Rigsby and the Grey Lady

Fig. 1: Gay Rose as Brenda is amused to see 

Richard Beckinsale as Alan dressed in his Grey Lady garb  

 

 

I. Things That Go Bump in the Night: A Christmas Ghost Story

 

In paranormal folklore, a wandering female spirit is typically referred to as the Grey Lady. 

 

Fans of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter will doubtless think of Helena Ravenclaw whose ghost haunts Ravenclaw House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  

 

But fans of the classic 1970s British sitcom Rising Damp (1974-78) - of which I'm one - will immediately think of the series two episode titled 'Things That Go Bump in the Night' [1].

 

Written by Eric Chappell and directed by Len Lurcuck, the episode first aired on 19 December 1975, and starred Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby, Richard Beckinsale as Alan, Don Warrington as Philip, and Gay Rose as Brenda [2].   

 

Because of its broadcast date, it can reasonably be considered a Christmas ghost story, constituting a marvellous comic addition to an ancient British practice of pagan origin [3]. 

 

  

II. Things That Go Bump in the Night: Synopsis

 

After Alan returns late one night from the cinema, having taken Brenda to see Doctor Zhivago (1965) [4], he and Rigsby get into a discussion about the latter's preference for watching horror films on TV, such as Dracula's Daughter (1936) and The Mummy's Hand (1940). 

 

Alan suggests this shows a morbid frame of mind, but Rigsby insists they have something important to teach us about "the eternal struggle between good and evil, revealing the darker side of human nature" (3:27) [5] and that the supernatural is not something to be lightly dismissed: "They don't like it when you're frivolous about them." (7:09) 

 

Knowing that despite his claims that not to believe in vampires and ghosts Alan won't walk through the local churchyard after dark, Rigsby decides to play a joke on him with the aid of a rubber werewolf's hand bought from a local toy shop. 

 

Having scared the bejesus out of Alan, Rigsby then attempts to do the same to Philip by wearing a ghoulish rubber mask. Unfortunately, and hilariously, the urbane and supercool Philip isn't fooled or frightened by Rigsby and greets him calmly when he jumps out - "Hello Rigsby" (8:21) - advising him also to change his face soap.  

 

Undeterred, Rigsby then tells them the tale of the Grey Lady who is said to haunt the house, having being walled up long ago. This gives Philip an amusing idea, which involves Alan donning an old-fashioned long dress and bonnet in order to scare Rigsby. This he does, twice, on the stairs: "My God, she's a size", Rigsby tells Philip: "She's got wild hair and feet like barges. No wonder they walled her up." (14:40) 

 

All of this is much to Brenda's amusement (see fig. 1 above) and, interestingly, she also seems far more sexually attracted to Alan when he's in drag than she was earlier at the cinema: "Well, now you're here, why don't you take your frock off?" (11:47) [6]        

 

Philip persuades Rigsby that the Grey Lady is trying to get in touch and they need to hold a séance - although Rigsby isn't keen on putting the lights out until Brenda expresses the fact that she's game. And it's whilst the lights are out that Rigsby accidently on purpose has the opportunity to bump into Brenda, his hands touching her breasts: Quite firm (15:57) [7].

 

They hold hands round the table: and Philip contacts the Grey Lady: "Are you there, lady in grey? Do you wish to speak to us? Knock once for no and twice for yes." (16:31) Alan, hiding in the room, tells Rigsby in a comical ghostly voice that she's alone and unhappy and that he should be kind to his tenants before it's too late: "Money isn't everything. Don't be an old skinflint." (17:27)

 

Thinking that there must be a tape recorder hidden in the room, Rigsby jumps up and pulls back the curtain from behind which the voice emanates - only to encounter the Grey Lady for a third time. He runs from the room screaming.     

 

The following day, Rigsby enlists the help of sceptical local vicar (played by Norman Bird) and his overly enthusiastic cricket-loving curate (David Rowlands). The vicar tells Rigsby he'll see what can be done, although he's reluctant to perform the elaborate exorcism that Rigsby is demanding with holy water sprinkled over everything, insisting there must be some natural explanation and that "too much spiritual excitement" is "bad for the digestion" (20:15).  

 

Predictably - this is a sitcom after all - things do not go as planned. The clergymen only discover Alan and Brenda canoodling on the sofa and manage to photograph Rigsby - now dressed as the Grey Lady having found the outfit and uncovered the deception (not quite what they hoped for the parish magazine).  

 

They storm off with the vicar telling Rigsby he doesn't need a priest - he needs a doctor. 

 

This leaves a final scene on the stairs outside Brenda's room in which Rigsby, still in Grey Lady get-up, asks Philip for a light. Philip gives him such and then delivers with his usual deadpan comic skill the killer line: "You know something Rigsby, we just can't go on meeting like this." (23:35) See fig. 2 below. 

 

III. Things That Go Bump in the Night: Why I Love This Episode

There are several reasons why I love this particular episode of Rising Damp. Here are arguably the main two:  

 

Firstly, it cleverly subverts the Gothic horror tradition and writer Eric Chappell brilliantly plays with the Christmas ghost story trope by setting his tale not in some lonely country mansion or haunted castle, but the slightly seedy world of the boarding house and bed-sit. 

 

Exploring Rigsby's superstitious character - established in earlier episodes such as 'Black Magic' (S1/E2, 1974) and 'Charisma' (S1/E4, 1974) - always produces comedy gold and it's fun to discover that not only is he a lover of classic horror movies, but an avid reader of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1839). 

 

Secondly, the episode provides a masterclass in physical acting - and I say that as someone who isn't a great fan of slapstick, farce, and/or the use of drag in order to solicit laughter. It works here, though because the writing is so good and Rossiter, Beckinsale and Warrington all give sterling performances - as does Gay Rose [8]. 

 

I am very aware of the fact that Fawlty Towers (BBC Two, 1975-79) is critically regarded as superior to Rising Damp, but if I were exiled on a desert island, I know which box set I'd rather have with me ... [9]  

 

 

Fig. 2: Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) in the Grey Lady outfit

and Philip (Don Warrington) being supercool and witty as always 

 

Notes

 

[1] Rising Damp, 'Things That Go Bump in the Night' (S2/E7) can be watched in full on YouTube: click here. Times for the lines quoted from the episode will be given in the post.    

 

[2] Brenda, an artist model, played by Canadian actress Gabrielle Rose (credited as Gay Rose), temporarily replaced Miss Jones (Frances de la Tour) in the second series of Rising Damp. De la Tour was obliged to step away from the show in 1975 due to theatre commitments. Although she only appeared in four episodes as a new tenant, Rose made an interesting addition to the cast and I have always been fond of her character who added a missing sexual element to the show. 

 

[3] Telling ghost stories by the fire on those long December nights is rooted in the ancient winter festival of Yule, celebrated by Germanic peoples to mark the solstice; a time when people believed that the veil separating the living from the dead was thin. 

      It is an oral custom that carried on into the Christian era and the telling of terrifying tales and spooky stories had a real resurgence in Victorian England thanks to authors including Charles Dickens and M. R. James (the latter's 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary remains a spine-chilling example of the genre). 

      If largely overshadowed by more modern (and more commercial) Christmas traditions, the custom of telling ghost stories never completely went away and in the 1970s the BBC broadcast a series of short television films under the title A Ghost Story for Christmas (1971-78).

       And so, as indicated, the Rising Damp episode under discussion here must be understood within a broader cultural context. Readers who want to know more are encouraged to read The Ghost: A Cultural History (Tate Publishing, 2017), by the writer and art historian Susan Owens.   

 

[4] Directed by David Lean, Doctor Zhivago (1965) is an epic historical romance set in Russia which "deals with man's disillusionment with the Russian Revolution" (2:12). Alan was hoping it would get Brenda in a nice romantic mood - which it did; she fell in love with Omar Sharif.  

 

[5] Alan is impressed with Rigsby's insight, but he is simply repeating something he heard on Film Night, the BBC Two show that aired from 1968 until 1976 and featured movie reviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with prominent actors and directors.    

[6] Whilst gender play is, one suspects, quite a common phenomenon in the bedroom, some members of the kink community use the term Gynemimetophilia for this form of attraction. Coined by sexologist John Money in 1984, this clinical term refers to a sexual attraction to men who mimic or impersonate women, including cross-dressers and drag queens. 

      Although nothing is made explicit in the episode of Rising Damp under discussion, it does contain a scene in which, having been defrocked by Brenda, Alan tells her she's terrific and that they must do whatever it is they've done again sometime; that she's made him feel like a man. The more sexually experienced Brenda seems fairly blasé and simply reminds Alan not to forget to put his dress back on when he leaves. See the scene beginning at 13:31.  

 

[7] This is probably my favourite line in the episode, but I cannot decide whether it was scripted by Eric Chappell or ad-libbed by Leonard Rossiter. And I'm not alone in this; writing in an article on Rising Damp for the website Television Heaven (published on 5 June 2020), Andrew Cobby admits to his own indecision concerning who should be credited with the line, deciding that even if Rossiter didn't come up with it, he should be praised as an actor for making it sound as if it's ad-libbed.

      Either way, it's a hilarious line, which seems to make Brenda smile - or again, is that the actress Gay Rose who is amused and on the verge of breaking character? I can't tell, even though I've watched the scene repeatedly.   

 

[8] I have to confess that I'm not so keen on the supporting roles played by Bird and Rowlands, but don't wish to say anything too negative about either actor here. 

 

[9] Actually, several critics have come round to the opinion that Fawlty Towers hasn't aged as well as Rising Damp and now feels like a clever but clockwork theatrical farce rather than a genuine sitcom. 

      Writing in The Guardian (20 November 2009) Catherine Shoard argues that, at its best, Rising Damp "bears comparison with Beckett and Pinter". Plus, as she rightly notes, "it's hilarious".

      See also Michael Henerson's article 'Shouldn't we celebrate Rising Damp?' in The Spectator (24 September 2025), which argues that the ITV show was every bit as good as Fawlty Towers - just as funny and featuring a central performance by Leonard Rossiter just as convincing as that given us by John Cleese.  

      

 

Readers who wish to read more about Rising Damp are advised to go to Oh ... Miss Jones! a fantastic online resource for all things Rigsby: click here. 

 

 

No, Jasmine, Cliff Richard Isn't Cool

Cover of the debut album by Cliff Richard and his band 

the Drifters (later known as the Shadows) 

Columbia (EMI) (1959) 

 

I. 

 

The latest edition of SIG News (#5 2026) contains a provocative piece by Jasmine Howard [1] reflecting on one of her pop heroes. 

 

In it, she poses the question: 'Is Cliff Richard cool?' and attempts to play devil woman's advocate by making the case for the so-called Peter Pan of Pop [2]. 

 

Howard is, of course, by no means the first person to do this. Back in 2013, for example, Kiwi author Tim Roxborough claimed not to care if others thought Cliff uncool, writing: 

 

"Cliff may be celibate, he may annoy some with his public professions of his Christian faith [...] and he may have had a knack for singing Christmas number one hits that sap the tragically hip's will to live. But get passed [sic] that and he's the owner of one of the finest, most adaptable voices in popular music history." [3]

 

More recently, Stuart Penny also wrote a few words in defence of Sir Cliff:

 

"I know what you're thinking. With his goody two-shoes image and cringeworthy Wimbledon tennis rain break singalongs, the Peter Pan of Pop may have been hopelessly, desperately, terminally uncool for more than half a century, but it wasn't always that way." [4] 

      

In for a pound, Penny continues:

 

"I'm not ashamed to say that before the Beatles and Dylan, before discovering electric blues, folk, jazz and psychedelia, in fact before just about every other kind of music I grew to cherish, Cliff was my guy. The infatuation didn't last much beyond late 1962 and the arrival of the Fab Four, it's true, but his early singles, some of which were (and remain) excellent slabs of well-produced 60s pop, will always have a special place in my heart." [5]  

 

 

II. 

 

As I think is clear, even his biggest fans and would-be defenders concede that Cliff isn't cool. 

 

Talented, good-looking, clean-cut, devoted to his God and to his mother Dorothy, but not cool - an aesthetic quality that relates not only to appearance and style, but to attitude and behaviour (and so is more than merely being trendy or fashionable). 

 

Much like art, cool is notoriously difficult to define. But even if you can't quite describe it, you know it when you see it - and you also know what it isn't (and Cliff isn't it). 

 

Malcolm McLaren used to say that the coolest thing he'd ever seen was when Edward Tudor-Pole walked on stage auditioning to be the new lead singer with the Sex Pistols and flipped a cigarette in the air, caught it on his foot, and then flicked it into his mouth. And that is pretty cool - thus not something one can ever imagine Cliff doing (unsurprisingly, he doesn't smoke).   

Essentially, cool is tied to evil; to rebels, gangsters, rockers, and all those unconstrained by authority and who live in defiance of rules and conventions. 

 

Having said that, the idea of cool has now been fully recuperated and coolness is now mostly a marketing strategy; something manufactured and sold by those looking to capitalise on trends and subcultures. In fact, some commentators argue that cool is the central ideology of consumer capitalism.   

 

And so, ironically, it may be the case that the coolest people today are those who reject the stereotype and cliché of coolness entirely (though, sorry Jasmine, that still doesn't include Cliff - a man who, despite his name, completely lacks edge). 

 

 

III. 

 

In her effort to puzzle out why Cliff is considered so uncool, Ms Howard compares his career and public image to that of Elvis - which is certainly a brave and bold (some might say foolhardy) move, not least because Presley is incomparable as an artist in terms of cultural impact, vocal versatility, and his on-stage presence. The fact that he piled on the pounds in his final years - as Cliff was only too quick to point out [6] - does nothing to detract from his unique genius.    

 

Even Howard's claim that Cliff was "just as successful as Elvis" [7] - from a purely statistical perspective (i.e., in terms of record sales and UK number one singles) - doesn't quite add up. 

 

For whilst Cliff undeniably commands a spectacular chart legacy as the only artist to score a UK number-one single across five consecutive decades (from the 1950s to the 1990s), he remains firmly in the King's shadow when we look at the Official UK Charts' historic tally. 

 

Cliff has a highly respectable fourteen number-one singles; but Elvis has a staggering twenty-one UK number one hits. Further, whilst Cliff has sold over 250 million records worldwide across his 68-year career, this figure is dwarfed by the more than one billion Elvis records sold.

 

To claim parity when it comes to their commercial success is therefore inaccurate - and also, we might add, when did commercial success and longevity as an artist ever equate with cool or relevance? Some of the coolest singers hardly troubled the charts and died young (Ian Curtis is an obvious example). 

 

Cliff's ability to score number-one hits across several decades is a testament to an aging, fiercely loyal fanbase and clever marketing, not cultural impact. David Bowie also sold a lot of records and had a long career, but he redefined music, fashion, and societal norms, whilst Cliff remained artistically stagnant; his later chart-toppers were not driven by musical innovation, but by novelty appeal and seasonal sentimentality, such as 'Mistletoe and Wine'. 

 

  

IV. 

  

Apart from his commercial success and longevity, attempts to defend Cliff as cool are also often based upon his early days as a credible rock 'n' roller who opened the way for British pop music and his national treasure status. 

 

Let's briefly examine each of these points ...

 

Firstly, it's true that his 1958 hit debut single 'Move It' (written by Ian Samwell) might be viewed as marking the birth of British rock 'n' roll, as acknowledged by John Lennon and many others. However, Cliff almost immediately abandoned his leather-jacketed persona and within a few years transitioned into a safe, sanitised, family-friendly performer who happily established himself in the world of light entertainment and Eurovision.  

 

Thus, if Cliff paved the way, it was a road that subsequent generations of British rockers were desperate to veer off. For the punk generation in particular, Cliff was the ultimate symbol of establishment compliance and everything they hated about Top of the Pops (it will come as no surprise to discover that he made more appearances on the iconic BBC music show than any other solo artist, with over 150 performances).   

 

As for his national treasure status, which rests on the idea that he's basically a good egg, even this might be questioned in light of his politically suspect views on women in the workplace and parenting, for example [8]. Coolness may involve a degree of studied indifference, but it also requires a degree of cultural sensitivity and Cliff has sometimes used his public platform to judge others from a position of detached privilege. 

 

Ultimately, his wholesome image disguises a rigid (often reactionary) moralism that may be Christian but isn't cool [9] - we don't like being lectured to by pious pop stars, thank you very much.        

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, I'd like to remind Jasmine - a canny lass from the North East of England [10] - of a famously surprising televised encounter between her hero, Cliff, and Thomas (Mensi) Mensforth, the lead singer of South Shields punk band the Angelic Upstarts [11]. 

 

Rather than playing along with the polite banter expected by mainstream television, the fiercely intelligent punk vocalist confronted the Peter Pan of Pop over his privileged celebrity status and his religious faith. However, if producers had hoped for an explosive, foul-mouthed slanging match, they were disappointed. 

 

While Cliff spoke of personal salvation and his pop career, Mensi steered the debate toward systemic political issues: religious sectarianism, police brutality, and social deprivation. He emerged as someone who genuinely cared about the contemporary world around him, rather than what had occurred in the Holy Land two thousand years prior. 

 

All Cliff's tried-and-tested defence mechanisms - polite smiles, deflection, and breezy showbiz charisma -proved useless against the raw passion of Mensi’s arguments. The Peter Pan of Pop was exposed as having little concern for the struggles of everyday people in Thatcher's Britain.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Edited by Russ Bestley, Tim Gibney, Kevin Quinn, and Roger Sabin, Sig News brings the work of the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) to a wider audience. Operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), this diverse, informal collective focuses broadly on the politics of style. The publication offers an eclectic mix of articles by a disparate group of authors from both within and outside UAL. For more information, click here. 

      Postgraduate student Jasmine Howard wrote her MA dissertation on class and clothing in the North East of England in the mid-late 1960s; see the post on Torpedo the Ark dated 30 March 2025 in which I discussed her granny, my mother, and the likely lasses: click here.   

       

[2] This nickname is not a self-styling coined by Richard himself, nor one he particularly cares for as it creates pressure upon him to always appear youthful when performing on stage before his fans. It was actually coined by music journalist Keith Altham of the NME in 1972 and was quickly taken up by the press and public alike. 

 

[3] Tim Roxborough, 'Why Cliff Richard Is Much Cooler Than You Think', The Roxborough Report (26 January 2013): click here. 

      Roxborough goes on to inform his readers that as well as having a great voice Cliff is also "said to be one of Britain's most generous philanthropists", saying that this is important when considering Richard the man and not just Richard the artist. 

      I might point out, however, that philanthropy is a contentious issue. Whilst it directs resources to worthy causes, it can also function as a tool for the wealthy to virtue signal and ease their conscience. It can also allow donors power over social agendas while providing them with significant tax benefits.   

 

[4] Stuart Penney, 'A Few Words In Defence Of Sir Cliff Richard', And Now ... It's All This! (21 August 2025): click here. 

 

[5] Ibid.

 

[6] During an appearance on ITV's This Morning (20 Nov 2023), Cliff was asked if he had ever met Elvis: he hadn't. But he revealed that he had once turned down an opportunity to do so and be pictured with Presley on the grounds that the latter had put on a lot of weight and no longer looked as good as he had in his prime. 

      Probably to his surprise, the comment immediately went viral and caused a massive uproar. Viewers of the show accused him of fat-shaming and were particularly upset that he made the comments whilst sitting next to popular host Alison Hammond, a plus-sized presenter. This is just one of several occasions in which Cliff - usually known for his polite and overly cautious public persona - came across as tactless and uncool, sparking controversy.  

 

[7] Jasmine Howard, 'Is Cliff Richard Cool?', SIG News 5 (1 Sept 2026), p. 12. 

[8] In a controversial 1994 interview with Bella magazine, the Bachelor Boy claimed that women cannot successfully juggle both careers and children. He also blamed working mothers for the breakdown of discipline in society. These remarks drew sharp criticism from the public and parenting organisations at the time, with representatives from groups like Parents at Work dismissing his comments as 'complete and utter nonsense'. 

 

[9] Amusingly, Cliff even managed to alienate sections of the Christian community in 1999 when he set the words of the 'Lord's Prayer' to the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne'. The resulting record - titled 'The Millennium Prayer' - was almost universally loathed by music critics, but, more surprisingly, various church leaders and Christian commentators condemned it as a gimmicky and cynical exploitation of faith for commercial chart success (even though Cliff donated the proceeds to charity).

[10] As the child of parents from Tyneside - my father was born in Gateshead and my mother in Whitley Bay - I trust I am allowed to say this without sounding patronising. 

 

[11] The meeting between Sir Cliff and Mensi was recorded by Anglia Television for an episode of the late-night religious and current affairs series Something Different (hosted by Stewart White) and was broadcast on 25 January 1980 (or early March in some ITV regions). Click here to watch an excerpt on YouTube (as preserved by Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive).    

 

 

Musical bonus: Angelic Upstarts, 'The Young Ones', from the album Teenage Warning (Warner Bros., 1979): click here. The track also featured as the B-side to the single 'Teenage Warning' (1979), which reached No. 29 in the UK charts.

      The song, written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, was made famous by Cliff Richard and the Shadows and is the title song to the 1961 film The Young Ones (dir. Sidney J. Furie). 

      With advance orders of over 500,000, it was released in January 1962 on the Columbia (EMI) label and went straight to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart (the first British single to do so since Elvis Presley's 'It's Now or Never' in November 1960). It held that position for six weeks and spent twenty weeks in the chart overall, selling over a million copies in the UK, and 2.6 million copies worldwide.   

       

 

SIG News 5 Manifesto: A Friendly Deconstruction

SIG Manifesto 

(SIG News 5: September 2026)

 

 

I.

 

The new, bumper edition of SIG News (#5) is out now - arriving two months ahead of its cover date and two weeks ahead of its public launch at the Mausoleum - sorry, Museum - of Youth Culture (see below). Edited by the established team of Russ Bestley, Tim Gibney, Kevin Quinn and Roger Sabin, it assembles an eclectic mix of articles by a disparate group of authors from both within and without the University of the Arts London (UAL). 

 

By deliberately choosing the inky medium of an old-school, limited-run newspaper, SIG's explicit aim is to thumb its nose at mass circulation and the algorithmic curation of the online world. Anyone interested in the history and practice of music- and style-based subcultures is guaranteed to find something to excite them in this issue. 

 

However, it is the ever-changing SIG Manifesto, printed boldly on the back cover, which I invariably read first, and it's this ten-point text that I'd like to discuss - by which I mean deconstruct - here. Let us begin by looking at each point in turn, offering a brief response before building towards a critical overview of a text that functions as a public declaration of the Group's ideology. 

 

Ultimately, we are obliged to ask: does this text genuinely rally readers to radical action, or does it risk encouraging mere repetition of the same old inauthentic busyness [1] and the restless pursuit of novelty? 

 

II.

  

1. We at SIG News decree that the high-street purveyors of plainstream bad dreams dispense nothing more than tribal whorefare. A cavalcade of copycat caricatures and clone-clowns cascade across mediascapes devoid of depth and bereft of breadth.

 

Point 1 playfully, if somewhat aggressively, sets the tone: mock-authoritative, mock-confrontational, and mock-avant-garde, delivered with an over-reliance on alliteration and Situationist-style wordplay. 

 

Strip away the performative hostility, however, and it's a bog-standard critique of the Mainstream Media (MSM). It accuses the latter of lacking both substance and diversity whilst actively exploiting social divisions for profit (tribal whorefare), manufacturing systemic anxiety (bad dreams), and recycling formulaic content (copycat caricatures).

  

2. Scenes should be heard, not spread. 

 

Point 2 of the manifesto posits that for subcultures to remain authentic and flourish, they must foster local, organic connections through live performance, material publications (such as fanzines) and word-of-mouth, rather than engaging in global, digital dissemination. In line with subcultural theory, the statement also suggests that exposure via modern media causes rapid commodification and the loss of a scene's underground edge.

 

Ultimately, there's nothing virtual or viral about SIG News: it demands physical presence. Ironically, however, by demanding scenes remain localised, it inadvertently privileges those living in metropolitan cultural hubs whilst excluding the isolated, provincial outsider, i.e., the sort of poor sod stuck in the sticks or in some shitty seaside town that SIG often seems to champion.

  

 

3. Within the suffocating technological netweb 'DIY-bother' has become the despairing mantra of an autonomous muddleground desperate for something 'more'. 

 

Point 3 suggests that within a restrictive digital infrastructure, autonomous DIY culture has devolved into an exhausting, ineffective, and futile struggle - hence DIY-bother.

 

Whether we like it or not, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have successfully co-opted, neutralised, and commercialised creative independence, transforming the radical punk ethos of Do It Yourself into a neoliberal chore that demands constant content creation, algorithmic self-optimisation, and endless self-promotion.

 

Independent creators are left confused, isolated, and trapped on a digital muddleground - profoundly exhausted by the machinery of the burnout society [2], yet desperate for an authentic path forward that doesn't involve feeding the algorithm.

 

 

4. Be impossible, demand the unrealistic.

 

By reversing the famous Situationist slogan from May '68 - Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible - this point serves as an update appropriate to the age of capitalist realism [3]. It is a potent mix of defensive absurdism and revolutionary desire for alternatives in an era dominated by the mantra there is no alternative.

 

By becoming-impossible, one becomes capricious and unclassifiable and thus useless to systems that rely on reliable data and predictive modelling. By demanding the unrealistic, one asks for the very things that consumer capitalism cannot commodify or deliver: silence, secrecy, and stillness.

 

   

5. It is absolutely normal to be resolutely on the outside of anything and everything. 

 

Point 5 normalises and validates splendid isolation and magnificent marginalisation, asserting that refusing to belong to any mainstream group, trend, or digital network is a completely valid way to live. 

 

This position is arguably more countercultural than subcultural. For in actively rejecting anything and everything one acknowledges that even the most radical subcultural movements will eventually be compromised, co-opted, and commodified. 

 

However, in affirming such an extreme model of individualistic detachment, it becomes politically problematic for those of a more socialist persuasion who believe that it requires collective power (i.e., solidarity with others) to build lasting alternative structures.  

 

  

6. Inspiration + imagination x application = no sweat.

 

Quite possibly, this is the point I dislike the most. It reads like an uninspired motivational slogan dreamed up by some corporation trying to sound knowledgeable about the creative process. Ironically, it undermines SIG's own depiction of cultural production as involving a good deal of sweat (not to mention blood and tears). Only artificially intelligent machines don't sweat.   

 

If I were to be generous, I might accept that the author of this manifesto is attempting to subvert the capitalist no pain, no gain work mantra. In other words, they might be trying to say that when one is genuinely inspired, creative work ceases to feel like alienated, exhausting labour. 

 

However, by dressing this concept up as a reductive, pseudo-logical mathematical formula they have ended up producing a trite, neoliberal slogan that completely devalues the demanding reality of artistic practice.

 

 

7. Omniformed existences expire with no trace. A feast of spectres amasses. 

 

Jesus! Point 7 reads like gothic poetry as much as cultural theory. Nevertheless, the warning here is stark: if you allow yourself to be shaped entirely by the Matrix, your life will leave no lasting legacy; you will expire with no trace and the world will become haunted by the ghosts of mass-produced human entities who failed to realise their potential or blossom as individuals.

 

Put another way, it's arguing that total conformity leads to a form of spiritual and cultural death and what Mark Fisher would term lost futures.  

 

 

8. Humanarchism is the logical evolutionary step away from total disconnection towards renewed social connection. Unplug, turn off, conjoin in. 

 

Is humanarchism a SIG neologism? At any rate, it's a new word to me; a portmanteau blending humanism and anarchism which suggests that in order to survive the isolating effects of modern digital life, society must evolve a new philosophy that rejects technological control in favour of autonomous (and essentially analogue) human community. 

 

There's no point (and no fun) in being connected to networks if we are physically out of touch not only with other people, but with animals, plants, and objects. We need a form of libidinal materialism born of desire, not merely a new idealism. 

 

Unfortunately, whilst I approve of the necessary update to (and inversion of) Timothy Leary's famous countercultural mantra, I'm not sure humanarchism is the best term for this new philosophy. 

 

Also, one must ask how realistic is this as a solution; by simply instructing people to unplug and turn off the SIG manifestoists assume people can easily walk away from the digital infrastructures that control their jobs, bank accounts, and daily communication and make a nostalgic return to pre-internet socialising [4]. 

 

 

9. Renounce the over-the-counterculture. Spurn the splendour-vendors and venal frontiers. Difference is natural indifference.

 

I like that last sentence: Difference is natural indifference (even if, obviously, I think indifference is a highly stylised pose born of stoicism and dandyism and has nothing natural about it). Indifference, along with several other 'I' terms - irony, insouciance, insincerity - is one of my watchwords here on Torpedo the Ark (TTA). 

 

The starry individual does not care about being noticed or need to be validated. They are secure in their own distinctiveness and completely indifferent to mainstream trends, social media metrics, or corporate attempts to categorise them - and, as the rest of the point makes clear, they have renounced the over-the-counterculture too which all-too-often means pseudo-rebellion and commercialised bullshit sold by splendour-vendors (i.e., hucksters working in the advertising business or those in marketing who wish to build and promote brands).    

 

Of course, again, this sounds good - but it involves the same naive romanticism as we have encountered already; just because you choose to ignore the Matrix it doesn't mean you are outside of it; in capitalist reality, modern data tracking doesn't care if you are indifferent to it; the system still tracks your habits and monetises your lifestyle; it might frame your structural isolation and indifference, for example, as the adoption of a zen attitude (Would you like to buy a yoga mat?)   

  

 

10. Fashion is no more than a fleeting fad. Follow nothing except your shadow. Go forth and amplify. 

 

The SIG Manifesto ends with a tripartite series of slogans intended, one assumes, to inspire readers and incite them to acts of defiant rebellion. 

 

The third - Go forth and amplify - is simply a play on the biblical injunction given initially by God to Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:28) and then later repeated to Noah and his sons (Genesis 9: 7). I suppose it's encouraging us to find our own voices and to speak up (so is again at odds with the ethos of silence and shutting the fuck up promoted on TTA). 

 

The first sentence - Fashion is no more than a fleeting fad - is one that I'm astonished to see in a manifesto born of a university which includes the London College of Fashion as one of its six constituent colleges. Also, as the author of Philosophy on the Catwalk (2011), I am very much of the view that in fashion we can discover "all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been" [5].

 

As for the fleeting character of fashion - or what we might term after Barthes the logic of fashion - isn't that its beauty and philosophical importance? Lars Svendsen is spot on when he writes: 

 

"Fashion does not have any telos, any final purpose, in the sense of striving for a state of perfection [...] The aim of fashion is rather to be potentially endless, that is it creates new forms and constellations ad infinitum." [6] 

 

This is why, one might suggest, the most interesting writings on fashion have tended to come from our poets and novelists; for "they alone are sufficiently free from its perceived triviality" [7]. 

  

As for the second sentence ... ironically, despite speaking of shadows, it's another essentialist injunction; for it is saying, is it not, be completely self-reliant and look only to your own true self for direction. One of the problems, however, is that Baudrillard powerfully illustrated how in an obscene hyperreal world and an era of total transparency, we have no shadows!  

 

So that's another issue - one of many - for the signatories of the SIG Manifesto to address ...

 

 

III.    

 

We are told to memorise the ten-point SIG Manifesto and ignore it at our peril. 

 

Obviously, this is said humorously - but, somehow, the text doesn't leave us smiling and I suspect that's because it functions primarily as an academic pastiche rather than a viable blueprint for contemporary cultural resistance. 

 

Whilst it accurately diagnoses the exhaustion inherent in a hyper-commodified digital landscape, its structural utility is limited by an outdated binary framework. It posits, for example, an enlightened avant-garde operating from an imaginary external position that ignores how modern capital functions through decentralized, participatory networks. 

 

Consequently, directives to unplug (Point 8) or remain on the Outside (Point 5) overlook the material reality that economic survival and communication are fundamentally embedded in digital infrastructure. Further, by framing resistance as a personal lifestyle choice, the manifesto risks falling into bourgeois individualism and what theorist Mark Fisher termed the privatisation of discontent, effectively atomising opposition rather than fostering collective solidarity.

 

Aesthetically, the wider SIG project draws heavily from historical precedents, specifically 1970s punk fanzines and 1990s culture jamming. The decision to print SIG News as a physical newspaper highlights a deliberate engagement with obsolete media forms, positioning the work closer to an archival art project than a contemporary subcultural critique. 

 

However, viewed through the lens of radical graphic design and visual history, the SIG Manifesto might be said to succeed on its own terms. For while it lacks a coherent political strategy for navigating an algorithmic mediascape and, theoretically, it has more holes than a proverbial piece of Swiss cheese, it functions effectively as a stylish conceptual provocation, illustrating the profound difficulty of offering meaningful resistance today. 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Heidegger terms this Geschäftigkeit - a key concept introduced in Sein und Zeit (1927) as a structural component of Dasein's everyday manner of existing; i.e., constantly occupied with the immediate tasks at hand and numerous daily distractions. 

      For Heidegger, this relentless busyness is a coping mechanism; one that allows us to avoid confronting the deeper questions of our existence, including our own mortality. It is closely connected to his concept of Verfallen, wherein the individual tumbles into superficiality and evaluates their life simply by how much they are doing, losing their authentic self in the process. 

 

[2] The phrase Müdigkeitsgesellschaft was used by the philosopher Byung-Chul Han as the title of an essay first published in German in 2010 (the English translation by Erik Butler was published by Stanford University Press in 2015). 

      It might be noted that the term literally translates as fatigue society, but the word burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger to refer to a state of mental and physical exhaustion - arguably has greater contemporary resonance.     

      Readers who are interested can find a two-part post published on Torpedo the Ark back in November 2021 discussing Han's text: click here to access part one.  

 

[3] The phrase capitalist realism is, of course, forever associated with Mark Fisher; see his book of this title (Zero Books, 2009). The first of a three-part post written on this work published on Torpedo the Ark earlier this year can be accessed by clicking here. 

      In brief, capitalist realism 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 easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,' as Fisher famously puts it. 

  

[4] It must also be pointed out that in demanding that people gather and collaborate as what D. H. Lawrence would term a democracy of touch, point 8 is at odds with point 5 - remain a singular individual on the outside of everything.

 

[5] Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. Kerry McSweeney and Peter Sabor, (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 57. 

      Admittedly, this novel derides those who would make of fashion the basis of all human experience, but, contrary to his own idealism, Carlyle is obliged to concede that clothes do play a crucial role in materially constituting the self.  

 

[6] Lars Svendsen, Fashion: A Philosophy, trans. John Irons, (Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 29.

 

[7] Roland Barthes, 'Language and Clothing', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 21.  

 

Bigger Than Football: In Praise of the Norwegian Viking Row

Team captain Martin Ødegaard leads Norway's Viking Row 

after reaching the last sixteen of the 2026 FIFA World Cup 

 

 

I. 

 

First we had the Mexican Wave - originating in US sports arenas in the late 1970s and early 1980s [1], but which gained its name and came to the attention of the wider world during the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.

 

Then we had the Icelandic Thunderclap - a synchronized chant that starts with a slow, deliberate clap paired with a shout of Huh! Growing progressively faster and more intense, it culminates in a thunderous roar (thus the name). 

 

Again, it's thanks to TV that it became universally associated with Iceland and their supporters during the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament (the one in which Iceland - the smallest nation ever to qualify - knocked out England to qualify for the quarter-finals). But just as the Mexican wave is actually American in origin, the thunderclap has its origins in Scotland; supporters of Motherwell having a very similar clap-chant routine.

  

Whilst the Mexican wave is essentially a bit of harmless fun which frequently serves to amuse spectators during a dull moment or a long stoppage in play, for Icelandic supporters the thunderclap has a spiritual dimension known as samheldni - a concept to do with cohesion and solidarity and which refers to the bond that keeps a people unified and strong. 

 

And now we have the Norwegian Viking Row - a synchronised action and chant performed by the Norwegian football team and their fans - which has become the viral phenomenon of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, capturing the imagination of millions of people around the world: click here. 

 

Commencing with the sound of a loud horn, it involves participants sitting as if in a longboat and - in unison to an accelerating drumbeat - drawing an imaginary oar through water while chanting Ro (no prizes for guessing what word this is the Norwegian spelling of). 

 

As Norway's star striker Erling Haaland said on Instagram alongside a clip of the squad rowing after their victory over the Ivory Coast (sending them into the last sixteen): This is bigger than football - and, as a matter of fact, I think it is - although what this means exactly is as yet unspoken. 

 

It may be something that was consciously devised (by school teacher Ole Frøystad), carefully choreographed, and massively promoted online, but, arguably, it taps into something ancient, authentic, and magical; just like the runic-style lettering and numbers used on the players' shirts [2].     

  

 

II. 

 

However, as Jon Henely points out in an article in today's Guardian, not everyone is impressed; "with some noting that the Vikings' reputation is primarily for looting, pillaging and general brutality" [3]. 

 

The novelist and Professor of English Janne Stigen Drangsholt, for example, used her column in Norway's leading newspaper to criticise what she perceived to be an unhealthy masculine aesthetic. 

 

This is really disappointing coming as it does from such an intelligent woman. It feels like a textbook manifestation of what the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher called the 'Vampire Castle' - a class of bourgeois critics who suck the joy and innocence out of solidarity, driven by a deep mistrust and contempt for anything invested with desire that arises from ordinary people [4].

 

To be that mistrustful of a collective ritual reveals the very issue Fisher diagnosed; an impulse to pathologise the longing of young, white working-class males to experience a sense of belonging and togetherness, reducing a harmless celebration to a toxic vibe. 

 

"Others", again to quote Henely, "have expressed concern about the use of Norse imagery, noting that in Scandinavia Norse symbolism is now associated with far-right, nationalist and neo-Nazi groups" [5] - and, somewhat amusingly, "Norway’s neighbours have complained that they were Vikings too" [6] and that they also once rowed long boats and wore the mandatory horned helmets, etc.

 

Po-faced Norse historians can't help pointing out what they term inaccuracies in another attempt to spoil the celebrations: As a matter of fact, the Vikings didn't do this and didn't wear that. Regardless of what these killjoys say, however, "the chant has won over many Norwegians, who have posted countless videos of themselves rowing" [7] and Norwegian members of parliament have not only dismissed criticism as absurd, they have taken part in a row themselves, organised by the speaker. 

 

It may, ultimately, be ersatz ethno-nationalism designed for a digital age, but it beats singing 'Wonderwall'.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] On 15 November 1979, the wave originated at a National Hockey League game between the Colorado Rockies and Montreal Canadiens at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. Credit for its invention is given to professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson. 

      The earliest available video documentation of a wave, led by Henderson, was recorded on 15 October 1981, at a Major League Baseball game in Oakland, California. 

 

[2] Designed by Nike, the geometric, angular font draws heavily from the Elder Futhark, which is the oldest known runic alphabet used by the Norse and Germanic peoples. Runic fonts have seen numerous revivals over the years and were central to 18th century Scandinavian nationalism, 19th century Germanic occultism, and 20th century Norse paganism.  

 

[3] Jon Henley, '"Bigger than football": Norway fans' Viking row makes waves at World Cup', The Guardian (3 July 2026): click here. 

 

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

 

[5] Jon Henley, The Guardian (3 July 2026).

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ibid.  

 

 

Congratulations to Maya Joint

Maya Joint 

(Aus WTA ranking 87) 

 

 

Congratulations to 20-year-old Australian tennis player Maya Joint for her victory yesterday at Wimbledon over the 44-year-old former champion Serena Williams, who was making her singles comeback after four years away from the game.  

 

Congratulations also to journalist Matthew Syed for writing the only honest assessment of the match in The Times this morning. It stood out against the rose-tinted commentary of other pundits who relied on lazy, predictable narratives mixing old-fashioned nostalgia with virtue-signalling sentimentality. 

 

Unsurprisingly, the BBC coverage was so painful it required the mute button. Nick Mullins, Tracy Austin, and John McEnroe fawned endlessly over Williams in the commentary box, whilst Clare Balding was her usual obsequious self in the studio.

 

If retired legends want to play the senior circuit and relive their past glories, that's fine by me. However, I don't wish to see them on Centre Court lapping up the adoration of the fans just for old time's sake or so that their children can see mom or pop in action.  

 

Joint's victory was not only a win for her; it was a victory for the future and for tennis.

 

  

Notes on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: Lecture Five

Mark Fisher Haunted by the Spectre of 

Jean-François Lyotard Until the Very Last 

(SA/2026)

 

I.

 

Torpedophiles who have been following this series of posts on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire (2021) [a] will recall my surprise (and disappointment) that in Lecture Four he didn't take the opportunity to dive deep into Anti-Oedipus (1972), even whilst admitting that Deleuze and Guattari were the spectres that continued to haunt his thinking. 

 

Well, it is even more surprising in light of Fisher's decision to concern himself more with socio-historical writings rather than French theoretical texts, to find that Lecture Five is centred on Lyotard's Libidinal Economy (1974) - a notoriously difficult and intense work that even the author eventually came to regard as his evil or nasty book [livre méchant] due to its aggressive rejection of the rigid moral, political, and theoretical frameworks of the political left - specifically Marxism - in favour of a chaotic celebration of accelerated desire [b]. 

 

Fisher obliging his students to engage with Lyotard having just lectured them on 1970s American labour history and countercultural idealism the week before, is like being taught to swim by someone who lets you paddle for a bit in the shallows near the shoreline before throwing you in the deep, shark-infested waters.  

 

 

II.  

 

Fisher begins by reading aloud a passage from Libidinal Economy in which Lyotard (ironically) suggests that English industrial workers actually enjoyed their subordination and the destruction of their bodies by the capitalist machine: 

 

"the English unemployed did not become workers to survive, they [...] enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion  [...] in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed on them, they enjoyed the decomposition of their personal identity [...] enjoyed the dissolution of their families and villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous anonymity of the suburbs and the pubs [...]" [c]  

 

While this pissed off many of his Marxist contemporaries, it is something that D. H. Lawrence had seriously explored in his fiction many years earlier. In Women in Love (1920), for example, he writes of how Gerald Crich reorganises the mines owned by his ailing father in line with the latest technology and modern work practices:

 

"Everything was run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method [...] the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments. They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and heartbreaking in its mechanicalness.

      But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their lives, the hope seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised. And yet they accepted the new conditions. They even got a further satisfaction out of them. [...] There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness. The men were satisfied to belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them. It was what they wanted [...] They were exalted by belonging to this great and superhuman system [...] Otherwise Gerald could never have done what he did." [d]  

 

That perfectly anticipates Lyotard and his politics of desire. It also explains why, personally, I didn't find anything terribly provocative in Lyotard's book back in the '90s (although a fair amount of material that simply perplexed or bored).     

    

 

III.  

 

The key takeaway from Lyotard is that there is no revolutionary outside to capitalism; no primitive societies or subversive regions. This, says Fisher, is the "relentless message" (182) of Libidinal Economy - it's a "scathing assault" (182) on those thinkers who believe otherwise and a slap in the face to those Leftists still romanticising May '68. 

 

Furthermore: Marxism itself (certainly in its Old Man guise) "is never done with the prosecution of the case against capital" (191). Consequently, the revolution is always deferred; there is no climax or consummation. Marxism is forever stuck at the level of critical foreplay.     

 

One might ask at this point why Fisher wants his students to consider Lyotard's nasty book - it seems to negate his own political project of acid communism. 

 

The answer is that Fisher uses Lyotard's pessimistic analysis - which is less a critique and more a diagnosis - to map the fatal flaw of the modern Left; i.e., its abandoning of the terrain of desire and its own retreat to a joyless, defensive moralism that is despised by the proletariat. 

 

Lyotard captures this with savage perfection in the following quoted by Fisher:  

 

"'You situate yourselves on [...] the moralistic side where you desire that our capitalised desires be totally ignored, forbidden [...] you are like priests with sinners, our servile intensities frighten you, you have to tell yourselves: how they must suffer to endure that!'" (204)

 

And, of course, the working class does suffer, but so too do they enjoy "'swallowing the shit of capital'" (203) - including its sausage pâtés - until fit to burst. 

 

Fisher sees the task of a postcapitalist politics of desire (acid communism) as countering this by building an alternative future that is ultimately more pleasurable than anything capital can offer; to oblige Marx to become the Little Girl at last ...   

  

 

IV. 

 

Bringing his lecture to a close, Fisher provides a convenient summary:

 

"I think, then, that the libidinal economy [...] is largely to do with [...] a kind of hatred of almost all existing left-wing models of what political transformation entails. [...] These [left-wing projects] are all inadequate and all for the same reason [...] in that they don't take the desire of the capitalised seriously. They reject it and [...] therefore keep re-inscribing moralism." (204)

 

It's not enough to understand Marx - you also need to understand the Marquis de Sade! Capitalism and desire are inseparable; capitalism is desire. Thus, we need to "throw aside a simple utilitarian model of desire" (205) - i.e., one in which we seek out pleasure and wish to avoid pain. To acknowledge that there's an intimate and complex relationship between these two things has a number of implications - not least for political theory. 

 

I have to say, I'm still not entirely sure how Fisher thinks his concept of acid communism shows the fly the way out of Lyotard's libidinal bottle. He accepts that desire is key and he doesn't moralise in the manner of many on the Left. But he rejects the idea that capitalism is totalising and absolute and insists there must be a tasty vegetarian alternative to capitalism's sausage pâtés (so to speak).

 

If only the collective consciousness of the People can be raised and expanded, so that new - psychedelic - desires can be produced and politically channelled ... And so we end up once more falling back on Fisher's favourite phrase - if only [e].      

 

 

V. 

 

 

Lecture V (5 December 2016) was to be the last that Fisher gave in his Postcapitalist Desire seminar series. 

 

Following his suicide on 13 January 2017, the remaining ten weeks of the course could obviously not go ahead as planned. Which is a shame, 'cos it would have been fun to hear what he had to say about technofeminism and cyberfeminism in week ten and interesting to discover also his thoughts on Nick Land's 'Machinic Desire' in week eleven. 

 

But there you go - no more miserable Monday mornings for him - and just a (boring) sixteen track playlist for the rest of us ... [f]  

 

Notes

 

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

 

[b] Originally published as Économie Libidinale in 1974, the work was translated into English by Iain Hamilton Grant and published by The Athlone Press (1993). 

      Lyotard wrote the book in an intentionally vulgar, violent, and quasi-pornographic style designed to outrage his Marxist contemporaries. Its most notorious provocation - which I examine in relation to the fiction of D. H. Lawrence in Section II - was the claim that the 19th-century proletariat derived a dark, masochistic pleasure from being physically consumed by the industrial machinery of capital. 

      Equally controversial was Lyotard's accelerationist insistence that all modern political systems (capitalist, socialist, or fascist) are ultimately fuelled by these exact same chaotic libidinal energies. 

 

[c] Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant, quoted by Fisher in Postcapitalist Desire, p. 180.  

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 230-231. 

      Sir Clifford Chatterley reforms his coal mines in a similar fashion to Gerald Crich in Lawrence's final novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). I discussed all this in my PhD thesis, Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000), completed in the philosophy department when Fisher and friends were raving about Lyotard and his Libidinal Economy but refused to engage with Lawrence's work, despite the fact that Lawrence had been named by Deleuze as one of the four great heirs to Spinoza and despite the fact that Nick Land was on my Graduate Progress Committee, so knew of what I was up to under the supervision of Keith Ansell-Pearson. I guess I simply wasn't cyberpunk enough for members of the CCRU.   

 

[e] See section VI of the post written on Lecture IV (published 28 June 2026) where I examine Fisher's overreliance on wishful thinking - If only things had gone differently in the '70s ... If only we could make X, Y, or Z happen in the future ... etc. - allowing his desires to heavily influence (if not actually determine) his political philosophy: click here. 

      His supporters will doubtless dispute this and refer to the concept of hyperstition - i.e., they'll insist that Fisher wasn't just engaging in wishful thinking, but attempting to produce real effects via theory-fictions that make themselves true; a speculative idea is introduced into culture, people believe it and change their material behaviour based on that belief, et voila! their actions physically construct a new (alternative) reality. 

       

[f] See Appendix Two: '"No More Miserable Monday Mornings" Tracklist' in Postcapitalist Desire, pp. 217-220.  

      Matt Colquhoun explains that the title refers to a post on k-punk (18 July 2015) and that the sixteen songs listed provide a "mode of consciousness-raising" (218) and have a tonic effect: 

      "Taken as a whole, [the playlist] auto-affects the brain into a state of joyful indignation [...] the freedoms these songs promise remain soulful, and this emboldened soul rattles the subjugated body out of its contemporary complacency" (219). 

        Unfortunately, for me, it's going to take more than a mix of pop, reggae, and disco to buy into Fisher's revolution; let's just say he has much broader taste in music than I do (and I would sooner stuff my ears with beeswax than listen to the sound of the Sleaford Mods).   

 

 

To read the four other posts in this series on Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire published on Torpedo the Ark, please click here.