Notes on Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (2009) 2: Chapters 4-6

Mark Fisher: Capitalist Realism 

(Zero Books, 2009) [a]

 

This is the second part of a three-part post: part one can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

 

I. 

 

Fisher ties his analysis of capitalist realism (or neoliberalism and postmodernity) to three areas; bureaucracy, education, and mental health. 

 

It's the last of these things with which he is most concerned and why, as a matter of fact, the book has proved to be so popular. For we are in an age obsessed with mental wellbeing; everyone from King Charles to Z-list celebrities feels the need to bang on about anxiety, depression, stress, eating disorders, learning difficulties, and reflexive impotence.  

 

And Fisher, convinced by his reading of Oliver James's 2008 book The Selfish Capitalist [b], is able to reassure us that the mental health crisis is due to an inherently dysfunctional society and not caused only by "chemical imbalances in the individual's neurology and/or by their family background" (21).

 

 

II. 

 

That last term in the above list - reflexive impotence - was coined by Fisher to describe a widespread modern mindset where individuals recognise that the world is fucked up, yet feel utterly incapable of changing it. This belief creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, fostering depression on the one hand and political disengagement on the other.   

 

According to Fisher, depression is endemic in the UK and "afflicting people at increasingly younger ages" (21). But it's a new form of depression - one he terms depressive hedonia:

 

"Depression is usually characterised as a state of anhedonia, but the condition I'm referring to is constituted not by an inability to get pleasure so much as an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure." (21-22)

 

In other words, kids today have too much of a good thing - "the soft narcosis, the comfort food oblivion of Playstation, all-night TV and marijuana" (23) - and it's spoiling them and wrecking their health (physically and mentally). 

 

"There is a sense that 'something is missing' - but no appreciation that this mysterious, missing enjoyment can only be accessed beyond the pleasure principle." (22)

 

Hmmm ... That sounds like the sort of thing those who are promoting national service or Jesus usually say! 

 

Obviously, I'm not saying that's what Fisher is doing. Nevertheless, there is something amusingly kids today-ish about what he writes of his experience dealing with young students in further education; their inability to read more than a couple of sentences without getting bored; their wanting to consume Nietzsche with the same ease they eat a hamburger; their need to constantly listen to music or check social media:

 

"The consequence of being hooked into the entertainment matrix is twitchy, agitated interpassivity, an inability to concentrate or focus." (24)

  

That could well be the case, but, the funny thing (unless I'm very much mistaken) is that back in the day Fisher and his pals in the CCRU - were all for cyberspace and schizophrenia, the fragmentation of time and subjectivity, etc. 

 

His complaint in Capitalist Realism seems to be that all this was co-opted by those whom he thinks of as neoliberals and that it didn't lead to the revolution he was hoping for, but, rather, to a generation suffering from "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" (25); a pathology peculiar to late-capitalism and "a consequence  of being wired into the entertainment-control circuits of hypermediated consumer culture" (25) [c]. 

 

 

III.

 

Once upon a time, Marxists used to call for permanent revolution and anarchists dream of permanent insurrection. But what we have today thanks to neoliberalism is permanent instability - McJobs and zero-hours contracts. Now there's no such thing as full-employment or jobs for life; workers are expected to be flexible and willing to periodically learn new skills. 

 

New buzzwords emerged, such as deregulation and outsourcing. And now, in 2026, everyone's talking about AI.  

 

And if permanent instability places intolerable strain on family life, too bad: "The values that family life depends upon - obligation, trustworthiness, commitment - are precisely those which are held to be obsolete in the new capitalism." (33) 

 

Today, we have to all live like Neil McCauley, De Niro's character in Heat (dir. Michael Mann, 1995), and not let ourselves get attached to anything (or anyone) we're not willing (and able) to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if need be. 

 

In brief, the world has changed - though, crucially, the change was in part "driven by the desires of workers" (34) themselves. The moral of which (not drawn by Fisher) is: be careful what you wish for - because even freedom and happiness can become burdensome and make miserable.

 

 

IV. 

  

The urgent task today, says Fisher, is to repoliticise mental illness; that's the way to challenge capitalist realism. 

 

And there seem to be many on the radical left who agree with him, which is perhaps why so many of those pink-haired young people with rings through their noses, campaigning for a wide range of progressive issues and causes, are keen to tell you about their struggles with anxiety and depression. 

 

Ironically, however, recent research suggests that viewing everything through a lens of activism can become mentally exhausting and the fact that they find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism undoubtedly adds to their levels of distress and unhappiness [d].    

 

Oliver James was widely criticised for his anti-medication stance in The Selfish Capitalist (2008); he explicitly attacked the use of pharmaceuticals as a pacifying social element that enabled damaged individuals to be returned to the work force. James also dismissed cognitive behavioural therapy and suggested it too was designed to serve neoliberal interests. 

 

I mention that because I do wonder if - inadvertently - Fisher's book harms some of the people he most cares about by feeding into their political neuroses and validating their psychopathologies ... 

 

Perhaps a reader who already finds the world cruel and unjust and blames society for his or her own feelings of what used to be called alienation, might come away from Capitalist Realism feeling even more depressed; particularly as it doesn't actually offer an alternative, functioning more as a diagnostic tool.     

 

Just sayin' ...

 

V.    

  

Fisher's ideas on market Stalinism, the triumph of PR, and bureaucratic anti-producion - ideas which form the basis for chapter 6 of Capitalist Realism - are interesting; but not so interesting that I have much to say about them here.     

   

These are the things into which all that was once solid have dissolved ... The things which that spectral authority known as the big Other [e] believes in even if (even when) nobody else does. 

 

Fisher rejects the claim made by some (including Nick Land) that capitalist realism has "given up belief in the big Other" (45) - that it has become as incredulous to the latter as to all metanarratives and doesn't need such to act as a guarantor. Either the Symbolic hasn't been as abolished as once believed, or, even if it has, this abolition did not lead to "a direct encounter with the Real" (48) - it led to what Baudrillard termed hyperreality. 

 

Oh, and bureaucracy hasn't gone away either (which is why we can still learn much by reading Kafka) - just ask any teacher or university lecturer. It's no wonder, then, that Fisher felt less than happy working in the education sector and one can't help wondering why he felt so compelled to belong to it and desperate to secure a permanent post ... 

 

Shortly before resigning from Warwick and after his position there had become untenble, Nick Land once told me: 'I'd rather flip burgers from the back of a van than be an academic.'

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the cover of the first edition. I'm using the 2022 edition published by Zero Books and page references given here are to this edition. 

 

[b] In The Selfish Capitalist (2008), psychologist Oliver James asserts that the model of neoliberalism adopted by English-speaking nations since the 1970s is a primary driver of widespread mental illness. He contends that this system fosters affluenza - i.e., a kind of cultural virus, symptoms of which include an obsessive pursuit of money and status, which makes people prone to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem for those who don't succeed in getting rich or becoming famous. 

      Thus, like Mark Fisher, James argues that mental illness is essentially a social consequence, rather than a genetic or neurological condition and he calls for an unselfish form of capitalism, in which workers have more pay, shorter hours, better conditions, and so on, thereby ensuring the wellbeing of the many takes precedence over the wealth of the few. 

      Critics point to his use of data and the fact that his thesis relies on correlation rather than proves causation. He also seems to have little real knowledge of some of the countries he champions as more caring and sharing; countries including Japan, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Ultimately, his proposed solution to the crisis in mental health is a bit like Fisher's; underdeveloped, to say the least.       

  

[c] It's probably due to his somewhat belated recognition that cyberfuturism and schizonomadism might lend themselves to neoliberalism - not to mention a neo-reactionary politics (à la Nick Land) - that led Fisher to retreat to acid communism (which is essentially an all too human model of politics).  

 

[d] Researchers in Finland at the University of Turku identified a negative correlation between progressive ideals and mental wellbeing. Their findings suggest that other Western nations may find similar patterns among socially conscious (or woke) individuals.

      See the study, authored by Oskari Lahtinen, titled 'Construction and validation of a scale for assessing social justice attitudes', in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 65, Issue 4 (August 2024), pp. 693-705. Click here to read online.   

[e] The big Other is Fisher's development of Žižek's elaboration of Lacan's concept; a collective fiction or symbolic structure "presupposed by any social field" (44) and which organises and supports social reality via an invisible framework of rules, laws, and cultural norms. It is sometimes known by other names; such as the Market, or that coldest of all cold monsters, the State. 

 

 

Notes on Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (2009) 1: Chapters 1-3

Mark Fisher: Capitalist Realism 

(Zero Books, 2022) [a]

 

'The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction ... 

From a situation in which nothing can happen, 

suddenly anything is possible again.' 

 

 

I. 

 

It's arguable that since his death in 2017, Mark Fisher has gone from being merely a cult figure within certain academic circles to something resembling a posthumous spiritual leader to an entire generation; one who is "quoted feverishly by his disciples" [b]. 

 

That's not his fault, I suppose - I can't imagine Fisher would have wanted faithful followers forever asking themselves What would Mark think? when confronted with the latest political or cultural development. 

 

But we are where we are and the fact is that, today, Fisher has become an enormous cult and it amuses me to think of him doing his best Kenneth Williams impression up in Heaven, telling the angels of his status [c].

 

As one might imagine, there is an ever-increasing number of articles, essays, books, and films made about him and his work; particularly his seminal debut text, Capitalist Realism (2009), and it's this slim volume I would like to discuss here ... [d]  

 

 

II.  

 

The title of the opening chapter provides the book's tagline: "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." (1) 

 

It's a borrowed phrase by which Fisher refers to the fact that capitalism is more than an economic arrangement of society or a political ideology; that it has become a singular reality that is so all-encompassing that we mistake it for the natural order or inevitable way of the world. 

 

This, in turn, makes alternative models either unimaginable or seem foolish and utopian. 

 

It's a neat trick: though Wilde might say that capitalism's passing itself off as natural is merely an irritating political pose. 

 

Nevertheless, pose or not, it remains a huge problem for those who, like Fisher, want to bring about revolutionary change and a form of what he later calls acid communism - something which, apparently, will unleash post-capitalist desire, raise levels of consciousness, and reclaim the creative ideas and countercultural energies of the world before neoliberalism.       

 

For the record, I'm broadly sympathetic to this line of thinking. I don't accept the argument that capitalism is in fact natural and aligns with the human condition by fostering competition and the innate desire to trade, invest, own property and aspire to a materially more comfortable existence. 

 

Or, if this is in fact a valid argument, then, for me, it simply reinforces the Nietzschean idea that man is a bourgeois compromise and, as anti-humanist philosophers, we are obliged to value that which lies overman [e].    

 

Having said that, I'm a little more cautious - maybe even a little more liberal - than I was thirty years ago when developing my own politics of desire in the philosophy department at Warwick University [f], and just as I wince at some of the things I wrote then, so too do I cringe at some of the things in Fisher's book.

 

Capitalism may not be the same as the Real, but I seriously doubt there's anything particularly acidic (or in any way unmediated) about communism ...    

 

 

III. 

 

One of the pleasures of reading Fisher is that he doesn't seem to make any hard and fast distinction between fiction and theory, or the world of thought and that of feeling. 

 

I can see how this might irritate those readers who, like Jürgen Habermas, believe that the false assimilation of one enterprise to another robs both of their substance, purpose, and productivity [g], but, for me - as a lover of Nietzsche and Lawrence - I approve of this intertextual promiscuity. 

 

Like Fisher, I think that philosophy, the arts, and politics have a profound and congenial relation to one another and that the best writers are those who produce a text that is radically and openly figurative, drawing upon all manner of considerations; including those ideas and images found within popular culture that were previously regarded as unacceptable or irrelevant to serious critical debate.     

 

Fisher's devising of a highly idiosyncratic mode of accessible (but never simplistic) language in his writings - and its application to a wide variety of contemporary issues - is undoubtedly one of his strong points (and it's something I have tried to replicate in my own manner here on Torpedo the Ark).

 

The key thing is this: in Capitalist Realism Fisher is essentially trying to imagine an alternative reality principle; one that is capable of providing new forms of practice, new attitudes, and new historical possibilities - even if, by his own admission, "for most people under twenty in Europe and North America, the lack of alternatives to capitalism" (8) isn't really an issue. 

 

Further, he wants to provide an authentic sense of solidarity and community; to "fill the conditions of a collective enunciation that is lacking elsewhere", as Deleuze and Guattari would say [h]. For Fisher, it's not capital which is the essence of reality; but the complex and shifting world of relationships between people [i].

 

But - and this is what worries me - hasn't Fisher's book already succumbed to the fate that met Picasso's Guernica in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006); the dystopian film that Fisher discusses in chapter 1?

 

That is to say, hasn't Capitalist Realism - "once a howl of anguish and outrage" (4) - simply morphed into another popular bestseller "accorded 'iconic' status" (4); just another cultural artefact available for free delivery with Amazon Prime? [j]

 

  

IV. 

 

Am I mistaken, or does Fisher hanker after something to believe in? 

 

That's a concern if true (and would explain how he ends up promoting acid communism). We will need to be on the lookout for signs of religiosity when (re-)reading through Capitalist Realism. 

 

Sadly for him, one of the things he can't believe in anymore is pop culture; the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 "confirmed the defeat and incorporation of rock's utopian and promethean ambitions" (10) and as for hip-hop, well, that was pretty much stillborn and complicit with capitalist realism from the get-go. 

 

Likewise, movies and comic books became equally hopeless; a mixture of neoliberalism and neo-noir (although that's a pretty seductive combination if, like me, you happen to like Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Frank Miller's Batman). 

 

 

V. 

 

Chapter 2 of Capitalist Realism poses an interesting question: 'What if you held a protest and everyone came?' 

 

Though it's perhaps a question that any teenager who ever decided to throw an open house party when their parents went away for the weekend might be able to answer. I refer readers to the 2012 teen comedy film directed by Nima Nourizadeh, Project X, which tells the story of three friends who attempt to gain popularity by throwing a party which then quickly escalates out of their control.   

 

I would remind readers also of Nietzsche's warning against the attempt to turn a subtle revolutionary idea into a mass movement by dumbing down one's philosophy and painting "great al fresco stupidities" [k] on the walls. 

 

I'm not saying this is what Fisher has done. But he does give the impression at times of being a political and social fantasist, inviting a revolutionary overturning of the global economy in the belief that "fair humanity will then rise up as though of its own accord" [l]. 

 

In such a dangerous (and delusional) dream, says Nietzsche, one hears "an echo of Rousseau's superstition, which believes in a miraculous primeval but as it were buried goodness of human nature and ascribes all the blame for this burying to the institutions of culture" [m].    

 

Unfortunately, history has taught us that whilst mass uprisings and revolutions can unleash "the most savage energies in the shape of the long-buried dreadfulness and excesses of the most distant ages" [n], they can neither perfect man nor society. 

 

That said, Fisher is smart and honest enough to recognise that the anti-capitalist protest movement - with its hysterical demand for the impossible - invariably just reinforces capitalism itself: "Protests have formed a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism, and the anti-capitalist protests share rather too much with hyper-corporate events [...]" (14) 

 

Fisher particularly loathes Live 8 [o], which he describes as "a strange kind of protest; a protest that everyone could agree with" (14) and one which "the logic of the protest was revealed in its purest form" [14]; basically, a chance to scream at Daddy (or the Man). 

 

For it is "not capitalism but protest itself which depends upon this figuration of the Father" (14) and he explicitly tells his readers the harsh truth that they themselves are complicit "in planetary networks of oppression" (15) - even when pumping their fists in the air or singing along with Bono and the boys at Wembley. 

 

Fisher writes: 

 

"What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation. The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labour is ours, ad the zombies it makes are us." (15)

 

What this means, therefore, is that in order to reclaim real political agency, one must first of all accept one's "insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder" (15). 

 

This, for me, is Fisher at his most Landian - and I like it. His exposure of the myth that caring individuals "could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganisation" (15) - provided they bought the right products - is brutal and brilliant. 

 

 

VI. 

 

Chapter 3 returns us to the question of capitalism and the Real ... 

 

And a confession from Fisher that not only was the phrase about it being easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism not his - it was earlier used by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek - but neither is the term capitalist realism an original coinage: 

 

"It was used as far back as the 1960s by a group of German Pop artists and by Michael Schudson in his 1984 book Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion, both of whom were making parodic references to socialist realism." (16)  

 

I don't really have a problem with borrowings like this and, besides, Fisher doesn't just adopt the term, he ascribes a more expansive (and more exorbitant) meaning to it. For Fisher, capitalist realism "cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions" (16). 

 

It is in fact, "more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action" (16). 

 

Fisher at this point openly reveals his hand, in a crucial passage worth quoting:

 

"If capitalist realism is so seamless, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless and impotent, where can an effective challenge come from? A moral critique of capitalism [...] only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism's ostensible 'realism' turns out to be nothing of the sort." (16)

 

Quite simply, I don't agree with that. I don't think it makes much difference whether capitalism is consistent or inconsistent, real or false - any more than whether God is an actual entity or virtual being. Marxists have been droning on for years about the many internal contradictions of capitalism and how these would one day trigger a crisis from which it would be impossible to recover - and yet, here we are.

 

Unfortunately for those who pin their hopes on this idea, contradictions have not caused a terminal collapse because the system is highly adaptive and able to stumble on from one crises to the next, sustaining production and restoring profitability, even without ever resolving the underlying issues (such as massive inequality).  

 

The masses are not going to be spurred into revolutionary action when it is revealed to them that capitalism is a fraud, anymore than the faithful simply abandoned God following the announcement of his death. Nietzsche famously concedes that God's posthumous shadow or ghost would be encountered for thousands of years, meaning humanity would continue to uphold the same moral values long after faith in the existence and authority of an actual deity had vanished (that's why the revaluation he called for will not happen overnight) [p]. 

 

Similarly, the overcoming of capitalism isn't as easy as simply revealing its structural inconsistencies and internal conflicts. Perhaps it will even require the kind of accelerationism that Fisher probably subscribed to when under the influence of Nick Land during his days at Warwick and involvement with the CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit).       

 

In other words, perhaps the revolutionary path is not to withdraw from the global economy into private fantasy or try to simply side-step the coldest of all cold monsters like a crab, but accelerate the forces that the market economy has itself unleashed:

 

"To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization. For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and practice of a highly schizophrenic character." [q]        

 

From the viewpoint, that is, of the theory and practice developed by Deleuze and Guattari - writing here in Anti-Oedipus (1972) - who argue that, through its process of production, capitalism "produces an awesome schizophrenic accumulation of energy" [r], which it is obliged to repress but which, nevertheless, continues to act as capitalism's external (and absolute) limit.   

 

The task, therefore, is to accelerate the process, so that capitalism can no longer bind these schizo-revolutionary forces and flows which it has itself unleashed. Capitalism, like all great historical systems, will thus "perish more as a result of its successes than its failures" [s] or its contradictions. Admittedly, however, this is a risky (potentially fatal) strategy that will require an exterminating angel who scrambles all the codes.    

 

 

VII. 

 

Finally, we return to the idea of the Real ...

 

Fisher is right to say that "what counts as 'realistic', what seems possible at any point in the social field, is defined by a series of political determinations" (16). And that the real trick, as we noted earlier, was to naturalise ideological values, magically transforming values into facts. 

 

"As any number of radical theorists [...] have maintained, emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a 'natural order', must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency [...]" (16)  

 

In other words, radical theorists wish to give the game away - to pull back the curtain, like Toto the dog; or, if you prefer a recent cinematic reference, convince others to pop a red pill. The problem, of course, is that most people, given the choice, prefer blissful ignorance and eating virtual steaks. 

 

Who wants the Real - "a traumatic void that can only be glimpsed in fractures" (18) - if it provides none of the comforts of reality - if it risks making one even more depressed (and impoverished) than the illusory world of capitalist realism?  

 

  

Notes

 

[a] This is the most recent edition of Fisher's seminal text published in 2009. It comes with a Foreword by Zoe Fisher, an Introduction by Alex Niven, and an Afterword by Tariq Goddard. All page numbers given in this post refer to this edition.

 

[b] Rosa Abbott, writing in a post titled 'Ghosts of Mark Fisher' (5 Feb 2021), published on her Bad Taste Substack: click here.

 

[c] I'm referring here to Williams's hilarious interview with Terry Wogan in which he declared himself to be an enormous cult (Wogan BBC TV): click here and go to 1:49. 

 

[d] For some reason, I have resisted doing so until now, despite having previously written about two other books completed by him; Ghosts of My Life (2014) and The Weird and the Eerie (2017) - click here and/or here. 

 

[e] I'm not familiar enough with Fisher's reading of Nietzsche to know for sure how he relates the idea of the Übermensch to his own political thinking (or if he did so). One assumes that he would interpret the concept in communal rather than individualistic terms (i.e., as the realisation of a collectively imagined future that breaks the spell of the capitalist realism and the perpetual present).     

 

[f] Whilst Fisher and I were both doing doctoral research in the philosophy dept. at Warwick in the 1990s - he completed his PhD on cybernetic theory-fiction in 1999 and I submitted my study of Nietzsche-Lawrence-Deleuze the following year - we didn't know one another, nor, I believe, ever cross paths. He was far more involved with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) than I was, even though Nick Land was overseeing my progress in 1994-95. 

 

[g] See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Polity Press, 1994), p. 210.  

 

[h] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 18.   

 

[i] As Alex Niven writes in his Introduction: "At its most basic level, whatever political and theoretical nuances it might otherwise have implied [Capitalist Realism ...] was a book which called for a joining of human hands." [xiv] 

 

[j] This isn't, of course, Fisher's fault; he himself noted that capitalist realism works by rapidly absorbing dissent and neutralising it. And maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic; people on the left still insist the book remains relevant and its central argument remains valid (even if it is not the key to unlocking the future that some had once hoped). To date, Capitalist Realism has sold over 250,000 copies and it has been translated into many different languages.    

 

[k] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1993), I. 8. 438, p. 161. Nietzsche goes on to quote Voltaire at this point: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu ... 

 

[l] Ibid., I. 8. 463, p. 169.  

 

[m] Ibid. 

 

[n] Ibid. 

 

[o] Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place in July 2005, in the G8 states and South Africa, marking the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. The call was to make poverty history. More than a thousand musicians performed at the concerts, which were broadcast on 182 television networks and two thousand radio networks. The BBC estimated the global audience to be around 1.5 billion. 

 

[p] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, III. 108. 

 

[q] Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley et al (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 239.  

 

[r] Ibid., p. 246.

 

[s] Keith Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life (Routledge, 1997), p. 178. 

 

 

Parts two of this post can be accessed by clicking here. 

 

Part three of this post will follow in due course.   

 

On Being (and Not Being) Leonard Zelig

Stephen Alexander and Leonard Zelig 

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Zelig (1983) may not be my favourite Woody Allen movie, but it's the one that philosophically most interests and also the film that most closely resonates with my own experiences. 

 

The title character, Leonard Zelig [1], played by Allen - who also wrote and directed the movie - is, paradoxically, a man without any fixed character or distinguishing features; someone who, out of a pathological desire to fit in and be liked, takes on the personal traits of those people around him. 

 

Our friends the psychologists refer to this with the term environmental dependency syndrome - although some see it as an actual disorder that compromises individuation and prevents personal autonomy [2].  

 

Made as a fictional documentary, Zelig uses archival footage, faux-newsreels, and interviews with real-life intellectuals - including Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and Bruno Bettelheim - to chronicle the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig in the 1920s and '30s, humorously exploring themes of identity, conformity, and celebrity. 

 

It's an almost flawless film and certainly far more than the one-joke technical novelty that some critics dismissed it as at the time. To enjoy a short theatrical teaser trailer, click here.  

 

 

II. 

 

Rewatching Allen's film, it struck me that, in some ways, I'm a bit Zelig-like, in that I have the knack for being at the right time and place and of appearing to fit in, even while secretly remaining on the outside of events and somewhat indifferent to what others think of me. 

 

For unlike Zelig, I don't need to be loved; I just need to be close enough (and invisible enough) to watch the chaos unfold; more an amused observer rather than an active participant or paid-up member of an established scene.  

 

 

III.

 

For example, when at Charisma Records in 1984-85, I was both employed and not-employed; at the heart of the music business whilst never really belonging. I hadn't applied for a job in the press office and had no ambitions of building a career. 

 

Rather, I just found myself placed there thanks to the machinations of Malcolm McLaren who wanted me to act as a mole, letting him know what was happening behind the scenes during a very turbulent period when the Virgin shark was in the process of digesting Charisma, having swallowed the label in 1983.     

 

Then, in the 1990s, whilst doing doctoral research at Warwick University, I was both a member of the philosophy department and not quite part of it. Registered as a part-time student, I was based in London rather than resident on campus or living nearby. I was also co-supervised by a professor in the English department and that made me a bit suspect to some in the philosophy department.

 

I knew (and quite liked) Nick Land and even produced some artwork for the magazine Collapse at his invitation, but, again, was never really one of Nick's gang or involved with the CCRU as they accelerated off into the future.        

 

Finally, and by way of another example, between 2004-08, I spent a good deal of time at Treadwell's, in Covent Garden, seemingly a key figure on the pagan witchcraft scene, presenting over thirty talks at the store during this period on subjects ranging from thanatology to zoophilia - as noted by Gary Lachman in an article for the Independent [3].    

 

But, once more, despite my ability to look at home in an esoteric environment, I always felt like an enemy within (just a little bit too sceptical, too cynical, and too insincere to ever really belong).   

 

IV. 

 

In conclusion: I am and I am not Leonard Zelig. 

 

Whilst he transforms physically to fit in, I'm more of an intellectual chameleon: in other words, he has no fixed look; I have no fixed ideas. 

 

In our own ways, however, we both haunt cultural history by being everywhere and nowhere at once, reflecting the mood and the madness of the times. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The name Zelig is Yiddish of Germanic origin, meaning 'blessed' or 'happy' and has historically been associated with individuals considered to be favoured by a higher power.

 

[2] EDS is often caused by frontal lobe damage, often resulting from strokes, tumours, or degenerative diseases like dementia. Those with the condition not only copy the gestures and mannerisms of others, but also often use objects inappropriately; unable to resist the impulse to interact with their environment. Such behaviour, as one might imagine, can lead to awkward social situations and, in severe cases, can have serious consequences. 

 

[3] See Gary Lachman, 'Pagan pages: One bookshop owner is summoning all sorts to her supernatural salons', Independent (16 September 2007): click here. 

 

    

Suits You, Sir!

 1984 1992 2006

  

I. 

 

The modern suit - regarded in the early days as informal daywear comprising of jacket, trousers and, if a three-piece, a waistcoat  - has been around since at least the late 19th-century. 

 

Indeed, some fashion scholars trace the history of the suit back to the 17th-century and credit Charles II with being instrumental in bringing together the key components. Others think the main man was Regency dandy Beau Brummel, who helped establish Savile Row as the home of bespoke men's tailoring. 

      

Personally, I tend to think that the suit as we know it owes more to the rise of the Victorian business class and the industrial revolution. And what really interests me is how the suit developed in the 20th-century, particularly in the United States in relation to youth-driven popular culture - but that's a story for another day, another post. 

 

Here, I just want to briefly reflect on the memories triggered by the three suits I can be seen wearing in the image above: the first by Jane Khan, one half of Birmingham's best and brightest designers Khan & Bell; the second from the Italian high-end fashion house of Armani; and the third by punk Dame Vivienne Westwood. 

 

 

II.

 

Kahn & Bell was a fashion label and boutique established by Jane Kahn and Patti Bell in Hurst Street, Birmingham, in 1976; much loved by those who simply had to dress up in order to mess up.

 

By the mid-'80s, however, they'd decided to go their separate ways and Khan sans Bell was trading at the Great Gear Market [1] under the brand name of Khaniverous. 

 

And it was at Khaniverous, in April 1984, that I bought my first suit; a loud and colourful check design featuring a teddy boy style jacket with padded square shoulders and black velvet lapels. 

 

It was the kind of theatrical (some might say clownish) punk look that I adored. The suit also reminded me of one worn by Johnny Rotten when fighting his High Court case against Malcolm McLaren in February 1979. 

 

According to my diary from the time, Miss Khan was very friendly and the suit cost £75 (which is about £300 in today's money).  

 

I'm not sure I was ready to take on the world in that suit, but wearing it always made very happy. It was given it's final outing on my wedding day (20 October 1988); after that, the jacket was appropriated into my wife's wardrobe (along with my favourite Zorro style black hat).  

 

 

III. 

 

By the beginning of the 1990s, not only was I approaching 30 and so no longer to be fully trusted, but I was increasingly tired of the tartan-clad Jazz persona invented ten years earlier. And so, whilst still pretty much subscribing to the same anarcho-nihilistic philosophy of punk, it was time for a radical change of image, beginning with the purchase of a heavy linen suit bought from Giorgio Armani.

 

In other words, the Armani suit was not a belated attempt to become a yuppie and I had no desire to turn rebellion into money [2]. Indeed, part of the joke was to look rich whilst being poor; to be dressed as if keen for success whilst all the time celebrating failure.

 

I remember once wearing the suit to Warwick University for a meeting with Nick Land, in an attempt to make the point that being a mad Deleuzian doesn't necessarily oblige one to always dress in oversized black jumpers. 

 

Of course, Land was no more persuaded by my arguments in favour of expensive designer fashion than he was taken by my suggestion that the Ccru should retitle their magazine ***collapse as Stand Up! [3] 

 

To be fair to Nick, however, I don't think I was ever entirely convinced by my own arguments on this point either and, ultimately, this new Armani look never really worked. Thus, I almost inevitably drifted back to more avant-garde designers, including Vivienne Westwood ... 

 

 

IV.

 

This brings us to the final suit pictured above; an unstructured, linen/cotton design featuring a Prince of Wales check, from 2006. 

 

This suit always reminds me of happy days spent with my beautiful friend Dawn Garland, hanging around a bar in Bloomsbury (see photo below) before attending a series of lectures at Birkbeck by the (hugely over-rated) public intellectual Slavoj Žižek, on topics including Lacanian psychoanalysis and neo-Marxism. 

 

The suit - far more sober than the two drunken suits (one wool, the other silk) that I'd also purchased from Vivienne Westwood during this period - nevertheless always attracted attention when worn (particularly if I was accompanied by Miss Garland, who had her own unique style); some negative, but mostly positive and that's always welcome. 

 

For one doesn't wish to be too flamboyant and standoutish, but neither does one want to fade into the background or be just another face in the crowd; imperceptible, yes - indistinguishable, no thanks. 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Great Gear Market was located at 85 King's Road, London. It was a place known for its punk and alternative fashions and was where many young designers started out and many musicians shopped for outfits. Long closed now, it's perhaps not as well-remembered (nor as well documented) as Kensington Market.

 

[2] As Ian Trowell writes of Heaven 17's decision to wear expensive suits at the start of the 1980s, it was a look designed to confuse those whose anti-conformity simply meant conforming in another direction to another sartorial code or subcultural uniform. 

      See Trowell's article in SIG News #4 (UAL, September 2025); 'Let's All Make a Bomb: Heaven 17 and the Yuppie 1980s'. To read my take on this article, see the post on Torpedo the Ark dated 2 July 2025: click here. 

 

[3] The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit - styled as the Ccru - was an unorthodox, unsanctioned, experimental (and in-part imaginary) collective growing like some malignant tumor in the philosophy department at the University of Warwick in the mid-1990s, whose posthumous reputation far exceeds its actual accomplishments. Key members included Nick Land, Sadie Plant, and Mark Fisher. 

      The Ccru published a zine entitled ***collapse for which I once provided some artwork, even though I didn't particularly care for (or fully understand) much of the content. My idea was that we were already among the ruins - that pretty much everything that might collapse had collapsed - so it was time to build new little habitats and encourage people to stand up and find a way beyond the ruins: We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen, as Lawrence once put it. 

      I suspect I was seen as a bourgeois reactionary - in an Armani suit - hoping to reterritorialise on old ideas at a time when the Ccru wished to radically accelerate the process of deterritorialisation; although, to again give Land his due, he was always friendly with me and his suggestion about the direction my Ph.D should take (less philosophical and more literary in character) was extremely helpful.

 

 

For a follow up post to this one - on enclothed cognition, etc. - please click here.  

 

On the Politics of Accelerationism Contra Slowness

Jamie Reid, Nowhere Bus (2005)

giclee mounted cotton rag print (79 x 90.5 cm) 

bonhams.com

 

 

I. 

 

As everyone knows, the Sex Pistols were going nowhere - but they were going nowhere fast! Speed was the very essence of punk; even if travelling by bus [1]. Indeed, one might argue that Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid both subscribed to a political strategy that is now termed accelerationism ... 

 

In other words, theirs was a revolutionary project founded upon the idea that radical social and political change could only be achieved via an injection of speed (or chaos) into the current system in order to destabilise it and thus accelerate its demise. 

 

When everything is rotten and on the point of collapse, the task is not to try and reform or improve the situation, but, rather, to push the process of decay further and faster beyond the point of no return. Ultimately, the Sex Pistols wanted to make things worse - not better; McLaren and Reid believed in the ruins of culture, not its grand monuments. 

 

II. 

 

I'm not sure from where (or whom) McLaren and Reid adapt this line of thinking - one which attracts extremists on both the far-left and far-right - but, for me, it has its roots in the Nietzschean idea of pushing (or kicking) over that which is already falling [2]. 

 

One is also obliged to mention the work of Deleuze and Guattari in their seminal two-volume study Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in which they speak of accelerating the processes of the former all the way to a singular outer limit [3], effectively injecting Marxism with a little madness and speed.

 

And of course, it was from his idiosyncratic and delirious reading of Deleuze and Guattari, fuelled by amphetamine, that the British philosopher most associated with the theory of accelerationism, Nick Land, drew many key ideas in relation to his own brand of techno-nihilism that affirms rapid advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, human enhancement (or replacement), etc. [4]

 

 

III. 

    

As dangerously exciting as the idea of accelerationism is - and despite my own long advocacy of speed over slowness: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - I find myself now increasingly drawn toward the idea that it might, in fact, be advantageous and desirable to slow things down; that slowness is another softly-spoken S-term to be added to the list that includes silence, secrecy, and shadows ... [5]   

 

Of course, this might just be a sign that one is getting older, but not necessarily any wiser: I'm very aware of the fact that it was only when he had passed 60 years of age and approched the end of his life, that Malcolm McLaren also embraced the idea of slowness in various cultural forms, including slow art and film [6].

 

Thus, for example, when discussing his series of 'musical paintings' entitled Shallow 1-21 (2008), he was very keen to explain how they were based upon the idea of slowness; that speed and the idea of going nowhere fast wasn't attractive to him any longer; that Damien Hirst's spin paintings were essentially boring [7]. 

 

McLaren now wanted individuals to take their time; to focus on things and delight in the nuances and details; to enjoy the moment that leads up to the event or action as much as the event or action itself; to appreciate that Jamie Reid's bus destination could, with but one stroke of a pen, be transformed from Nowhere to Now/here - i.e., an immanent utopia that exists in the bonds between people, not the dissolution of those bonds.   

A still from Malcolm McLaren's Shallow 1-21 (2008) 

showing a woman slowly eating some grapes
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

   

   

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring of course to the Jamie Reid artwork used to promote the Sex Pistols' single 'Pretty Vacant' (Virgin Records, 1977) which featured two buses; one headed to Nowhere and the other destined to terminate in Boredom. 

      This amusing image, however, pre-dates punk; Reid was reworking an earlier graphic produced for his radical Suburban Press, having appropriated the buses idea and design from a 1973 pamphlet published by the American situationist group Point-Blank! In 2010, the activist David Jacobs, founder of Point-Blank!, claimed that he was the one who should be credited with the original concept and design. 

 

[2] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes: 

      "O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: That which is falling, should also be pushed! Everything of today - it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it? But I - want to push it too!" 

      - 'Of Old and New Law Tables' (20), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 226.

 

[3] In Anti-Oedipus, for example, Deleuze and Guattari advocate an acceleration of the forces and flows that capitalism has itself unleashed: "To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization." [239]

      It should be stressed, however, that whilst they think capitalism "produces an awesome schizophrenic accumulation of energy" [34], this also acts as its limit, which is why "schizophrenia is not the identity of capitalism, but on the contrary its difference, its divergence, and its death" [246]. 

      Page references are to the English edition, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1994).

 

[4] Readers interested in knowing more about Land's thinking in this area might like to see his essay 'A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism' (2017), which can be located as a five page pdf on the Internet Archive: click here. 

      Ultimately, for Land, capitalism is something akin to an alien form of intelligence and a means of opening up the future. Thus, philosophers truly interested in change have a duty to affirm such regardless of the consequences to humanity or the planet. 

      See also Robin MacKay and Armen Avanessian (eds.), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader (Urbanomic, 2014). 

 

[5] See the post 'In Defence of Isis Veiled' (9 Sept 2023), in which I suggest what a practice of occultism might mean today in an age of transparency: click here. 

 

[6] On the other hand, it's possible that this wasn't a sign of age, but an attempt by McLaren to get with the times and create a contemporary space for himself. For the slow movement as a cultural initiative encouraging individuals to reject the hustle and bustle of modern life, had, by the early 2000s, been (ironically) gathering pace for a number of years. 

      The core idea at the heart of the slow movement's philosophy is that faster is not necessarily better and that one should learn to relax a little so as to enjoy the moment and be able to appreciate and reflect upon things without feeling hurried or distracted. 

      The slow movement has found expression in many different areas; from slow art and photography, to slow fashion and food. There is also a political aspect to the movement; one that calls for local governance models that are inclusive and centered on deliberative democracy and community empowerment. 

      All this sounds very nice, but one suspects that this is essentially a middle-class movement; that the working class can't afford to take things slowly and lead a more leisurely lifestyle.

 

[7] I'm paraphrasing McLaren speaking in conversation with Prof. Jo Groebel, Direktor of the Deutsch Digital Institute, Berlin, at the American Academy in Berlin (29 Oct 2008): click here. Malcolm introduces the concept of slowness at 42:10. 

      For those who may not be familiar with the work, Shallow 1-21 is an 86-minute video consisting of 21 'musical paintings' that combine (but do not synchronise) musical snippets with short film clips - the latter appropriated from old sex movies - into a slow moving and hypnotically layered work of art.

 

 

For a follow up post to this one on making haste slowly and learning how, as an artist, one might be quick, even when standing still, please click here. 

 

Révéroni de Saint-Cyr: Modern Perversity and Old School Pessimism

Illustration for Pauliska ou la Perversité moderne (1798)  

by Jacques-Antoine Révéroni de Saint-Cyr [1]

 

"L'amour est une rage; il peut s’inoculer par la morsure ..."

 

 

I.

 

The Marquis de Sade may be the best-known aristocratic French author writing dark Gothic fiction with a sexually explicit flavour, but he wasn't the only one. 

 

And I'm slowly getting round to read Révéroni de Saint-Cyr's two-volume novel Pauliska ou la Perversité moderne (1798); finally translated into English, by Erik Butler, and published by Tartarus Press (2018) [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Considered a (minor) classic of its kind, the work tells the story of a young Polish countess, Pauliska, as she travels around Europe, à la Sally Bowles, "inch by inch, step by step, mile by mile, man by man" [3], and misfortune by misfortune [4].

 

Combining supernatural elements with those of an erotic nature, the book is essentially a fatalistic meditation on desire, depravity, and the accursed nature of a life determined more by chance and random events, than moral law or human reason.

 

The suggestion is therefore given that we are all just helpless playthings, or, if you prefer, victims awaiting our own senseless death, rather than free-willing agents who can shape what happens to us and build an orderly world.     

 

Pauliska, is thus a deliberate slap in the face of those philosophes promoting the ideals of the Enlightenment, which is perhaps why Foucault seems to be such a fan of the work ...

 

 

III.

 

Writing in a text entitled 'So Cruel a Knowledge' [5], Foucault delights in the novel's opening where we encounter Pauliska fleeing a burning castle, as invading soldiers rape and disembowel the chambermaids; their screams reverberating in her ears as she makes good her escape:

 

"Pauliska abandons her scorched lands to the Cossacks [...] her countrywomen bound to the pale trunks of the maples, her servants mutilated and their mouths covered with blood. She seeks refuge in Old Europe [...] which sets all its traps for her at one go. Strange traps, in which it is hard to recognise the familiar ones of male flattery, worldly pleasures, scarcely intended falsehoods, and jealousy. What is taking form is an evil much less metaphysical [...] an evil very close to the body and meant for it: A modern perversity." [6]

This, obviously, is not good news for Pauliska, who encounters all kinds of terrifying men belonging to all sorts of strange sect, secret society, or criminal gang: political fanatics, libertines, counterfeiters, mad scientists, religious mystics, she is misfortunate enough to meet (and fall victim) to them all. 

 

Foucault writes: 

 

"In this underground world the misfortunes lose their chronology and link up with the world's most ancient cruelties. In reality, Pauliska is fleeing a millennial conflagration, and the partition [of Poland] of 1795 casts her into an ageless cycle. She falls into the castle of evil spells where the corridors close up, where the mirrors tell lies and watch what passes before them, where the air distills strange poisons [...] It is a paradoxical initiation not into the lost secret but into all those agonies that man never forgets." [7] 

 

This initiation into suffering - into evil - is achieved, says Foucault, through silent myths and wordless complicity; Pauliska is kept in the "harsh and monotonous condition of the object" [8]. 

 

And what is it she has to learn? 

 

That mankind will never establish a world of peace, justice, and freedom, because the savage truth is this; "man is nothing but a dog to man; law is the appetite of the beast" [9], and we're all trapped inside a giant cage from which there is no escape (for even death, as Nick Land reminds us, is at best, a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to the compulsive dissipation of life) [10].

 

Alternatively, dear reader, if you prefer we end with a different metaphor ... 

 

We're all bound - virtuous and wicked alike - naked on an enormous electric wheel; just like Pauliska at the end of  Révéroni's novel. And when this diabolical object par excellence begins to turn, sparks will fly and we'll cry out in endless agony. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Born in 1767, Jacques-Antoine Révéroni de Saint-Cyr belonged to an Italian family that followed Catherine de' Medici to France in the 16th century. Unhappy with his less-than-glittering military career, Révéroni decided to try his hand as a writer. Sadly, despite writing a large number of plays, novels, and essays, Révéroni never quite established himself as a man of letters and when he died, insane, in 1829, he was already more or less forgotten.  

 

[2] Readers who wish for a recent French edition of Révéroni Saint-Cyr's novel might like to see the one edited by Antoine de Baecque (Payot & Rivages, 2001). 

 

[3] Lyric from the song 'Mein Herr', written by Fred Ebb, with music by John Kander, for the film Caberet (1972), directed by Bob Fosse. The character Sally Bowels was famously played by Liza Minnelli. 

 

[4] Pauliska is clearly indebted to Sade's novel Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu (1791), although it arguably possesses its own unique charm.  

 

[5] Michel Foucault, 'So Cruel a Knowledge', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 53-67.    

 

[6] Ibid., p. 54.  

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] Ibid., p. 56. 

[9] Ibid., p. 57. 

[10] See Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (Routledge, 1992), p. 180. 

Who is Mencius Moldbug?

Photo of Curtis Yarvin 

By David Merfield (2023) 

 

'It is much easier to delude others if at the same time you delude yourself.'

 

 

I. 

 

Curtis Yarvin is one of those shadowy intellectuals who looks a little creepy and in fact is a little creepy (all that long-flowing hippie hair doesn't help).

 

Unfortunately, he isn't someone who can just be dismissed as a creep or ignored as a crank; not when he seems to have the ear of some powerful figures in the incoming Trump administration, including vice president elect J. D. Vance [1], who has spoken approvingly of some of Yarvin's ideas. 

 

Steve Bannon, who briefly served as the White House's chief strategist during Donald Trump's first administration, (before being unceremoniously fired by the President), is also a Yarvin fan.    

 

 

II. 

 

Also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin (b. 1973) is an American writer (ironically from an educated secular liberal background) who - along with the British philosopher Nick Land - is credited as being the founder of the neo-reactionary movement (NRx) or so-called Dark Enlightenment - about which I will be speaking at Kant's Cave next month [2].  

 

In brief, Yarvin argues for a post-liberal, non-democratic America led by a powerful individual who is somewhere between an old-fashioned monarch and a tech-savvy corporate CEO. If you can imagine Elon Musk dressed in ermine, you pretty much get the picture.

 

Yarvin's early influences include those libertarian thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, although he's taken their ideas in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

 

In 2007, he started a blog - Unqualified Reservations - in which he set out his (formalist) political vision and announced his aim of destroying progressive ideas and illusions. This blog - which influenced Nick Land's thinking - was formally abandoned in 2016. 

 

As of 2022, Yarvin blogs on Substack under the page name Gray Mirror, where he continues his assault upon the Cathedral (his name for the liberal elite who determine what passes for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful today via the media and higher education) and advocates for a hard reset of society along neo-cameralist lines.  

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, whilst some may be seduced by Yarvin's utopian vision of Singapore or Shanghai über alles, I'm not. Nor am I convinced that Yarvin really believes what he says and he's clearly not above trolling and provocation for its own sake (which is not to say that we shouldn't take him seriously).

And, given the choice, I'd sooner go down the pub with Old Nick than Mr Moldbug. 

 

Partly, that's for old time's sake - Land was briefly my co-supervisor at the University of Warwick, in the 1990s, when working on my Ph.D. - but it's also because there are significant philosophical differences between the two that incline me towards the former.     

 

As Elizabeth Sandifer rightly says:

 

"The differences between Land and Moldbug, however, are vast. Moldbug is at his heart a utopian, his vision of neoreaction rooted in a Silicon Valley-style idealism that clever people can just engineer solutions to everything. Land, on the other hand, gave his big essay on the matter the deliciously gothically overripe title 'The Dark Enlightenment' and peppers his work with imagery of tentacled horrors and grim eschatology." 

 

Sandifer continues: 

 

"Indeed, what's really interesting about Land is that he presents his take on neoreaction as a logical extension of his earlier work. To him, the point is not so much that neoreaction is 'correct' in any sense, but rather a sort of cynical pragmatism that views reactionary tendencies as an inevitable force that can be harnessed productively for his larger goal of accelerating towards the bionic horizon where we all grow face tentacles." [3] 

 

In other words, Yarvin seems to retain a certain American optimism; whilst Land is a nihilist at heart and thinks that nothing human will make it out of the near-future ... [4]  

  

Notes

 

[1] See Jason Wilson's profile of Yarvin in The Guardian (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[2] Essentially, this post is a teaser for my upcoming paper on the Dark Enlightenment: see the TTA Events page for details: click here. Alternatively, visit the Philosophy for All website and go to the section on Kant's Cave: click here. 

      The paper is based on a four-part series of posts published on Torpedo the Ark back in July 2024: 1: On the Politics of Hate; 2: On Exiting the Present; 3: On the Zombie Apocalypse; 4: On Rejecting Universalism.  

 

[3] Elizabeth Sandifer, 'Haunt the Future', Art Against Art, Issue 3 (Winter 2016/17): click here to read online.  

 

[4] See Land's essay 'Meltdown' on the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website: click here.