register in order to be able to access three free articles a month online, will sadly come up against a paywall. I'm grateful to Colquhoun for kindly emailing me a copy of their text, so that I could read it at my convenience.     

Class Sketch

Mssrs. Cleese, Barker, and Corbett in the Class Sketch 

Written by Marty Feldman and John Law

The Frost Report (7 April 1966)

I.

If I remember my political theory correctly, then class consciousness refers to an individual's knowledge of their socio-economic status which allows them to judge where their own best interests lie. For Marxists, the hope is that by raising awareness of inequality and injustice, etc., one increases the chances of collective action and, ultimately, revolution.      

However, whilst I've always been aware of myself as working class and fully conscious of what that entails - and whilst I've always had a certain level of mistrust for the middle classes - I've never been motivated to join the Labour Party or align myself with those on the far left who long for power and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.  

In the end, I just don't care enough about even my own interests; certainly not when these are conceived in material terms of ownership. According to my Armenian friend, Vahe, that's because I'm too other-worldly, suffer from a form of false consciousness, don't fully understand the historical process, blah, blah, blah ...


II.    

In a short essay written in 1927, D. H. Lawrence argues that the gulf between social classes is very real and very deep, though there are now, he says, only two great classes: middle and working; the aristocratic upper class having entirely been absorbed into the bourgeoisie.

Indeed, notes Lawrence, even the working class share in the aspirations of the middle class; to be successful and to have a lot of money in the bank. However, there remains a very real difference and division which is rooted in feeling and in the politics of touch:

"What is the peculiar repugnance one feels, towards entering the middle class world? [...]
      What is the obstacle? I have looked for it in myself, as a clue to this dangerous cleavage between the classes. And I find it is a very deep obstacle. It is in the manner of contact. The contact, among the lower classes [...] is much more immediate, more physical, between man and man, than it ever is among the middle classes. The middle class can be far more intimate, yet never so near to one another. It is the difference between the animal, physical affinity that can govern the lives of men, and the other, the affinity of culture and purpose, which actually does govern the mass today.
      But the affinity of culture and purpose that holds the vast middle class world together seems to me to be an intensification today, of the acquisitive and possessive instinct." [39]

       
III.

Like Lawrence, I was  born among the working class. My father too went down the mines when he left school - though unlike Lawrence's father, he hated it and didn't last long as a collier. After the War, he and my mother - at her instigation - moved south, to London, leaving their old life in the north east of England behind. Eventually, they ended up in Essex in a newly built two-up, two-down council house, where I was born.

My father was employed in a non-managerial position at the Bank of England printing works in Debden. My mother was a traditional housewife, who occasionally did part-time jobs outside the home if money was particularly tight. She had hopes for me and my sister, but nothing too grand or ambitious: some kind of clean office job that paid well. Like the Lawrence household, ours was absolutely working class: tabloid-reading, football-loving, and ITV-watching. 

Of course, one is never entirely shaped by or a prisoner to the past, to one's background, to one's class. But one can never quite escape it either. Or - in my case as in Lawrence's - one never really wants to escape and move up in the world, or get on in life. Why? Well, according to Lawrence, it's because this involves too great a cost; one has to sacrifice something vital and vibrate at a different pitch of being, as it were.

For between the classes exists "a peculiar, indefinable difference" that determines the way the heart beats. This might sound like nonsense, but I know exactly what Lawrence means. And I understand entirely why it is he never quite managed (or wanted) to climb up the social ladder, even when offered a helping hand to do so:

"No one was unfriendly. [...] But it was no good. Unless one were by nature a climber, one could not respond in kind. The middle class seemed quite open, quite willing for one to climb into it. And one turned away, ungratefully. [...]
      And that I have not got a thousand friends, and a place [...] among the esteemed, is entirely my own fault. The door to 'success' had been held open to me. The social ladder had been put ready for me to climb. I have known all kinds of people, and been treated quite kindly by everyone [...] whom I have known personally.
      Yet here I am, nowhere, as it were, and infinitely an outsider. And of my own choice." [37-38]

Precisely: here I am nowhere, with nowhere left to go.

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Which Class I Belong To', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 33-40. 

See also 'Myself Revealed' in the above text, pp. 175-81, which is essentially a variant of 'Which Class I Belong To', that concludes: "I cannot make the transfer from my own class into the middle class. I cannot, not for anything in the world, forfeit my passional consciousness and my old blood-affinity with my fellow-men and the animals and the land, for that other thin, spurious mental conceit which is all that is left of the mental consciousness once it has made itself exclusive." [181] 

Note: 'Myself Revealed' was included in Assorted Articles (1930) under the title 'Autobiographical Sketch'.  

Dandelion: D. H. Lawrence and the Question of Care

Dandelion: photo by Greg Hume (2006)

As much as Lawrence may wish to sit like a dandelion on his own stem and concern himself exclusively with those objects existing within his immediate physical environment - refusing to care about abstract issues, faraway places, or unknown peoples - he’s conscious of the fact that such insouciance can lead to parochialism and might easily be mistaken for indifference on his part; something he’d very much regret.

For Lawrence is very keen to sharply differentiate between insouciance and indifference. The former, he says, is a refusal to be made anxious by abstractions, or swept off to into the empty desert spaces inhabited by idealists gripped by a compulsion to care about everything under the sun. The latter, however, Lawrence defines as an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness or nihilism, which, like Nietzsche, he posits as the great malady of the modern age; a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the immediate past.

The apathetic or indifferent individual, the nihilist, is essentially an exhausted idealist; they have none of the carefree gayness of the insouciant man or woman and do not know how to live on the spot and in the nowness of the actual moment.

That said - and as indicated - insouciance can itself become problematic and serve to isolate the individual, cutting them off from the wider world and from history. We can’t be entirely self-sufficient and concerned only with our own musings and sense impressions. Nor can we only be concerned only about those with whom we have a direct relationship; our immediate family and friends, or kith and kin.

Ultimately, as Lawrence was reluctantly obliged to concede, feeling a sense of solidarity with all mankind isn’t entirely fraudulent and the love of humanity stands for something real and vital; "that feeling of being at one with the struggling soul, or spirit or whatever it is, of our fellow men". Lawrence continues:

"This caring about the wrongs of unseen people has been rather undone. Nevertheless ... still, away in some depth of us, we know that we are connected vitally, if remotely ... [and] we dimly realise that mankind is one, almost one flesh. It is an abstraction, but it is also a physical fact. In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me, and affects me unknown to me. For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity."

What’s interesting about this passage is that not only does it demonstrate that Lawrence was not an individualist as many critics mistakenly believe, but it also shows that his love of humanity was born not of some transcendental attempt to develop a conceited cosmic consciousness, but out of a sense of class consciousness; it’s the workers and the peasants of the world that Lawrence primarily feels connected to and sympathetic with.

Those who cultivate indifference to the point that they lose any compassion for others are mistaken. Lawrence understands their frank egoism, but refuses to share it - worried by the effect it has on the individual who refuses to care. Their intellectual honesty is fine and it’s good to cast off all spurious sympathy and false emotion, but not if this entails the death of all feeling and one becomes empty inside (believing in nothing, standing for nothing, caring for nobody).

Lawrence admits, however, that some can find perverse pleasure in precisely this becoming-void and take "real pride and satisfaction in pure negation". These he calls the perfect nihilists: those whose shallowness is mistaken for depth; whose false calm is mistaken for strength; whose indifference is mistaken for insouciance. Nietzsche termed them the last men; those who sit grinning furtively in the triumph of their own emptiness.

See: D. H. Lawrence, ‘Insouciance’, and ‘Nobody Loves Me’, in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). The lines quoted are from the latter text.