Warwick alumni: Messrs. Alexander and Fisher
This is a continuation of a post: part 1 can be accessed by clicking here
and part 2 by clicking here.
I.
In a sense, this isn't so much a book review as an attempt to occupy the textual space that Fisher has succinctly mapped out in his book Capitalist Realism and meet him there in and on his own terms.
But it is also a staged confrontation; perhaps even an attempt to exorcise his ghost (it's difficult not to feel a little haunted by Fisher at times). But it's a confrontation that is hopefully carried out in an amiable manner and a generous spirit. One that whilst opening up a pathos of distance between us as cultural commentators, also indicates that we clearly share certain interests, ideas, and points of reference.
Anyway, let us return to the book, Capitalist Realism (2009) [a] - picking up where we left off in part two, at the beginning of chapter 7 ...
II.
Back in the old days, being realistic was a relatively straightforward affair; because the real was fixed and everyone agreed what it was.
But now, being realistic in the age of capitalist realism, "entails subordinating oneself to a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment" (54). Now nobody knows quite what's real and what's not, or where they are (readers will recall Fisher spoke earlier of perpetual instability).
That's fine for a small number of people (including Nietzscheans), but can cause issues for the majority who like to know what's what and rely upon what is called common sense. The only way to stay sane is to comply with the madness of the world:
"This strategy - of accepting the incommensurable and the senseless without question - has always been the exemplary technique of sanity as such, but it has a special role to play in late capitalism [...]" (56)
It probably helps if one can actively forget most things too; again, for those of a Nietzschean disposition, that fortunately comes easily.
But for those people more like elephants than goldfish - particularly those individuals burdened with hyperthymesia [b] - it isn't easy to forget and, amongst such people it wouldn't be surprising "if profound social and economic instability resulted in a craving for familiar cultural forms" (59) to which they could return to again and again.
This in part explains why postmodernity is retromaniacal in character; "excessively nostalgic, given over to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty" (59).
III.
According to Fisher, although "excoriated by both neoliberalism and neoconservativism, the concept of the Nanny State continues to haunt capitalist realism" (62) - playing as it does an essential libidinal function; "there to be blamed precisely for its failure to act as a centralizing power" (62) when things go wrong.
Why look for systemic causes for the 2008 financial crisis, for example, when you can blame the government?
The fact is, global capitalism's radical lack of a centre is simply unthinkable for most people; they simply can't help believing that there has to be someone somewhere pulling the strings and in control (this returns us once more to the need for God's shadow to be shown in caves long after God himself has departed the scene).
It's at this point Fisher refers us to the call centre that terrifying non-space and "world without memory, where cause and effect come together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens" (63).
Fisher hates the call centre which, in his view, distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism in a distinctly Kafkaesque [c] manner:
"The boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since - as is very quickly clear to the caller - there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could." (64)
He continues:
"Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is
aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow
victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of
communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have
no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive,
impersonal, centreless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close
as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in
itself." (64)
Capital - and capitalism - that's the issue; that's the problem - not individuals nor even the corporations. For not even the corporations "are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by / expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-a-subject: Capital" (70).
All of which puts one in mind of the Lawrence verse 'Kill Money', which opens with the following lines:
Kill money, put money out of existence.
It is a perverted instinct, a hidden thought
which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul. [d]
IV.
The final chapter of Capitalist Realism opens with a discussion of the Channel 4 reality show Supernanny, starring Jo Frost. It's a show about parents struggling with their children's behaviour; or, as Fisher argues, a relentless (if implicit) attack on "postmodernity's permissive hedonism"(71) and the failure of the paternal superego (or father function) in late capitalism.
Having never watched the show, I'm going to have to take his word on that.
The question is: what might a paternalism without a father look like (assuming a return of the paternal superego is neither possible nor desirable in an age in which Mum knows best) and "the 'paternal' concept of duty has been subsumed into the 'maternal' imperative to enjoy" (71)?
"A question as massive as this cannot of course be answered in a short book such as this [...] In brief, though, I believe that it is Spinoza who offers the best resources for thinking through what a 'paternalism without the father' might look like." (72)
I have to admit, I wasn't expecting that and I'm not sure I entirely understand what this means or implies (is it okay to admit that my knowledge of Spinoza is limited?).
What he seems to mean is something like this: what we need to do today is make the move from a sad and depressive individualism to collective action; i.e., something more communal and joyous.
Neoliberalism treats people not only as individuals but as infants whose behaviour needs to be modified not with reference to a moral system of right and wrong, but with reference to their own health and safety. They also need to be told not what to think - because nobody has to think anymore in an age of artificial intelligence - but what to feel.
Unfortunately, having always to be constantly concerned about one's health and safety and sign one's emails with virtual hugs 'n' kisses, results in increased anxiety which leads to mental health issues. The Spinozist alternative, which breaks us out of such upbeat narcissism, encourages us to actually connect with others - whatever the risks and whatever the drawbacks (other people can be irritating and boring; they can be unpleasant and make miserable).
But it's still better to fall in love and become an active member of society than fall into solipsistic isolation; the Covid pandemic illustrated that, one might have imagined. Ultimately, it's all about constructing collective agency rather than just an individual identity. Freedom - or perhaps it would be better to say fulfilment - comes when you are no longer trapped within your self.
And from this line of thought, Fisher comes to the following conclusion: "The Marxist Supernanny would not only be the one who laid down limitations" (76), but also the one who encouraged us to take risks and seek out the strange (or that which is not-self).
It would, if you like, be a slightly less stuffy version of Auntie Beeb - and acid communism doesn't just call for wild and colourful countercultural experimentation, but a revival of "the supposedly stodgy, centralized culture of the postwar consensus" (76).
Fisher thus moves from Gothic materialism and cyber-punk [e] to public-service broadcasting - which is certainly quite a leap and not one I'm sure I wish to make. Unlike Fisher, I have always hated the BBC - even as a young child. But he insists that the effect of "permanent structural instability [...] is invariably stagnation and conservatism, not innovation", whilst, on the other hand, it's the BBC and Channel 4 that will perplex and delight with "popular avant gardism" (76).
This might seem like a paradox, but Fisher is insistent: "This is not a paradox." (76) The fear and cynicism that come to define late capitalism - including the creative sector - always produce conformist and conventional shit in the end; whereas a certain amount of stability is "necessary for cultural vibrancy" (77).
Whatever else he may or may not be, Fisher is not an anarchist who wishes to smash the state; nor is he an old school socialist who dreams of taking over the state and ever-expanding its size and reach. What he wants - and what he calls on his comrades on the more acidic wing of politics to do - is subordinate the state to the general will:
"This involves, naturally, resuscitating the very concept of the general will, reviving - and modernizing - the idea of a public space that is not reducible to an aggregation of individuals and their interests." (77)
And so, just like that, Fisher again reveals his Rousseauist roots [f]. One half-expects him to begin speaking about enforced freedom and the need for grand narratives. And sure enough ...
"Against the postmodernist suspicion of grand narratives, we need to reassert that, far from being isolated, contingent problems [violent teen crime; hospital superbugs, etc.], these are all the effects of a single systemic cause: Capital." (77)
Thus, as well as subordinating the state to the general will, Fisher's neocommunists need to develop strategies against Capital; I refer you to the Lawrence poem quoted above in section III and, if you want, click here for a musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'Money Is Not Our God' [g].
V.
Despite Killing Joke releasing their thirteenth studio album - Absolute Dissent - in 2010 and despite the financial crisis two years prior to that, the world kept turning and capitalist realism didn't collapse. In fact:
"It quickly became clear that, far from constituting the end of capitalism, the bank bail-outs were a massive reassertion of the capitalist realist insistence that there is no alternative. Allowing the banking system to disintegrate was held to be unthinkable, and what ensued was a vast haemorrhaging of public money into private hands." (78)
No wonder those who, like Fisher, hoped capitalism might not simply be exposed and discredited but deposed and demolished, were quickly disappointed.
They seemed willing to suffer a second 1920s style Great Depression, but, in the end, had to make do with their own personal forms of depression and concede that without a "credible and coherent alternative [...] capitalist realism will continue to rule the political-economic unconscious" (78).
Still, not wanting to end on a defeatist note, Fisher tries to rally his troops with the hope that "it is year zero again, and a space has been cleared for a new anti-capitalism to emerge which is not necessarily tied to the old language or traditions" (78) of the left.
That just seems naively optimistic (and in political bad taste) to me - there is no year zero - it's a mythical point that Buddhists and Khmer Rouge militants might base their calendars on, but Fisher should know better than to flirt with such rhetoric.
I also wish he would refrain from calling for authentic universality - a phrase that he has possibly picked up from that old fraud Slavoj Žižek and by which he appears to return us to humanism - although I'm sure his defenders would insist appearances can be deceptive and that, actually, Fisher is proposing a new, post-humanist (as well as post-capitalist) form of solidarity (i.e., a model that differs entirely from old school metaphysical humanism).
Nevertheless, it's a problematic phrase to say the least ... [h]
VI.
I think I noted earlier in this post that I didn't know - and never even met - Mark Fisher. So I rely for insights into his character upon his friends, colleagues, students, etc.
Individuals such as Tariq Goddard, for example, who provides the 2022 edition of Capitalist Realism with an Afterword, in which he tells us that Fisher was a somewhat manic individual who alternated between "the certainty that the finished work would be a portent of good things to come and an intermittent panic [...] based largely on the fear that he had written too little, too late" (82).
Goddard also informs us that Fisher was unburdened by false modesty and full of messianic zeal and something of this comes across, I think, in the final pages when Fisher boldly tells those on the left what their vices and failings are - "endless rehearsal of historical debates" (78) - and what they must do to be more successful; plan and organise for a future they really believe in.
He continues:
"The failure of previous forms of anti-capitalist political organisation should not be a cause for despair, but what needs to be left behind is a certain romantic attachment to the politics of failure, to the comfortable position of a defeated marginality." (78-79)
Fisher, in other words, does not like the embracing of victimhood or those who are defeatist by nature. Nor does he have much time for those who might reject his thinking:
"It is crucial that a genuine revitalised left confidently occupy the new political terrain I have (very provisionally) sketched here." (79)
And crucial also that they do two things: firstly, "convert widespread mental health problems from medicalized conditions into effective antagonisms" (80); and, secondly, impose a new austerity in order to avoid environmental catastrophe and because limitations placed on desire are a good thing per se (as shown by Oliver James and Supernanny).
To which we can only reply: Tak tochno, tovarishch Fisher!
Notes
[a] I'm using the 2022 edition of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, published by Zero Books, and all page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.
[b] Hyperthymesia - also known as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) - is an extremely rare condition causing individuals to vividly recall nearly every event of their lives in minute detail (not only what they felt, but what they were wearing and had for lunch on any specific date). Such individuals - and there are believed to be only a hundred in the entire world - often find it hard to forget unpleasant memories or trauma, which can make it difficult to move past negative experiences.
Interestingly, Fisher is more concerned with another memory disorder - anterograde amnesia, i.e., the impaired ability to form new long-term memories, whilst past memories remain intact; "the new therefore looms up as hostile, fleeting, unnavigable, and the sufferer is drawn back to the security of the old" (60). For Fisher, this is the postmodern condition defined.
[c] Fisher refers readers to Kafka's novel The Castle (1926), in which K's encounter with the telephone system is "uncannily prophetic of the call centre experience" (64).
He then explains what it is that makes Kafka so important as a writer: "The supreme genius of Kafka was to have explored the negative atheology proper to Capital: the centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there - it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility." (65)
[d] D. H. Lawrence, 'Kill Money', in Pansies (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1929), p. 93.
Lawrence maintained a vehement hatred of money throughout his writing; see for example his essay 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine' (1925) in which he writes:
"Our last wall is the golden wall of money. This is a fatal wall. It cuts us off from life, from vitality, from the alive sun and the alive earth, as nothing can. Nothing, not even the most fanatical dogmas of an iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and inspiration, as money can."
I'm not entirely sure I agree with this; I would certainly rather live in California, or Switzerland - or even Felixstowe - than Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, or Iran under the rule of the Supreme Leader.
Lawrence's essay can be found in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Lines quoted are on p. 363.
[e] Mark Fisher's Ph.D thesis was titled Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (University of Warwick, 1999). It argued that cyberpunk fiction and cybernetic technologies are collapsing the distinctions between life/non-life and human/machine into a flat ontology; what he thought of as a form of Gothic materialism, in which traditional ideas of agency dissolve.
As for cyberpunk, Fisher analysed this genre of writing not merely as a type of fiction commenting on reality, but as hyperrealist theory-fiction that acted as an extension of the real world and as a guide to 'the increasingly strange terrain of capitalism'. The name of his long-running blog, k-punk (2004-2016), is CCRU shorthand for cyber-punk; the k stands for the Greek spelling of the term cyber (κυβερ).
Flatline Constructs was published in book form by Exmilitary in 2018 and K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher, ed., Darren Ambrose, was also published in 2018 (Repeater Books). It brings together some of the best posts from his seminal blog along with a selection of reviews and other writings, including his (unfinished) introduction to a planned work to be called 'Acid Communism'.
[f] Readers may recall that Rousseau is the philosopher most famously associated with the concept of la volonté générale, which he examined in The Social Contract (1762). It represents the collective, common interest of the citizens aimed at the public good, rather than the sum of individual selfish interests. Anyone who refused to obey the general will would be forced to do so.
[g] Killing Joke, 'Money Is Not Our God', was a single released (Jan 1991) from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions (Noise Records, 1990). Written by Jaz Coleman, Geordie Walker, and Martin Atkins.
It failed to chart, but it's a track which all those who hate Mammon will appreciate. I'm not sure they were one of Fisher's favourite bands, but he acknowledges Killing Joke as significant post-punk pioneers who not only challenged the musical and cultural norms of the period, but fostered counter-consensual collectivity, providing an exit from the present and a will to retake the present.
If interested, see what he writes about them on his k-punk blog and in the book Post-Punk Then and Now, ed. Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun, and Mark Fisher (Repeater Books, 2016).
[h] Fisher obviously isn't a traditional humanist; he doesn't subscribe to ideas of a fixed human nature (or some kind of metaphysical essence) existing outside of culture and history.
And so, I suppose authentic universality has to be thought of as a collective (or mass) political project designed to counter forms of suffering that global capitalism produces. Nevertheless, I still dislike the term and still think it lends itself to idealism.
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