a refusal to come to terms with the particular character of the present" and "signifies, as well, a certain narcissism with regard to one's past political attachments and identity." While it is unfair to describe Fisher as a revolutionary–he's a cultural theorist–and while he does acknowledge and makes efforts to accommodate the unique character of the present, the sustained exasperation of the way capitalism has infected our life world and even our fantasies, in part derived from his own private experience as an educator, and the symptoms he points out everywhere of this decrepitude leads him to a curious retro-Marxism that seems incommensurate with the times he so lucidly describes.Īt issue for Fisher is what he calls capitalist realism, a concept deeply indebted to Frederic Jameson: that sense that we have entered a stage of capitalism that precludes our ability to imagine any alternative to this system. who is, finally, attached more to a particular political analysis or ideal–even to the failure of that ideal–than to seizing possibilities for radical change in the present. As Wendy Brown describes it, "~left melancholy~ is Benjamin's unambivalent epithet for the revolutionary. On the other hand, Fisher demonstrates partial signs of succumbing to what Walter Benjamin called Left melancholia.
On the one hand, it accurately locates the current feelings of impotence to effect meaningful change to the anomie engendered through capitalism and neoliberalist economics in particular, the resignation toward the undeniable intrusion of a reductive capitalist logic in every sphere of society. It is this irony, this double-stance, that makes _Capitalist Realism_ both an important work and one to be treated with a critical distance. Indeed, Fisher's dynamic style, his Zizekian attunement to the absurdities of postmodern culture delivered with the same ironic wit, and his insightful use of film and popular culture to demonstrate his points, act as palliatives to the supremely pessimistic view that he ultimately roots in the structure of capitalism. Mark Fisher's _Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative?_ engages in schadenfreude of a most peculiar kind: it is deeply gratifying to read Fisher's excoriating rebuke of contemporary capitalist culture and his lucid description of the frustrations of those caught within the insipid logic of administrations and bureaucracies or the self-abasement of management to meet superficial outcomes yet, the misfortune we take pleasure in is our own. _Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative?_ Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.
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