The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
March 20, 2019 9:15 AM Subscribe
The Kirk Center's Ben Sixsmith reviews K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (1968-2017).
Mark Fisher, aka "k-punk", was a British cultural theorist, lecturer, musician, blogger and writer [Memoriam thread]. He is perhaps best known in the US for his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? and his 2013 post "Exiting the Vampire Castle" [MeFi thread].
He was also a founding member of the influential interdisciplinary collective Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) [thread], whose output was once said to "[bear] the same distillate relation to its sources (Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio,William Gibson) that crack does to cocaine" and whose membership also included Sadie Plant and Nick Land (yes, that Nick Land).
The posthumous collection is published by Repeater Books, one of two imprints that he co-founded (the other is Zero Books).
K-punk has been widely reviewed, reflecting Fisher's influence across the political and cultural spectrum:
Mark Fisher, aka "k-punk", was a British cultural theorist, lecturer, musician, blogger and writer [Memoriam thread]. He is perhaps best known in the US for his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? and his 2013 post "Exiting the Vampire Castle" [MeFi thread].
He was also a founding member of the influential interdisciplinary collective Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) [thread], whose output was once said to "[bear] the same distillate relation to its sources (Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio,William Gibson) that crack does to cocaine" and whose membership also included Sadie Plant and Nick Land (yes, that Nick Land).
The posthumous collection is published by Repeater Books, one of two imprints that he co-founded (the other is Zero Books).
K-punk has been widely reviewed, reflecting Fisher's influence across the political and cultural spectrum:
- "The Necessity of Being Judgmental: On “k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher”" - Roger Luckhurst, Los Angeles Review of Books
- "The Dead Come Back: On Mark Fisher’s K-Punk" - Ryan Meehan, BOMB Magazine
- "Mark Fisher's “K-Punk” and the Futures That Have Never Arrived" - Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
- "K-Punk — in recognition of Mark Fisher’s lasting influence" - Murray Withers, Financial Times
- "The Gospel According to Mark Fisher" - Meagan Day, Jacobin
- "Long Read Review: k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher" - Sean Seeger, LSE Review of Books
- "The Marxist Pop-Culture Theorist Who Influenced a Generation" - Rob Arcand, The Nation
- "K-punk, capitalist realism and acid communism" - Adam Corner, Crack Magazine
Well, this is exciting! I'm working on The Weird and the Eerie in my spare time right now.
posted by Frowner at 9:47 AM on March 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Frowner at 9:47 AM on March 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
Man I’ve been reminded of Fisher’s concept of Market Stalinism a lot recently, he used it semi-jokingly but it does put a name to this tendency (wholeheartedly supported by the UK’s Tories) that everything has to be collected and monitored and run through private systems cause totalitarianism is fine if a company does it.
posted by The Whelk at 9:58 AM on March 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 9:58 AM on March 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
I remember loving Fisher's music writing back in the mid 2000's before I knew the first thing about Marxism. His blog post Look at the Light is the greatest thing I've ever read about Kate Bush, and maybe about any album.
In recent years I've become more interested in left theory, and I've just begun diving into that side of his work. I recently read Capitalist Realism and I thought it was fantastic. Short, compelling, funny, extremely readable. I think about ideas from it quite frequently, especially his breakdown of what he sees as the main contradictions in today's late capitalism.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:54 AM on March 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
In recent years I've become more interested in left theory, and I've just begun diving into that side of his work. I recently read Capitalist Realism and I thought it was fantastic. Short, compelling, funny, extremely readable. I think about ideas from it quite frequently, especially his breakdown of what he sees as the main contradictions in today's late capitalism.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:54 AM on March 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
WOW 1SBA, thank you so much for bringing that album and review to my attention.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 12:54 PM on March 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 12:54 PM on March 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
The latest (paid, behind the wall) episode of Trashfuture has a review/discussion of the book “Reading Mark Fisher is cathartic cause it means you’re not the only one seeing what is going on directly in front of your eyes.”
posted by The Whelk at 5:45 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by The Whelk at 5:45 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
I am here to report that I have finished both The Weird and the Eerie and Ghosts of My Life.
1. His descriptions of music continue to be absolutely nothing like what I hear when I actually listen to the music in question. This time around, though, my tastes have changed enough to really get into the first Burial release - the gurgley vocals remind me of my very favorite musician Arthur Russell. I was excited to see that although I got there because of the Clientele and Fisher got there because of [deep musical smarts that I don't have and] liking Ghost Box records, he also liked Belbury Poly a lot.
2. If I were starting to read him, I'd start with The Ghosts of My Life rather than Weird and Eerie, which doesn't to me seem to come together as well as the work that he was alive to see into production. If you are interested in HP Lovecraft, seventies UK television or MR James, this book will resonate with you. Basically he distinguishes between "the weird" and "the eerie", separating both from Freud's uncanny and talking about how each of them is a different way of getting at an "outside" to human understanding and perception, but he doesn't seem to have the synthesis or conclusion that you end up expecting.
3. Ghosts of My Life will be right up your alley if you are able to read long descriptions of the use of crackle in electronic music either with understanding or at least without getting impatient. Actually, it was full of interesting things - reflections on class and region in late seventies/early eighties post punk; the persistence of certain traces from a pre-Thatcher lifeworld; some hints at the landscape stuff that emerges in Weird and Eerie; the idea of the disappearance of the future; an essay on Inception that I thought just an excellent description of how the psychoanalytic gets absorbed by capital. The actual "hauntology" bits were all right but one feels that "hauntology" isn't as exciting a concept as one expects. If you like neat stuff, I guess I'd say, you'll like at least some of this book. You get a strong sense of the web of Fisher's interests and his returns to them over time.
4. He does not like WG Sebald. This is what turns my smiles upside down.
5. He does not like WG Sebald. I think because he misreads Sebald as having but borking the same sets of concerns that he has, or as having concerns that should be replaced by Fisher's.
6. He seems almost pathologically uninterested in work by women. It's actually bizarre. He talks about how Tricky and Burial sort of "speak" women and interrogate gender norms, but he doesn't talk about any women musicians - and he talks about a LOT of musicians. I know he was a Kate Bush fan, but it's extraordinary how devoid of women's work both these books are. He'll sort of talk about a woman writer or artist and then veer weirdly away in a way that seems neurotic - for instance, he mentions Beloved, but jumps immediately to the man who directed the film version.
7. These books are....really male-intellectual in their style and focus? I feel ambivalent about this because I tend to really like the archetypical nerdy-guy-marxist things he name-checks, but also these seem like books for straight male critical theory grad students who are really serious about vinyl. The books themselves seem to embody a particular kind of male loneliness.
On balance I liked both books a lot. While still very readable to an average non-grad student like me, they open up a lot of avenues for further reading/listening/inquiry and provide some interesting and useful ways to think about landscapes, "haunting" and sound.
Belbury Poly, "Summer Round"
posted by Frowner at 4:52 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
1. His descriptions of music continue to be absolutely nothing like what I hear when I actually listen to the music in question. This time around, though, my tastes have changed enough to really get into the first Burial release - the gurgley vocals remind me of my very favorite musician Arthur Russell. I was excited to see that although I got there because of the Clientele and Fisher got there because of [deep musical smarts that I don't have and] liking Ghost Box records, he also liked Belbury Poly a lot.
2. If I were starting to read him, I'd start with The Ghosts of My Life rather than Weird and Eerie, which doesn't to me seem to come together as well as the work that he was alive to see into production. If you are interested in HP Lovecraft, seventies UK television or MR James, this book will resonate with you. Basically he distinguishes between "the weird" and "the eerie", separating both from Freud's uncanny and talking about how each of them is a different way of getting at an "outside" to human understanding and perception, but he doesn't seem to have the synthesis or conclusion that you end up expecting.
3. Ghosts of My Life will be right up your alley if you are able to read long descriptions of the use of crackle in electronic music either with understanding or at least without getting impatient. Actually, it was full of interesting things - reflections on class and region in late seventies/early eighties post punk; the persistence of certain traces from a pre-Thatcher lifeworld; some hints at the landscape stuff that emerges in Weird and Eerie; the idea of the disappearance of the future; an essay on Inception that I thought just an excellent description of how the psychoanalytic gets absorbed by capital. The actual "hauntology" bits were all right but one feels that "hauntology" isn't as exciting a concept as one expects. If you like neat stuff, I guess I'd say, you'll like at least some of this book. You get a strong sense of the web of Fisher's interests and his returns to them over time.
4. He does not like WG Sebald. This is what turns my smiles upside down.
5. He does not like WG Sebald. I think because he misreads Sebald as having but borking the same sets of concerns that he has, or as having concerns that should be replaced by Fisher's.
6. He seems almost pathologically uninterested in work by women. It's actually bizarre. He talks about how Tricky and Burial sort of "speak" women and interrogate gender norms, but he doesn't talk about any women musicians - and he talks about a LOT of musicians. I know he was a Kate Bush fan, but it's extraordinary how devoid of women's work both these books are. He'll sort of talk about a woman writer or artist and then veer weirdly away in a way that seems neurotic - for instance, he mentions Beloved, but jumps immediately to the man who directed the film version.
7. These books are....really male-intellectual in their style and focus? I feel ambivalent about this because I tend to really like the archetypical nerdy-guy-marxist things he name-checks, but also these seem like books for straight male critical theory grad students who are really serious about vinyl. The books themselves seem to embody a particular kind of male loneliness.
On balance I liked both books a lot. While still very readable to an average non-grad student like me, they open up a lot of avenues for further reading/listening/inquiry and provide some interesting and useful ways to think about landscapes, "haunting" and sound.
Belbury Poly, "Summer Round"
posted by Frowner at 4:52 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
And deep time. If you're interested in either the Quatremass series or Alan Garner, I felt that those parts of The Weird and the Eerie in particular were very good.
posted by Frowner at 5:12 PM on April 10, 2019
posted by Frowner at 5:12 PM on April 10, 2019
« Older Advertising Movies with the African Gaze | Red Light Special Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Space Coyote at 9:25 AM on March 20, 2019 [2 favorites]