Mark Fisher's book really is very good. Must get his K-Punk.
One of the main ideas revolves on just how over-bearing and dominant capitalism is in all of its manifestations. An ideological system that pretends it is free of ideology, a culture that is anti-culture since there is only the blank slate and empty desire.."pure desire" or preferences, to use the language of the economists, cannot be opposed because it is "natural" or purely subjective-and therefore nothing to argue over. You go your way, and I go mine.
Desires are not subject to re-vision, to political deliberation or ethical reflection. Anything but an individual ordering his or her preferences is paternalistic, one step away from totalitarianism. 'Freedom to' is really 'freedom from'.
What isn't capital now?
Cultural, social, physical, natural, cognitive, human, affective, infrastructural capital. Just don't talk about capitalism. Everything must be put to work, made productive. Nothing can be allowed to rest, remain idle. Time is money. Everything has an opportunity cost or an implicit/shadow price.
Rituals and practices, formerly embedded in historical and social contexts, stood because of the way in which they helped us find meaning in our lives. Now, ripped out of those contexts they are aesthetic objects which we 'consume' as spectators.
The final victory of nominalism. All that remains are signs that don't point anywhere, the sound and the fury.
The world ended in 1970. Since then we've all been ghosts, rehashing lines and slogans from a previous age, sampling music whose styles have gone out of fashion. Nothing new can happen again. As G. Steiner said, there are no new beginnings.
One of the main ideas revolves on just how over-bearing and dominant capitalism is in all of its manifestations. An ideological system that pretends it is free of ideology, a culture that is anti-culture since there is only the blank slate and empty desire.."pure desire" or preferences, to use the language of the economists, cannot be opposed because it is "natural" or purely subjective-and therefore nothing to argue over. You go your way, and I go mine.
Desires are not subject to re-vision, to political deliberation or ethical reflection. Anything but an individual ordering his or her preferences is paternalistic, one step away from totalitarianism. 'Freedom to' is really 'freedom from'.
What isn't capital now?
Cultural, social, physical, natural, cognitive, human, affective, infrastructural capital. Just don't talk about capitalism. Everything must be put to work, made productive. Nothing can be allowed to rest, remain idle. Time is money. Everything has an opportunity cost or an implicit/shadow price.
Rituals and practices, formerly embedded in historical and social contexts, stood because of the way in which they helped us find meaning in our lives. Now, ripped out of those contexts they are aesthetic objects which we 'consume' as spectators.
The final victory of nominalism. All that remains are signs that don't point anywhere, the sound and the fury.
The world ended in 1970. Since then we've all been ghosts, rehashing lines and slogans from a previous age, sampling music whose styles have gone out of fashion. Nothing new can happen again. As G. Steiner said, there are no new beginnings.
3 comments:
Capitalism: read Lewis Mumford. He posited the question: is growth (i.e.the sine qua non of capitalism, the only model? Quote from Donald L. Miller's 'Lewis Mumford. A Life', precis-ing Mumford's thinking about the era stretching from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution: ' The entire age was characterized by an absence of limitation - growth was the supreme imperative. The merchant could not be too rich; the state could not possess too much territory; the city could not become too big. Progress came to be reckoned by the amount of goods produced, and work, once considered merely 'a necessary part of living,' became an 'all-important end.'
Plus ca change...
Hello, C.
Yes, really should read Mumford at some stage. I think the idea of the lack of limitations is crucial (the first chapter of my book was on that: scarcity). In some sense, it's at the heart of the problem: the inability to live a small and contented life.
There's a great online essay by Wendell Berry called 'Hell hath no limits'. I personally think that this constant search (for what?) has led to a lot of restlessness and mental anxiety.
And on that happy note..time for lunch!
Take care,
b.
Yes, 'lack of limitations' - perhaps the search is for some ideal world in which life will be perfect without boundaries. But here's the problem: it takes imagination to live creatively like that and, I (tentatively) suggest, that the lack of imagination is a root cause of much contemporary malaise. Further, I blame failure of education to foster creative thinking, focused as it is (well in UK, anyway,) on narrow, measureable skills and thinking.(End of rant for today!)
Would like to read your book but it's astronomically expensive, being destined mainly, I guess, for academic institutions. However, next time I'm in the British Library I'll ask for it.
It's my 82nd birthday. And it's official: I've become the classic 'Little Old Lady' - cab driver in London identified me as such so it must be right. Supper time!
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