Introduction: Reading Capitalist Realism, Ten Years One.” Mediations 33.1-2(Fall 2019-Spring 2020) 139-148

Matthew Flisfeder. “Introduction: Reading Capitalist Realism, Ten Years One.” Mediations 33.1-2(Fall 2019-Spring 2020) 139-148. www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/fisher-intro Introduction: Reading Capitalist Realism, Ten Years On Matthew Flisfeder Of Which Realism May We Speak? Today, in the interregnum of the post-crisis, austerity-driven, global neoliberal capitalist society we are confronted with a range of contradictions potentially threatening our very way of life on Earth. From looming ecological catastrophes and the threat of the capitalocene, to the rise of artificial intelligence and digital automation threatening stagnation, to refugee crises and culture wars, and even to a resurgence of new economic crises unforeseen by mainstream economists, it would appear as though it is more necessary than ever to challenge the old Thatcherite dogma that “there is no alternative” (TINA) to the existing system. That hopeless, cynical claim that even if capitalism is full of flaws and fissures, it is still the least bad system we’ve got, so grin and bear it… But resisting this reified and disavowed root of the conundrum in the very capitalism that the TINA formula defends – if we are to confront these problems head on – perhaps it is time for us on the Left to be somewhat more pragmatic about what or how we even envision the future of the post-capitalist world. We need, perhaps, to be much more realistic; but in what sense? In his commentary on the Brecht-Lukács debate on the aesthetic conflict between modernism and realism in the 1930s, Fredric Jameson proposes that in the context of the rising postmodernism of the late 1970s and early 1980s “it may be Lukács – wrong as he was in the 1930s – who has some provisional last word for us today.”1 But he goes on to claim that if it is Lukács who is to be the retroactive winner in this debate then it comes with a caveat: that the version of realism that Jameson champions in Lukács is one that would be written in the terms of his History and Class Consciousness. That is, the version of realism that Jameson feels most adequate to the task of confronting postmodern capitalism is one expressed through the categories of reification and totality. The Brechtian “estrangement” no longer carries the same kind of critical weight that it might have had (if it ever really did) in the period of high modernism, or even 140 Matthew Flisfeder in the period of new avant-gardes in the post-Structuralist movements of the Tel quel group or the “screen theorists” of the 1970s. Estrangement or distanciation – the radical ideological break with the text and reality – becomes increasingly difficult and limited at the moment of the postmodern colonization of the commodity. When the commodity becomes everything, estrangement as a radical ethics begins to wane. Where there exists nowhere outside of the commodity then no distance is fully attainable or possible. Jameson concludes by saying in defense of Lukács that he cannot at all suggest which particular conception of realism works best for conceiving our historical present. But he proposes that “the study of realism makes it impossible not to feel the obligation to reinvent one” – that is, to invent a new category of realism.2 What he has in mind here is a conception of realism capable of identifying the totality of our social relations under late capitalism, set within the context of our historical present. A concept of realism, that is, which helps us to locate and understand the reified consciousness of capitalism that is itself set within a rationalist mode according to its own realisms. What we require, according to Jameson, is a concept capable of providing adequate cognitive mapping of our present conditions. As we will see in the texts that follow in this dossier, Mark Fisher’s now canonical book, Capitalist Realism, does precisely that; and, it is on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Mark’s impactful and influential short book that this dossier has been assembled to commemorate. But before I introduce the texts included in this dossier, I would like to offer some of my own reflections on Mark’s book and the impression it has left on me. Reading Mark Mark’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? was published in 2009. When I first read the book, I was just a few short months away from finishing my doctoral thesis on the relevance of Slavoj Žižek for contemporary film theory. I had also been writing about Žižek using a lens largely influenced by Jameson. Readers and celebrants of Mark’s book may therefore find no surprise by the fact that I immediately became enamoured with his book, and for very obvious reasons. I am probably not alone in expressing how impactful Mark’s writing, both in Capitalist Realism, and his subsequent texts – Ghosts of My Life and The Weird and the Eerie – has been on my own more recent work, as well as my cultural and political outlook and sensibilities more generally.3 Like many others, I was shocked and saddened by the news of his sudden passing in January 2017.4 Mark was a critic, theorist, and activist whose voice will truly be missed. These sentiments are only amplified when we read pieces in the recently published and highly acclaimed collection of Mark’s unpublished writings and blog posts, K-Punk, and especially the concluding piece to the collection, Mark’s draft introduction to his final project, Acid Communism.5 Reading the unpublished introduction to Acid Communism we realize that Mark did see forward a realistic Introduction: Reading Capitalist Realism 141 vision of life beyond capitalist realism (a Communist Realism), and it is in this vein that a number of relevant projects on the Left are now devoted – that is, the project of what some call luxury communism.6 As readers of course know, Mark begins Capitalist Realism with a nod to Žižek and Jameson – and I probably don’t have to repeat here the phrase which he attributes to both, that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”7 But as much as this phrase is repeated today it expresses very clearly what Mark had in mind with his conception of “capitalist realism.” Noting that the phrase had previously been used by the art and culture critic, Michael Schudson, to look at the ideological dimensions of advertising – the term contrasts with Socialist Realism – Mark appropriates it to address the rhetorical form of the reigning neoliberal ideology. Although the book is based on several of Mark’s K-Punk blog posts from around 2005-2008, it captures quite well the affective and ideological dimensions of the neoliberal period, especially in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, in exactly the way that Jameson had hoped for with his vison of postmodern cognitive mapping. 8 In fact, it could be claimed that “capitalist realism” – as a functional worldview – has in some ways become a much more potent ideology following the crisis. For it denotes the widespread sense that there is still no alternative to capitalism, even (or, perhaps, especially so) against the background of constantly looming crises. At the same time, “capitalist realism” offers exactly the kind of cognitive mapping that has helped to solidify and build solidarity around a number of emancipatory projects on the Left even since the crisis. It is almost as if Mark’s naming and pointing the finger at “capitalist realism” allowed radical movements to congeal around a common objective (as opposed to merely subjective) enemy found within the relations of capitalist exploitation. Žižek writes in First as Tragedy, Then as Farce that the first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by the bookended events of 9/11and the financial credit crisis of 2008.9 The first occurred midway through my undergraduate studies; the second occurred midway through my doctoral studies. It was the first event that initially opened for me a global crisis in the liberal worldview and drew me to the Marxist critique of ideology, as well as to several activist circles in Toronto for various different causes on the Left; but it was with the second that my comprehension of the inherent structural contradictions of capitalism was honed. Capitalist Realism was for me, then, quite timely. Mark’s book spoke to me in a way that I’d not identified in anything else I’d read previously. It provided a real sense of the kind of cognitive mapping needed for me to face the crisis. It is a book that has only radicalized my worldview even further. Reading Capitalist Realism for the first time, I felt an overwhelming affinity towards Mark. I had read posts from his K-Punk blog a few times prior, but at that point remained largely unfamiliar with his writing. Capitalist Realism is a product of what Jeremy Gilbert has called Mark’s Žižek-Lacan period, and it is quite clear that even in his conception of capitalist realism – that is, as a critical-ideological concept – Žižek’s 142 Matthew Flisfeder earliest theories of ideology shine through.10 But it wasn’t only in his uses of Žižek and Jameson that I felt inspired by Mark. It was of course, as many will still share, his style and manner of expression: his seamless and cogent prose; his practice of mixing theory and fiction (or “Theory- Fiction,” which we find even early on in his doctoral thesis, Flatline Constructs); his references to popular culture, electronic music, sci-fi, and cyberpunk; as well as his astute writing about the interpassive and jacked-in dimensions of new media, and the somnambulist trance of late modern (or postmodern) “sugar-coated” and caffeine-drenched, greasy and hyper-stimulated screen culture of twenty-first century capitalism, that drew me into his unique way of expressing and visualizing the most deleterious yet mesmerizing aspects of our present.

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