Notes on Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (2009) 3: Chapters 7-9

Warwick alumni: Messrs. Alexander and Fisher

 

This is a continuation of a post: part 1 can be accessed by clicking here 

and part 2 by clicking here. 

 

 

I.

 

In a sense, this isn't so much a book review as an attempt to occupy the textual space that Fisher has succinctly mapped out in his book Capitalist Realism and meet him there in and on his own terms. 

 

But it is also a staged confrontation; perhaps even an attempt to exorcise his ghost (it's difficult not to feel a little haunted by Fisher at times). But it's a confrontation that is hopefully carried out in an amiable manner and a generous spirit. One that whilst opening up a pathos of distance between us as cultural commentators, also indicates that we clearly share certain interests, ideas, and points of reference. 

 

Anyway, let us return to the book, Capitalist Realism (2009) [a] - picking up where we left off in part two, at the beginning of chapter 7 ...

 

 

II.   

 

Back in the old days, being realistic was a relatively straightforward affair; because the real was fixed and everyone agreed what it was. 

 

But now, being realistic in the age of capitalist realism, "entails subordinating oneself to a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment" (54). Now nobody knows quite what's real and what's not, or where they are (readers will recall Fisher spoke earlier of perpetual instability). 

 

That's fine for a small number of people (including Nietzscheans), but can cause issues for the majority who like to know what's what and rely upon what is called common sense. The only way to stay sane is to comply with the madness of the world: 

 

"This strategy - of accepting the incommensurable and the senseless without question - has always been the exemplary technique of sanity as such, but it has a special role to play in late capitalism [...]" (56)

   

It probably helps if one can actively forget most things too; again, for those of a Nietzschean disposition, that fortunately comes easily. 

 

But for those people more like elephants than goldfish - particularly those individuals burdened with hyperthymesia [b] - it isn't easy to forget and, amongst such people it wouldn't be surprising "if profound social and economic instability resulted in a craving for familiar cultural forms" (59) to which they could return to again and again. 

 

This in part explains why postmodernity is retromaniacal in character; "excessively nostalgic, given over to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty" (59). 

 

 

III. 

 

According to Fisher, although "excoriated by both neoliberalism and neoconservativism, the concept of the Nanny State continues to haunt capitalist realism" (62) - playing as it does an essential libidinal function; "there to be blamed precisely for its failure to act as a centralizing power" (62) when things go wrong. 

 

Why look for systemic causes for the 2008 financial crisis, for example, when you can blame the government? 

 

The fact is, global capitalism's radical lack of a centre is simply unthinkable for most people; they simply can't help believing that there has to be someone somewhere pulling the strings and in control (this returns us once more to the need for God's shadow to be shown in caves long after God himself has departed the scene).   

 

It's at this point Fisher refers us to the call centre that terrifying non-space and "world without memory, where cause and effect come together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens" (63).  

 

Fisher hates the call centre which, in his view, distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism in a distinctly Kafkaesque [c] manner: 

 

"The boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since - as is very quickly clear to the caller - there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could." (64)   

 

He continues:

 

"Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centreless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself." (64)

 

Capital - and capitalism - that's the issue; that's the problem - not individuals nor even the corporations. For not even the corporations "are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by / expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-a-subject: Capital" (70). 

 

All of which puts one in mind of the Lawrence verse 'Kill Money', which opens with the following lines: 

 

 

Kill money, put money out of existence. 

It is a perverted instinct, a hidden thought 

which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul. [d]  

 

 

IV. 

 

The final chapter of Capitalist Realism opens with a discussion of the Channel 4 reality show Supernanny, starring Jo Frost. It's a show about parents struggling with their children's behaviour; or, as Fisher argues, a relentless (if implicit) attack on "postmodernity's permissive hedonism"(71) and the failure of the paternal superego (or father function) in late capitalism. 

 

Having never watched the show, I'm going to have to take his word on that. 

 

The question is: what might a paternalism without a father look like (assuming a return of the paternal superego is neither possible nor desirable in an age in which Mum knows best) and "the 'paternal' concept of duty has been subsumed into the 'maternal' imperative to enjoy" (71)?  

 

"A question as massive as this cannot of course be answered in a short book such as this [...] In brief, though, I believe that it is Spinoza who offers the best resources for thinking through what a 'paternalism without the father' might look like." (72)

 

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting that and I'm not sure I entirely understand what this means or implies (is it okay to admit that my knowledge of Spinoza is limited?).

 

What he seems to mean is something like this: what we need to do today is make the move from a sad and depressive individualism to collective action; i.e., something more communal and joyous. 

 

Neoliberalism treats people not only as individuals but as infants whose behaviour needs to be modified not with reference to a moral system of right and wrong, but with reference to their own health and safety. They also need to be told not what to think - because nobody has to think anymore in an age of artificial intelligence - but what to feel.  

 

Unfortunately, having always to be constantly concerned about one's health and safety and sign one's emails with virtual hugs 'n' kisses, results in increased anxiety which leads to mental health issues. The Spinozist alternative, which breaks us out of such upbeat narcissism, encourages us to actually connect with others - whatever the risks and whatever the drawbacks (other people can be irritating and boring; they can be unpleasant and make miserable). 

 

But it's still better to fall in love and become an active member of society than fall into solipsistic isolation; the Covid pandemic illustrated that, one might have imagined. Ultimately, it's all about constructing collective agency rather than just an individual identity. Freedom - or perhaps it would be better to say fulfilment - comes when you are no longer trapped within your self. 

 

And from this line of thought, Fisher comes to the following conclusion: "The Marxist Supernanny would not only be the one who laid down limitations" (76), but also the one who encouraged us to take risks and seek out the strange (or that which is not-self). 

 

It would, if you like, be a slightly less stuffy version of Auntie Beeb - and acid communism doesn't just call for wild and colourful countercultural experimentation, but a revival of "the supposedly stodgy, centralized culture of the postwar consensus" (76). 

 

Fisher thus moves from Gothic materialism and cyber-punk [e] to public-service broadcasting - which is certainly quite a leap and not one I'm sure I wish to make. Unlike Fisher, I have always hated the BBC - even as a young child. But he insists that the effect of "permanent structural instability [...] is invariably stagnation and conservatism, not innovation", whilst, on the other hand, it's the BBC and Channel 4 that will perplex and delight with "popular avant gardism" (76). 

 

This might seem like a paradox, but Fisher is insistent: "This is not a paradox." (76) The fear and cynicism that come to define late capitalism - including the creative sector - always produce conformist and conventional shit in the end; whereas a certain amount of stability is "necessary for cultural vibrancy" (77). 

 

Whatever else he may or may not be, Fisher is not an anarchist who wishes to smash the state; nor is he an old school socialist who dreams of taking over the state and ever-expanding its size and reach. What he wants - and what he calls on his comrades on the more acidic wing of politics to do - is subordinate the state to the general will: 

 

"This involves, naturally, resuscitating the very concept of the general will, reviving - and modernizing - the idea of a public space that is not reducible to an aggregation of individuals and their interests." (77) 

 

And so, just like that, Fisher again reveals his Rousseauist roots [f]. One half-expects him to begin speaking about enforced freedom and the need for grand narratives. And sure enough ...

 

"Against the postmodernist suspicion of grand narratives, we need to reassert that, far from being isolated, contingent problems [violent teen crime; hospital superbugs, etc.], these are all the effects of a single systemic cause: Capital." (77) 

 

Thus, as well as subordinating the state to the general will, Fisher's neocommunists need to develop strategies against Capital; I refer you to the Lawrence poem quoted above in section III and, if you want, click here for a musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'Money Is Not Our God' [g].     

 

 

V. 

 

Despite Killing Joke releasing their thirteenth studio album - Absolute Dissent - in 2010 and despite the financial crisis two years prior to that, the world kept turning and capitalist realism didn't collapse. In fact: 

 

"It quickly became clear that, far from constituting the end of capitalism, the bank bail-outs were a massive reassertion of the capitalist realist insistence that there is no alternative. Allowing the banking system to disintegrate was held to be unthinkable, and what ensued was a vast haemorrhaging of public money into private hands." (78)  

 

No wonder those who, like Fisher, hoped capitalism might not simply be exposed and discredited but deposed and demolished, were quickly disappointed. 

 

They seemed willing to suffer a second 1920s style Great Depression, but, in the end, had to make do with their own personal forms of depression and concede that without a "credible and coherent alternative [...] capitalist realism will continue to rule the political-economic unconscious" (78).       

 

Still, not wanting to end on a defeatist note, Fisher tries to rally his troops with the hope that "it is year zero again, and a space has been cleared for a new anti-capitalism to emerge which is not necessarily tied to the old language or traditions" (78) of the left. 

 

That just seems naively optimistic (and in political bad taste) to me - there is no year zero - it's a mythical point that Buddhists and Khmer Rouge militants might base their calendars on, but Fisher should know better than to flirt with such rhetoric.   

 

I also wish he would refrain from calling for authentic universality - a phrase that he has possibly picked up from that old fraud Slavoj Žižek and by which he appears to return us to humanism - although I'm sure his defenders would insist appearances can be deceptive and that, actually, Fisher is proposing a new, post-humanist (as well as post-capitalist) form of solidarity (i.e., a model that differs entirely from old school metaphysical humanism).  

 

Nevertheless, it's a problematic phrase to say the least ... [h]

 

 

VI. 

 

I think I noted earlier in this post that I didn't know - and never even met - Mark Fisher. So I rely for insights into his character upon his friends, colleagues, students, etc. 

 

Individuals such as Tariq Goddard, for example, who provides the 2022 edition of Capitalist Realism with an Afterword, in which he tells us that Fisher was a somewhat manic individual who alternated between "the certainty that the finished work would be a portent of good things to come and an intermittent panic [...] based largely on the fear that he had written too little, too late" (82).

 

Goddard also informs us that Fisher was unburdened by false modesty and full of messianic zeal and something of this comes across, I think, in the final pages when Fisher boldly tells those on the left what their vices and failings are - "endless rehearsal of historical debates" (78) - and what they must do to be more successful; plan and organise for a future they really believe in.

 

He continues:

 

"The failure of previous forms of anti-capitalist political organisation should not be a cause for despair, but what needs to be left behind is a certain romantic attachment to the politics of failure, to the comfortable position of a defeated marginality." (78-79)

 

Fisher, in other words, does not like the embracing of victimhood or those who are defeatist by nature. Nor does he have much time for those who might reject his thinking:

 

"It is crucial that a genuine revitalised left confidently occupy the new political terrain I have (very provisionally) sketched here." (79) 

 

And crucial also that they do two things: firstly, "convert widespread mental health problems from medicalized conditions into effective antagonisms" (80); and, secondly, impose a new austerity in order to avoid environmental catastrophe and because limitations placed on desire are a good thing per se (as shown by Oliver James and Supernanny). 

 

To which we can only reply: Tak tochno, tovarishch Fisher!

 

  

Notes

 

[a] I'm using the 2022 edition of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, published by Zero Books, and all page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

 

[b] Hyperthymesia - also known as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) - is an extremely rare condition causing individuals to vividly recall nearly every event of their lives in minute detail (not only what they felt, but what they were wearing and had for lunch on any specific date). Such individuals - and there are believed to be only a hundred in the entire world - often find it hard to forget unpleasant memories or trauma, which can make it difficult to move past negative experiences.   

      Interestingly, Fisher is more concerned with another memory disorder - anterograde amnesia, i.e., the impaired ability to form new long-term memories, whilst past memories remain intact; "the new therefore looms up as hostile, fleeting, unnavigable, and the sufferer is drawn back to the security of the old" (60). For Fisher, this is the postmodern condition defined. 

 

[c] Fisher refers readers to Kafka's novel The Castle (1926), in which K's encounter with the telephone system is "uncannily prophetic of the call centre experience" (64). 

      He then explains what it is that makes Kafka so important as a writer: "The supreme genius of Kafka was to have explored the negative atheology proper to Capital: the centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there - it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility." (65) 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, 'Kill Money', in Pansies (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1929), p. 93. 

      Lawrence maintained a vehement hatred of money throughout his writing; see for example his essay 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine' (1925) in which he writes: 

      "Our last wall is the golden wall of money. This is a fatal wall. It cuts us off from life, from vitality, from the alive sun and the alive earth, as nothing can. Nothing, not even the most fanatical dogmas of an iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and inspiration, as money can."

      I'm not entirely sure I agree with this; I would certainly rather live in California, or Switzerland - or even Felixstowe - than Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, or Iran under the rule of the Supreme Leader. 

      Lawrence's essay can be found in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Lines quoted are on p. 363. 

 

[e] Mark Fisher's Ph.D thesis was titled Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (University of Warwick, 1999). It argued that cyberpunk fiction and cybernetic technologies are collapsing the distinctions between life/non-life and human/machine into a flat ontology; what he thought of as a form of Gothic materialism, in which traditional ideas of agency dissolve. 

      As for cyberpunk, Fisher analysed this genre of writing not merely as a type of fiction commenting on reality, but as hyperrealist theory-fiction that acted as an extension of the real world and as a guide to 'the increasingly strange terrain of capitalism'. The name of his long-running blog, k-punk (2004-2016), is CCRU shorthand for cyber-punk; the k stands for the Greek spelling of the term cyber (κυβερ). 

      Flatline Constructs was published in book form by Exmilitary in 2018 and K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher, ed., Darren Ambrose, was also published in 2018 (Repeater Books). It brings together some of the best posts from his seminal blog along with a selection of reviews and other writings, including his (unfinished) introduction to a planned work to be called 'Acid Communism'. 

 

[f] Readers may recall that Rousseau is the philosopher most famously associated with the concept of la volonté générale, which he examined in The Social Contract (1762). It represents the collective, common interest of the citizens aimed at the public good, rather than the sum of individual selfish interests. Anyone who refused to obey the general will would be forced to do so.         

 

[g] Killing Joke, 'Money Is Not Our God', was a single released (Jan 1991) from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions (Noise Records, 1990). Written by Jaz Coleman, Geordie Walker, and Martin Atkins. 

      It failed to chart, but it's a track which all those who hate Mammon will appreciate. I'm not sure they were one of Fisher's favourite bands, but he acknowledges Killing Joke as significant post-punk pioneers who not only challenged the musical and cultural norms of the period, but fostered counter-consensual collectivity, providing an exit from the present and a will to retake the present.

     If interested, see what he writes about them on his k-punk blog and in the book Post-Punk Then and Now, ed. Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun, and Mark Fisher (Repeater Books, 2016).   

[h] Fisher obviously isn't a traditional humanist; he doesn't subscribe to ideas of a fixed human nature (or some kind of metaphysical essence) existing outside of culture and history. 

      And so, I suppose authentic universality has to be thought of as a collective (or mass) political project designed to counter forms of suffering that global capitalism produces. Nevertheless, I still dislike the term and still think it lends itself to idealism.      

 

 

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 

and part three 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. 

 

 

On Spinoza's Four Great Disciples

Les quatre grands disciples de Spinoza

(Nietzsche - Lawrence - Kafka - Artaud)

 

I. 

 

Spinoza is one of those philosophers I have never read and about whom my knowledge is extremely limited: I know, for example, that he was a 17th-century Dutch thinker of Portuguese-Jewish origin and a founding figure of the Enlightenment who preferred to earn his living as a lens grinder, rather than accept an academic post that might compromise his intellectual independence. 

 

I also know that he rejected the idea of free will and divine judgement and argued for a kind of pantheistic monism (i.e., the belief that God and Nature are one and the same identical and infinite substance). Such thinking made him a controversial figure at the time and and a thorn in the side of the religious authorities. 

 

Finally, I know that Deleuze was a great admirer; that Spinoza was the thinker who provided him with the basis for his own work on immanence and encouraged a joyful affirmation of life free from belief in a world beyond, or tedious moral concepts that always terminate in judgement and punishment.  

 

For Deleuze, Spinoza was le prince de philosophes and he had four great heirs or disciples: Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Kakfa, and Artaud [1]. The question that interests me here, however, is not how or why Deleuze arrives at this conclusion, but what did each of these four think of the renegade Jew who gave us modernity ...? [2]

 

II.  

 

Let's work backwards and begin with Artaud, who, as far as I'm aware, never mentioned Spinoza in his writings, suggesting that the link between the two is something formed almost exclusively in Deleuze's philosophical imagination. 

 

Deleuze (and Guattari) may like to think of Spinoza's Ethics (1667) as anticipating Artaud's notion of the body without organs, but that's not something that ever occured to the French dramatist who introduced the world to the theatre of cruelty. 

 

Indeed, according to one scholar, Artaud's work is ultimately incompatible with Spinoza's rationalism [3]. For whereas Artaud aims to liberate libidinal energy and resist the body's rational organ-isation, Spinoza, in contrast, wished to perfect man via reason and an active form of knowledge. Both spoke about joy and passion, but each conceived such terms in radically different ways.    

 

 

III. 

 

Unlike Artaud, Franz Kafka apparently did acknowledge his indebtedness to Spinoza - even if he didn't do so in his published writings - considering him a spiritual mentor during his younger years when part of an intellectual circle in Prague which often discussed the Dutchman's work [4].

 

Kafka was particularly interested in Spinoza's notion of an indifferent deity; i.e., one who was blind to the suffering of humanity. This idea shaped Kafka's construction of an amoral fictional universe in which there is ultimately no justice, despite all the mechanisms of law and order put in place by mankind.      

 

 

IV.

 

Amusingly, one commentator has described Lawrence as a "sort of sexy Spinozist" [5], which I think is pushing things a bit too far, even if it's fair to say that Lawrence's own thinking does align in certain key aspects with Spinoza's philosophy. 

 

For example, Lawrence's model of pantheism which insists that God exists only in bodies; or his concept of blood-knowledge, which has echoes of Spinoza's intuitive science (a third way of knowing beyond imagination and reason which allows one to grasp the essence of things and experience a sense of blessedness or oneness with the universe).     

 

But again, as with Kafka and Artaud, there is hardly a mention of Spinoza in any of Lawrence's writings; the only one I can recall from memory is in the short prose piece 'Books' in which he dismisses him as another of those philosophers who, like Kant, only thought "with his head and his spirit" (and never with his blood) [6]. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, we arrive at Nietzsche  ... 

 

And finally we find actual written references to Spinoza that we are able to cite, such as the postcard sent to his friend Franz Overbeck in the summer of 1881, in which Nietzsche expresses his astonishment and delight at having found a precursor - i.e., someone in whose work he recognises himself, even if, due to differences in time and culture, there remained certain important points of divergence [7]. 

 

In the Genealogy (II.15), meanwhile, Nietzsche acknowledges Spinoza's insight into (and the need to overcome) traditional moral concepts. Material found in his notebooks from this period also show Nietzsche turning to Spinoza for ideas, particularly concerning the transformation of knowledge into a passion. 

 

Ultimately, Nietzsche saw in Spinoza someone who was able to think beyond good and evil - someone who scorned the teleological fantasy that the universe had some ultimate goal, or that man possessed free will.

 

Having said that, however, it's also true that Nietzsche viewed his own concept of will to power as superior and more radical than Spinoza's insistence that life strove above all for its own preservation. And in his mature (some might say mad) Dionysian phase, it's hard to believe that Nietzsche would have had much time for Spinoza's defence of reason as the essential human faculty leading to freedom.       

 

 

VI.

 

In sum: whilst Deleuze isn't simply joking or trying to be provocative by grouping together Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka, and Artaud as disciples of Spinoza, we need to take this idea with a pinch of salt and remember that none of the above saw themselves as such. 

 

Essentially, Deleuze was highlighting a number of conceptual connnections between them which might otherwise go unnoticed. He was probably also attempting to make Spinoza more relevant to a contemporary readership and, perhaps, inseminate Spinoza with his own ideas. 

 

Thus, it might be best to think of Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka, Artaud, and Deleuze himself as a line of thinkers who share common ground with Spinoza, but are not followers per se (more like fellow travellers); artist-philosophers who above all else want to have done with judgement.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the essay 'To Have Done with Judgement', in Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Sith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998), pp. 126-135. 

      According to Deleuze, it was not Kant but Spinoza who, in breaking with the Judeo-Christian tradition, carried out a true critique of judgement and had "four great disciples to take it up again and push it further: Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Kafka, Artaud" (126). 

 

[2] This description was coined by the American philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein and formed the subtitle of her biographical study Betraying Spinoza (Random House, 2006). 

 

[3] See Jon K. Shaw, 'Athleticism Is Not Joy: Extricating Artaud from Deleuze's Spinoza', in Deleuze Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Edinburgh University Press, May 2016), pp. 162-185. 

      As Shaw writes in the Abstract to this essay, "much of Artaud's metaphysics is incompatible with Deleuze's Spinozism, not least the relation between a body and its constitutive outside, and the questions of affect and expression": click here. 

 

[4] In the absence of direct references to Spinoza in Kafka's writings, we have to rely on biographical studies and scholarly analysis to confirm the latter's interest in (and sense of kinship with) the former. I'm not sure I'd speak of parallel destinies between the two, however, although that's the argument put forward by Carlos García Durazo in his essay on Medium (24 Oct 2024): click here. 

 

[5] See Mattie Colquhoun, 'Rainbows: From D. H. Lawrence to the NHS', on Xenogothic (23 Dec 2020): click here.  

 

[6] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Books', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 198. 

 

[7] Nietzsche, postcard to Franz Overbeck (30 July, 1881). It can be read (in English translation) on The Nietzsche Channel: click here. 

      It is interesting to note that Nietzsche doesn't simply identify with Spinoza because of certain shared ideas, but also because the latter was, due to his radicalism, very much a maligned and marginalised figure in his own day (much as Nietzsche felt himself to be in modern Germany). 

      It is also important to remember that Nietzsche's understanding of Spinoza was mostly based on his reading of secondary sources, such as Kuno Fischer's highly influential six-volume study Geschichte der neuern Philosophie ['History of Modern Philosophy'] (1854-1877). 

      See Andreas Urs Sommer, 'Nietzsche's Readings on Spinoza: A Contextualist Study, Particularly on the Reception of Kuno Fischer', in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Autumn, 2012), pp. 156-184. This essay is available on JSTOR: click here. 

 

 

Writing So As Not to Die

 

 

One of the questions I'm often asked is: Why write?

 

Well, in part, it's because, like Kafka, I think a non-writing writer risks madness [1].

 

But it's also because I subscribe to the (somewhat magical) belief that words have the power to protect us and can keep even death at bay. 

 

Not avert it indefinitely, but at least stave it off until such a time as I no longer have anything further to say and, like Prospero at the end of The Tempest, voluntarily decide to jack it all in; break my laptop, burn my books, etc.

 

What this implies, I suppose, is that there exists an essential affinity between language and death (or literature and evil), with the latter acting as both the limit as well as the core of the former. 

 

Those who think writing is merely about the communication of ideas or self-expression, have failed to grasp its true import: We write so as not to die ... [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In a letter to Max Brod (5 July, 1922), Kafka wrote that "a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity." See Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, (Schocken Books, 1977), pp. 332-335.

[2] In an interview with The New York Times (19 August, 1984), the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes said: "You start by writing so as to live, and you end up by writing so as not to die." The interview, by Nicholas Shardy, can be found online by clicking here.

      One might note, however, that in an essay entitled 'Language to Infinity', Foucault credits Blanchot with the idea of writing so as not to die; trans. by Donald F. Buchard and Sherry Simon, the essay first appeared in Tel Quel (1963), pp. 44-53. This text can also be found in Michel Foucault, The Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion, (Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 89-101. 

On the Feral Poetry of Fran Lock

 

Fran Lock in human and hyena form

 

 

Fran Lock likes to describe her poetic practice as feral - by which she means "omnivorous, opportunistic, accretive and excessive" [1]. 

 

Hers is not a poetry which germinates in "periods of quiet sustained reflection", but one cobbled together with a certain violence and a needs-be-as-needs-must attitude born of her working-class background. 

 

But is it any good? Based on the work I've read so far, I'd say it is ...

 

Or, at any rate, I'd say that - as a Deleuzian - it appeals to me, because, like Kafka, Lock is not attempting to express the inexpressible, or impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience, so much as construct a minor literature. 

 

In other words, she problematises everyday language which all-too-easily and all-too-often becomes sticky with familiar use and overlaid with doxa. 

 

Raised with a strong sense of her Irish heritage, Lock carries English away from itself and opens up a kind of foreign tongue within it; not by simply inventing neologisms, but by forcing a dominant language out of its usual syntactic conventions and thereby making it stutter or scream and travel to its own external limits (limits which are not outside language, but are the outside of language).

 

It's no surprise that Lock is also interested in therianthropy, because writing at its best always effects a becoming-animal (be it insect, hyena, or great white whale) [2] and transports us from the land of Oedipus to that zone of indiscernibility wherein we can lose our domesticated human selves and experiment with wild forms of otherness.  

 

She doesn't always succeed, but that's okay; Lock has learnt to assume the risks of failure and embrace her "moments of humiliated over-reach", continually pushing not only beyond her own comfort zone but her own competence. 

 

It's better, she argues, to be thought ridiculous than boring and if that alienates some readers and critics, she doesn't care; "I’m not a branch of the service industry, and nobody said my relationship to the people encountering my work had to be gentle or friendly."  

 

That's a statement that makes an old punk very happy ...

 

 

Notes

[1] Fran Lock, 'T. S. Eliot Prize Writers' Notes', on the Poetry School website: click here. All lines quoted here are from this text. 

 

[2] Admittedly, and somewhat disappointingly, Lock refers her idea of becoming animal (understood in terms of literal transformation) back to the American author Charles Hoy Fort and his book Wild Talents (1932), and not to Deleuze and Guattari's more philosophical notion developed in Mille Plateaux (1980). 

 

 

Bonus: to watch Fran Lock briefly talking about her work, her relation to language, and animal transformation fantasy, click here. 

 

 

I am grateful to Chloe Rose Campbell for introducing me to the work of Fran Lock. 

 

 

On Curbing One's Enthusiasm for Kafka's Drawings

 

"One of these days I’ll send you a few of my old drawings, to give you something to laugh at. 

These drawings gave me greater satisfaction [...] than anything else." [1]  

I.

 

What constitutes a doodle? 

 

I have to agree with Larry on this one: the beauty of a doodle is that it invites interpretation [2]. If more than merely a scribble, a doodle is not a detailed drawing possessing clear representational meaning. 

 

Sometimes, even the person producing the doodle has no idea what it is they've drawn. For a doodle is often composed of simple abstract lines and shapes, produced randomly without any conscious effort. 

 

A doodle is often made, in fact, while one's attention is elsewhere; such as speaking on the phone, for example, or bored out of one's mind sitting in a business meeting.  

 

Personally, I don't think there's anything foolish about these drawings and that they may very well warrent investigation by those interested in the workings of the brain. But, having said that, I'm not sure they always deserve to be framed and put on the wall, or published in a book - even when the doodler is a famous author, for example.

 

Which brings us to Kafka ...

 

 

II. 

 

In 2019, hundreds of drawings by Kafka were discovered in a private collection that had been locked away for decades. And three years later, they were published in a big book by Yale University Press, with an introductory essay by Judith Butler, in which she describes the drawings as "images that have broken free of writing" [3].

 

Kafka himself had instructed his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy the drawings. But, as is so often the case, his wishes were ignored, proving yet again that if you are a writer and you really don't want your juvenilia, marginalia, and unpublished (often unfinished) works to see the light of the day after your death, then you had better make sure you destroy this material personally before it's too late to do so.   

 

Still, it is as it is and we are where we are; the drawings survived and have now been placed within the public arena, so we can all pass judgement upon them ...    

 

 

III.

 

I suppose the first thing to say is that  these images - by the criteria outlined above - are not naive doodles, even if Kafka himself dismissed them as such and did, in fact, consign many of them to the rubbish bin. They betray just a little too much skill and attention to detail and it should be remembered that Kafka had, whilst a student (1901-06), taken drawing classes and attended lectures on art history. 

 

Max Brod could certainly see the ingenuity (and the humour) of the images and rightly recognised that they would one day have great fascination for lovers of Kafka's work (although whether that justifies his preserving them against Kafka's wishes remains debatable).

 

But, whilst I do like many of the pictures, I'm not sure they quite merit the praise that has been poured over them by various commentators who, whilst unanimously agreeing that Kafka possessed genius with a capital G, disagree about whether he understood words and pictures as entirely independent of one another, or existing on a single plane and walking arm-in-arm, as one reviewer put it [4].      

 

For me, they're good and have a certain dynamism. I also love the fact that, as Andreas Kilcher points out, most of the figures are not fully elaborated bodies:

 

"They are not fleshed out and situated in three-dimensional space, they do not have fully devel­oped physiques. On the contrary, they are generally free-floating, lacking any sur­roundings, and in themselves they are disproportional, flat, fragile, caricatured, grotesque, carnivalesque." [5]

 

But they're not that good and I'm not sure how seriously we should take them as artistic statements in their own right. Nor do I think them vital for an understanding of his written work. 

 

And so, as ever, one might do well to curb one's enthusiasm before forking out £35 for a copy of the book (particularly when, with Christmas just around the corner, you can probably persuade a loved one it would make a lovely gift).  

 

 

(Yale University Press, 2022)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] Kafka writing in a letter to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, in February, 1913. See Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (Schocken Books, 1973), p. 189. 

      In this same letter, Kafka rather amusingly claims: "I was once a great draftsman, you know, but then I started to take academic drawing lessons with a bad woman painter and ruined my talent."

 

[2] See the third episode of season ten of Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'Artificial Fruit', (dir. Cheryl Hines, 2020): click here and here for scenes discussing what does and does not constitute a doodle.

 

[3] See Butler's introduction to Franz Kafka: The Drawings, ed. Andreas Kilcher with Pavel Schmidt, trans. Kurt Beals, (Yale University Press, 2022). 

[4] Benjamin Balint, 'Graven Images' in the Jewish Review of Books (Spring, 2022): click here. 

 

[5] Andreas Kilcher, 'Discovering Franz Kafka's Nearly-Lost Drawings', trans. Kurt Beals, Literary Hub (1 June, 2022): click here.  

 

 

Odradek

 

"At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colours. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs. "

 

"One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinarily nimble and can never be laid hold of."

 

- Kafka, description of Odradek in 'The Cares of a Family Man'

 

 

I. 

 

Many critics and philosophers rank Kafka alongside the greats of modernist literature. But, whilst I wouldn't wish to echo Joseph Epstein's dismissal of him as overrated [1], I have nevertheless often found some of Kafka's short stories a little ... not boring exactly - but disappointing.  

 

That's not the case, however, with 'The Cares of a Family Man' [2], in which the world is introduced to the fantastically strange character called Odradek ...

 

 

II. 

 

As the narrator of the tale confesses, Odradek is a name of uncertain origin; it might be Slavic; it could be German, but it's very possibly neither. Confusion over the etymology of Odradek's name, however, is really the least of it - for it's not even clear what Odradek is ... 

 

For whilst they - and I think it probably best we use the gender-neutral pronoun here in its singular sense - can stand up and speak and even laugh, they're also a non-human object who looks rather like a star-shaped cotton reel with bits of old coloured thread wound round in a tangled manner (see Kafka's own description above).  

 

Odradek, however, is nobody's spool and they have a vital presence in the family home; perhaps more vital even than the narrator's and the latter is concerned not only that Odradek undermines his position as husband and father - despite having no real purpose or role - but that Odradek will ultimately outlive him and thereby have the last laugh, extracting what Baudrillard terms the revenge of the object:   

 

"He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful." [3]

 

 

III.

'The Cares of a Family Man' has, as one might imagine, more interpretations than one can shake a stick at; certainly more than I can possibly discuss here - or would wish to, as all the usual readings - Marxist, Freudian, Existentialist - are predictable enough (often very clever and insightful, but unsurprising). 

I think, if anything, I favour a more occult (and object-oriented) musing on the story over and above a political, psychological, or lazy metaphorical attempt at interpretation; a musing that doesn't seek to identify Odradek in the full-light of day (or by the natural light of reason) and which acknowledges that objects are ultimately mysterious (and alluring) because of their withdrawl from human perception.

As Anya Meksin notes, we are asking the wrong questions if we ask what Odradek symbolises or represents: 

 

"The story stubbornly resists an adequate correlation between Odradek and any existing entities or concepts in our world. It is as if the little text has somehow transcended the very system in which symbolism is possible, just as Odradek has somehow transcended the logic of the physical world. Odradek is a metaphysical rupture in the reality of the family man, and the story is an epistemological rupture in the reality of the reader." [4]

 

Ultimately, Odradek is a messenger from the secret realm of objects; not so much a realm humans deny the existence of, but casually dismiss as less interesting than their own. Such anthropocentric arrogance has no place here, however. I maintain that objects not only exist independently of us upon a democratically flat ontology, but, despite our conceited claims of human exceptionalism, we too ultimately have our being upon this plane.   

 

That's what Odradek reminds us: material reality is essentially meaningless; consciousness is epiphenomenal; life is just a very rare and unusual way of being dead. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Readers of a certain age will doubtless recall the Unigate ads on TV in the 1970s which warned viewers to watch out in case there was a Humphrey about [5]. 

 

Well, an Odradek does more than steal your milk; they negate all the illusions, and lies, and convenient fictions upon which human life is built and once you discover, like Kafka's humble family man, that there's one living in your house there are, says Anya Meksin, only two options: "immediate suicide, or continuing along as best we can, given the circumstances" [6].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Epstein's article 'Is Franz Kafka Overrated?' in The Atlantic (July/August 2013): click here. 

      For those who might be interested, the critic David L Ulin responds to this piece by Epstein in 'Why Kafka Matters', Los Angeles Times (24 June 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Die Sorge des Hausvaters was written between 1914 and 1917 and published in a collection of Kafka's short stories published by Kurt Wolff entitled Ein Landarzt [A Country Doctor] (1919). 

      The English translation - 'The Cares of a Family Man' - can be found in Kafka's Collected Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir, (Everyman, 1993), pp. 183-85. The story is also in The Complete Stories, (Schocken Books, 1971) - a book that can be found as a pdf online thanks to Vanderbilt University. The opening quotations at the top of this post are both taken from the latter edition, p. 468. 

 

[3] Kafka, 'The Cares of a Family Man', The Complete Stories, p. 469.

 

[4] Anya Meksin, 'Ragged Bits of Meaning, Wound on a Star-Shaped Spool for Thread', essay on Mauro Nervi's Kafka Project website: click here. Meksin's excellent essay is worth reading in full. 

 

[5] For those readers who are either too young or now too old and forgetful, the British milk company Unigate produced a series of TV ads in the 1970s featuring mysterious characters called Humphreys whose only visible presence was was a red-and-white striped straw. 

      The campaign, devised by John Webster, is best known for the slogan: "Watch out, watch out - there's a Humphrey about!" written and sung by musical genius and creator of the Wombles, Mike Batt. 

[6] Anya Meksin, 'Ragged Bits of Meaning, Wound on a Star-Shaped Spool for Thread' ... click here.

      I don't actually share Meksin's conclusion. Rather, like Camus, I don't see why suicide should be considered in the face of life's absurdity - for there is no more meaning in death than in life. And there's no reason either why a meaningless life should not be a happy and passionate one; the trick is to affirm the void and thereby consummate nihilism, as Nietzsche would say.    

 

 

On the Uncertain Duty of a Writer

 

 

Someone told me the other day that, as a writer, I have a duty to always say what I think. 

Aside from the fact that I don't feel under any such obligation, I'm not sure it's possible to speak one's mind and then simply turn spoken words into text; certainly it's a far more difficult task than non-writers imagine. 

 

For as Kafka pointed out, whilst thought, speech, and writing all emerge from (and proceed into) the same darkness, we write differently to how we speak; speak differently to how we think; think differently to how we feel - and, indeed, think differently to how we think we think and how we think we ought to think.     

 

To put this in a Nietzschean nutshell: We knowers are unknown to ourselves - and that's why it's only naive or stupid people who are sure of themselves and their opinions; who pride themselves on their sincerity and believe they can instruct others on their duty. 

 

Writers, like quantum particles, are bound by the principle of uncertainty.