#so like i read mark fisher and because it was interesting then i read about marx's theories and then i looked into hegel more etc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

familyabolisher · 1 year

Note

i’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on mark fisher if you have the time or energy to share, this is coming from someone who has read only excerpts from him and i remember you mentioning you’re not a fan (i’ll prob read more of his work regardless out of interest lol). no pressure, i’m just curious!

i lost all interest in fisher after exiting the vampire castle, which is an essay claiming that 'witch-hunting moralism' has overtaken 'leftist' spaces and an overfocus on 'identity' at the expense of class analysis occludes praxis. in practice, it is fisher whining that we're all too mean to major 'leftist' figures online and developing strategies to address racism and misogyny in leftist spaces is just bourgeois subjectivity. he argues that people like owen jones and russell brand are being effectively persecuted online by what might as well be 'the woke mob' in all but name.

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.

I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’ Castle uses an ultimately liberal understanding of race and gender to obfuscate class.

this is the oldest reactionary take on 'identity politics' in the book.

he claims that critiques leveraged against people like jones and brand come from individuals marginalised along axes of race and gender who have been allowed to prosper under capitalism because they can align their interests with that of capital; generally speaking, this just isn't the case, and it's pathetic to excuse jones + brand from the category of people whose interests can be absorbed into the bourgeois imaginary because you feel bad for them when working class racialised women are mean to them online. he calls on his readers to 'reject identitarianism' and makes a series of incredibly patronising claims about how everyone except him seems to have forgotten that the struggle is not about 'recognition from the bourgeoisie'; this is parroting an argument about liberal absorption of a palatable iteration of marginality to quell dissent that has nothing to do with people dunking on owen jones in the qrts??????

it's a contemptible essay full of complaints about the 'moralist left.' favourite line is: "Others told us that [Russell] Brand couldn’t really be working class, because he was a millionaire," followed by the claim that materialist class analysis is bad because it wants to prevent social mobility or whatever (how are you going to align yourself with communism and say this?).

i need it to be noted that this essay comes at a time when one of the biggest problems with communist organising in the UK is the fact that a lot of major so-called 'communist' or 'socialist' organisations have significant histories of unaddressed abuse, specifically sexual abuse; the SWP and CPGB are stellar examples of this, as well as several anecdotal examples i could give just off the top of my head as someone who has both participated in and has friends who have participated in those spaces. the manipulative deployment of abolitionist language allows rampant misogyny, transphobia, and racism to go unchecked in these spaces where abuse is facilitated and then covered up. when fisher claims that 'we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication,' i can't help but wonder what he thinks should be done about rapists in communist parties, or whether he thinks people talking about their experiences of bigotry in those spaces are exaggerating for the sake of creating an artificial conflict. an appeal to excessive focus on 'identity' is an obviously reactionary ethos, and occludes the actual sites where violence can take place using 'callouts' as a cudgel; as a tactic used to isolate vulnerable people by grossly exaggerating perceived transgressions and appealing to preexisting biases, often transmisogyny or racism through the wielding of respectability politics.

it's worth reading the whole essay, if only to see just how fucking bad it is. and like, whatever, i'm not saying i wouldn't get anything out of reading fisher (i've read some of his hauntology writing in the past, it's fine), but i can't take seriously an anti-capitalist writer whose anti-capitalism is pathetic enough to feel the need to write a whole piece on why we should feel bad for owen jones and stop being such awful awful scolds actually. what developments on my own articulation of communism would i possibly stand to gain from reading mark fisher?

so, yeah. i don't care for him.

#ask #rape cw

61 notes · View notes

darlingpoppet · 1 month

Note

What inspired you to start Where The Dead Forget? Also can you tell us some more about your PZA Dreamers AU? (e.g. what your favourite thing to write has been so far, things you look forward to or struggle with, or anything else you like). Thanks!

As for WTDF, honestly it pretty much all started with this tweet where I expressed interest in the concept of Patroclus Hadesgame losing his memories. I had seen such fanarts already so I was curious if there were fics out there too (there are of course! I have since found some, lol!) But a friend in the comments was encouraging to the notion of me writing one myself and I pretty much immediately began spiraling from there (I tweeted this the same day I posted Once More and also about a week before I posted Upon A Lazy Bed, so at the time my brain was on fire and I was constantly brimming with ideas!) The entire story from beginning to end pretty much came to me immediately and I’ve been expanding on it ever since! A lot of my inspiration has been fueled by the experience of consuming every depiction of Achilles & Patroclus I could get my hands on, as well as countless academic writings with various analyses on the characters. Also just the entire meta tradition of storytelling with folklore characters in general, where there’s no one “definitive version”, and thinking about how that might work in-universe where things like memories, bias, human fallibility, etc make objective truth difficult or impossible to obtain. Films such as Rashomon and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind that explore similar concepts to WTDF also inspired me!

As for the PZA Dreamers AU!! I can’t remember if I’ve ever properly explained the concept in a public post but for anyone curious: the whole thing was born out of me seeing a parallel/synergy between the themes of the film The Dreamers and certain interpretations of the Iliad (the Homeric version itself ofc but also particularly Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida.) The characters in these stories exist in this symbolic & narrative liminal space where they’re shutting themselves off from the outside world so they can Live Laugh Love—and in all the stories, reality catches up with them eventually, usually in tragic ways. I’m making it a modern AU (a vaguely 2010s period piece?) because as a millennial I also see parallels to my generation (& Gen Z) where as a whole our own lives also seem to be stuck in a figurative liminal space academically, economically, socially (especially in the era of covid where we were all shut-up in our houses finding there was more to life than The Grind, simultaneously reveling in simple pleasures & also going insane until we were all forced back out again) And at the same time our generations have this fascination with liminal spaces as an Internet meme (including vaporwave which also coincidentally appropriates classical Greco-Roman imagery in its aesthetics.) I’m reading serious non-fiction books like Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher and Retromania by Simon Reynolds in service of what at the end of the day is just a horny fanfic LMFAO.

Because getting back on track to what you actually asked me: I’m not gonna lie, my favorite parts of writing this story so far have been the sex scenes, haha. Like the whole vibe of the story is supposed to be just this completely unfettered dreamy indulgence, and even things like sex have a liminal quality to me (where time seems to stand still and people are joined together transitioning through several physical states) hopefully I’ll be able to pull the whole thing off the way I’m envisioning it! The fact that it’s a modern AU is probably what makes this both easier and harder to write—things like dialogue can have a more modern sensibility but it’s probably the more flowery prose that’s giving WTDF its own dreamy, liminal quality so it’s tricky figuring out how to balance it. I’m also having a hard time deciding whether I want to dump this entire high-concept, novella-length story as a one-shot (or at least split up into 2-3 parts that are published all at once) or if I should stick to a more traditional (for fanfic) serialized publication schedule ahahaha. I guess if anyone reading this has any preferences or insight feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Oh and as for the PZA of it all: writing Closest To My Heart was probably what reminded me of the existence of The Dreamers in the first place (I had seen it years and years ago) because I realized that film has a similar dynamic of an “outsider” falling into an erotic triangle with a pair who are essentially soulmates, and ends up biting off a little more than he can chew in keeping up with the two of them… I decided I wasn’t quite done exploring that dynamic and I wanted to write about it more! Though don’t worry, I don’t think this story is gonna be quite as dark as Closest (uh oh wait this might be a lie actually), and also Patrochilles are MUCH nicer to Zag in this story ;)

(Also I didn’t even mention Hadesgame itself where the entire underworld is a liminal space Zagreus passes through to reach the surface/self-actualization and how he is constantly dying/resurrecting… Zagreus is a very liminal character! But this is already an ETA so I shall leave my thoughts there for now, lol.)

Hopefully all that answers your questions, anon! Thanks so much for the ask <3

#emica chat #where the dead forget #liminal spaces #my fics

3 notes · View notes

dykekakashi · 8 months

Note

(ask inspired by that post about no one sending asks nowadays) what are some of your favorite nonfiction books? also pls tell your puppy he is adorable for me

thank u for this, west!!! 🥺 i have so many but here's a few:

speak, memory by vladimir nabokov — does this even count as nonfiction? it is autobiography but sometimes it feels so much like fiction. anyway, absolutely one of my favourite books, beautiful prose, made seeing the butterfly collection at the nabokov museum much more meaningful!!

the house of government by yuri slezkine — a history book but like if it was a tolstoy novel. what could possibly go wrong (many things) but it's just an excellent read. the crux of the argument, that the bolsheviks were a millenarian sect, is so compelling and i think about it all the time even after graduating lol. definitely changed a lot re: how i think of religion and secularism

the furies: violence and terror in the french and russian revolution by arno j. mayer — another one of those books that makes u question how analytically sound it is, but provides a thought-provoking framework for thinking about revolution (and the less often addressed force of "counter-revolution") & political violence

ghosts of my life by mark fisher — i don't know what there is to say about this lol. i read it during spring 2021, when the pandemic wasn't quite over and i still wasn't sure what i was going to do w my life after graduation. it put a lot of things that i had been feeling re: art, media, just my general sense of the (im)possible future into words

the last utopia by samuel moyn — similar to the above actually but within the realm of political frameworks/ideologies. i don't think i've used any work more than this one in my own (academic) writing). the general gist of it is re: the way that the desire for political utopias (e.g. communism) turned into a desire for moral utopias (namely, human rights in the western/US-centric sense of them)

the elusive republic: political economy in jeffersonian america by drew mccoy — i have a strange fondness for this one because tbh it was the first book that made me interested in a) US history b) political economy overall. before this i didn't understand what republicanism was at all, tbh

ludwig wittgenstein: the duty of genius by ray monk — intensely well researched biography of an interesting man and the only way i will ever understand anything wittgenstein ever wrote. so. thank u mr monk

financial missionaries to the world: the politics and culture of dollar diplomacy by emily rosenberg — similar to the mccoy book, one of the first books that made me interested in political economy and US history. also actually addresses gender & media, which makes it doubly interesting because hmm. gender has historically not been addressed very often in studies of economic history or political economy lol. not a lot of women writing in this field to begin with unfortunately. anyway, it's about international lending as a form of imperialism, to be very very general

designing dead souls: an anatomy of disorder in gogol by susanne fusso — just such a cool book tbh. i don't know of any other authors writing about 19th c russian literature from this lens (then again i don't read a lot of complit monographs), v much focused on themes of sexuality, death, gender, aesthetics, etc. not just in this book but in her other ones, too

& pls ..... i gave him a tiny little forehead kiss on ur behalf<33

5 notes · View notes

bastellator · 9 months

Text

Violence and the Revolution

"The revolution made progress, not by its immediate tragicomic achievements but by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, an opponent in combat with whom the party of overthrow ripened into a really revolutionary party."

-Marx, The Class Struggle in France (1850)

The question of whether the Revolution (here meant as any meaningful overthrowing of the present state of things, whatever its form) will be violent or peaceful, through the medium of liberal democracy or outside it, used to be interesting to me, but since reading this quote it no longer is. It doesn't matter whether the actual toppling of the world order comes violently or peacefully, it is what happens afterwards. Will the bourgeois let capital be exorcised from its host, or will they fight back. In the video game Disco Elysium by ZA/UM, with dialogue predominantly written by science-fiction author Robert Kurvitz, an old man, a veteran of a failed revolution, talks about capitalism's "mask of humanity". In times of peace, capitalism parades as liberal democracy, hamburgers and endless TV-channels, but when faced with a crisis, this mask begins to slip. In the global north, we very rarely see this slip, because we need to think that everything is alright and that we live in a democracy, but of course our society is built as much on violence as any authoritarian state, we just outsource out violence to the global south. When a political candidate challenges Capital here, Capital does not need to use violence, at least not here --- consider Jeremy Corbyn being subjected to a smear campaign as bombs drop on Palestine. Capitalism cannot simply do away with him, because that might actually shock people out of despondency --- liberal democracy, the human mask of Capital, stays on. Optics in Chilean politics do not matter to Capital, only the flow of resources. If copper stops flowing, they might try some non-violent sabotaging of the economy to turn public opinion against the socialist president, but when that fails (the people who elected him were largely poor to start with, so they might not have perceived the change as much as hoped for), the mask will slip off. But this wasn't just about copper, the important thing was always to enforce capitalist realism (a concept created by Mark Fisher to describe that feeling of anything but capitalism being possible). If Chile had shown the world that, not only was socialism possible, but it was possible through peaceful means, through conventional liberal democracy, other countries would follow suit. If the proletariat of Chile could do it, so could others. So, the CIA backed a coup by the general Augusto Pinochet to "reinstate democracy". Many conservatives in Chile truly believed that this would happen, that the communists would be thrown out and that order would prevail. They were surprised when the junta refused to relinquish power and reinstate democracy. And the global north did nothing to about this. Instead, they sent Milton Friedman's goons to run their experiments on the country. They sent Margaret Thatcher to have tea with Pinochet (a recent example of a similar thing is how Venezuela and Cuba were refused entry to an OAS event, while Biden had a joint press conference with permanently constipated and corona-infected fascist moron Jair Bolsonaro). And of course, this is because liberal "democracy" is simply the human mask, the PR-trick of Capital and capitalism.

So where am I getting with this? To return to the quote that opened this post, I want to leave you with this: however the revolution happens, the counter-revolution will be swift and brutal, and we must be ready for that. They will first try to nip it in the bud, as they did with Corbyn and Sanders. Then they will try to choke the country, to show that the system does not work, like they are doing to Cuba. Failing that, they will do what they did to Allende, what they did to Patrice Lumumba --- they will swiftly and brutally put an end to the revolution. The choice is not ours whether violence will happen before we can come out on the other side --- it is inevitable --- and we must always be ready for it.

2 notes · View notes

scottsumrners · 2 years

Text

i'm reading reviews and plot holes about don't worry darling (because i love to see white people fail) and i can't get over how there's a good movie trapped in an incredibly mediocre one

like [spoilers for the shitty movie] the entire conclusion of the movie is that harry styles' character essentially trapped his wife/ex-wife, Ms. Flo, into The Sims 4: 1960s Expansion Pack. In the original script he had faked her death, but in the final cut of the movie that's never revealed, so it just looks like he kidnapped her and nobody ever bothered to go looking for her or something. and there are several other women in there as well, although some (like olivia wilde's character) who are there by choice, because it's the only way she gets to live with her dead children. which means that the virtual reality can (re)create facsimiles through AI technology.

but like. imagine if they had leaned on THAT aspect of this universe. instead of Ms Flo having been kidnapped by Boybander #5, imagine that the big twist is that she discovers she is actually... an AI, developed specifically to serve this guy. You have these "reject modernity embrace tradition" incel white guys who are paying good money to create this "perfect" society in the metaverse, which includes for them their idea of the "perfect" woman (which explains why you got dudes like nick kroll married to fucking. olivia wilde). Imagine if it turns out Ms Flo is not actually a person with thoughts and feelings but probably just the avatar created to resembled an ex-girlfriend or someone harry styles was in love with, but she is developing a level of consciousness that goes beyond her programming. it could have actually raised some interesting questions about, you know, image autonomy in the age of the internet (including if someone can use your image for their own pleasure even if you are not aware of it or if you're dead, as we see in deepfakes and star wars using technology to deage mark hamill or recreate carrie fisher) not to mention use it as a criticism of this cottagecore/vintage/romanticising the 60s movement that is so prevalent nowadays, especially between white people/racists.

instead it's just two hours of "hey what if you looked back at all these sex scenes you just watched and realized it was basically this woman being raped?"

4 notes · View notes

richardjlockleyhobson · 5 months

Text

RJL-H:

When did you first become aware of Derrida’s word/term and how did you come to reapply it to music?

Simon Reynolds:

Not sure when exactly I first became aware of it – one of those terms that was floating around in the intellectual ether – but I first got any kind of grip on what it signified when I read the essay collection Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx.

That came out in the late 90s I believe (not 2008 as it says on the Verso website, they’re referring to a new edition of it with a different cover) and it’s a bunch of essays mostly taking issue with Derrida’s “rapprochement” with Marx and his contesting of the idea of “the end of history” – the victory of neoliberal capitalism. There’s a few sympathetic essays like Fredric Jameson’s, but mostly quite hostile, from Marxists like Terry Eagleton, basically saying “okay, where were you during the 1980s?”. Anyway, that sparked my interest in the term and lodged it more firmly in my head. I believe it’s from an actual symposium that took place in 1993. Derrida’s response to his critics – quite peevish and wounded! – is included in the book.

However the initial use of 'Hauntology' was not meant to indicate any real connection between Derrida’s ideas and these bands, it was a playful term meant to evoke this spooky music with its explicit references to ghosts and the more general vague sense of revenant memories emerging from the cultural unconscious of recent (specifically British) history.

There are certain parallels that can be drawn between Derrida’s ideas and some of the things going on in, what music critics/bloggers have taken to calling, Hauntology, but they are pretty loose.

Have you read Specters of Marx? When I finally got round to it, I was quite disappointed. Hardly any of it seemed to have any application to Hauntology-as-music-genre. And beyond even that, it’s just an odd book. Typical Derrida (in my limited experience anyway), insofar as very specific things are given this extremely close reading, with lots of verging on tortured word-play and etymological games. The first bit is all about Hamlet’s father ghost: pretty interesting but rather strained in terms of the significance ladled onto what is, at the end of the day, a scene in a play. Then in the middle there’s a pretty passionate, eloquent section about how despite Communism allegedly being dead, the conditions that caused the Marxist analysis to emerge (injustice, exploitation, inequality etc) are not only with us but arguably worse than ever, so the spectre of Communism is still stalking the global stage. Cool to read him speaking out so directly, but then again, it doesn’t get much beyond slightly windy generalities. There’s also a long section about Marx and his disagreements with a philosopher contemporary, Max Stirner, and Marx’s fear of ghosts. Bit abstruse and again, its wider applications seemed uncertain.

Basically, I found very little I could extract and apply to Moon Wiring Club and Mordant Music! Which is not the only reason I read theory books; to get ideas to redeploy. But having actually read Spectres of Marx I did kind of regret the fact that Hauntology ended up being the name. Memoradelia, as suggested by another writer, might have been better.

Another slim, dense book by Derrida – Archive Fever – is slightly more useful for Hauntology-as-music-genre. But even here there’s a very close reading of a Jewish religious writer’s book on Freud.

As I say, it was picked as a name almost whimsically really. The ‘ology fit because there was something quite sober and scientific about the Ghost Box vibe, the whole pedagogical aura, similar to the first series of Look Around You.

How it came to become the Name, is a little cloudy. Mark Fisher had used the word ‘Hauntological’ as an adjective but I actually blogged a sort of “okay, chaps, let’s go with this as the name, shall we?” post. Also I had done the first published piece (outside the blog world) on Ghost Box and my original title was “Hauntology”. But Frieze went with “Spirit of Preservation”. That was published in October 2005, but I’d have written that in August most likely.

It’s a difficult one, the genre naming issue. As a journalist I know from having been around the block a bunch of times, that in terms of getting coverage for artists, it’s immeasurably better if there’s some kind of genre or scene name. Usually it’s best if the putative scene comes up with one themselves, as happened with grime (eventually, they took forever to settle on a name). But discourse abhors a vacuum and the longer people shy away from the process of self-naming, the more likely a journalist will step into the breach. Of course artists reflexively resist being pigeonholed, which is understandable. And as soon as there’s an identified genre, you run the risk of codifying the style, you get second-wave imitators. It’s a trade-off but I think on balance – when you factor in everything from piquing the interest of editors, to arousing the curiosity of potential fans, to mundane but vital things like getting your own dedicated section in record stores – having a name is a really important step. It develops its own momentum – there’s artists in the genres who complain churlishly about the name, but who’ve benefited from e.g. Boomkat doing a Hauntology track compilation, or from an arts institution like the British Film Institute doing a Hauntology event.

Musicians, bless ‘em, always see what they do as a) completely individual and b) completely original. They don’t like to envisage themselves as products of discursive currents, zeitgeists, etc. But if there’s one thing that Derrida, Foucault et al got right, is that the episteme is what generates ideas, sensibilities, what seems relevant or sexy at particular times in terms of culture/art/etc. The fact that all these artists emerged simultaneously and, initially, seemingly unaware of each other, shows that there’s something going on that’s bigger than any one individual’s obsessions.

RJL-H:

Whilst we’re on the subject. Derrida was christened Jackie. Jackie Élie Derrida. Having become aware of this, now, when I think of Derrida, I think of another Jacques and the eponymous hero of Brel’s song Jacky (La chanson de Jacky). Though in truth, the version as retitled and reinterpreted by Scott Walker comes more readily to mind.

“If I could be for only an hour, if I could be for an hour every day, if I could be for just one little hour, cute in a stupid ass way”.

I sometimes think that Derrida may well have considered himself better suited to a life such as the one lived by the eponymous hero of Brel’s song.

At this stage, Hauntology is seen by some as a mix-n-match of unsettling children’s television, analog electronics, suburban witchcraft. So on and so forth. By others, as a kind of backward looking-forward thinking philosophy, or vice-versa.

I see Hauntology’s core interests as an interrelated framework of ideas, rooted in, and branching out from, a seemingly simple premise: The past and future, converging on the present. To give Derrida his due, this concept of haunting, this ‘action of haunting’ is key to our understanding. So, to put it another way, the past and the future are haunting the present.

I would also say that I consider that something cannot be knowingly created Hauntological. A judgement can only be made in retrospect. As some people believe that objects do not exist until they are observed, I believe that something is rendered Hauntological by our considering it to be so. I think that things that are created to be knowingly Hauntological, more often than not, produce poor results.

Memoradelia is a good word/term. An American friend, who lives in Astoria, NY, says H, instead of Hauntology. People get fatigued. Hauntology sounds pompous and it doesn't spell check.

SR:

Nice to find my Derrida doubts confirmed and buttressed. In all honesty so much of it just seems like verbiage for its own sake. I know that to want to say to Jacques "for fucks sake man, can you not just come and say what you have to say in as direct and economical a fashion as possible", is to completely go against the spirit of Derrida, but that is what I unavoidably find myself feeling. The yield of actual ideas per kilo of verbiage is very low.

I actually have an almost diametric opposite feeling about Hauntology – I am much much more attached to the music than I am the word or even the concepts. It's really pretty much my favourite music of the last nine years, along with Ariel Pink and a few other things. What I listen to, inexhaustibly. If I'm being stern and quasi-objective, I would say that there's maybe half a dozen H artifacts that are essential, what every home should own. Slightly more if you include proto H things like Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children or Position Normal's Stop Your Nonsense.

That core of the canon would be: The Focus Group's Hey Let Loose Your Love, Belbury Poly's The Willows, Mordant Music's Dead Air, The Advisory Circle & Other Channels/Mind How You Go, Moon Wiring Club's An Audience Of Art Deco Eyes & eMMplekz's IZOD Days, Everything else is nice but either supplementary or reiterative. Some of it is not very good at all.

The Caretaker, James Kirby has done good stuff, but oddly vitiated by excessive copiousness. The Transactional Dharma of Roj LP was good and Broadcast have their moments. Pye Audio, nice, but inessential. Demdike Stare, dreary unmemorable, crippled by good taste. And what dry tedious interviews they do.

I wish Moon Wiring Club had been on The Wire cover, his music is much better and more fun and also genuinely eerie at times. And he has much more interesting, charming stuff to say. I think that charm and humour is an overlooked aspect of this music. But that relates to the fact that although I said above that every home should own these records, I also realise that this stuff has very limited appeal, it really only resonates with UK raised people of a certain age. I'm always honestly amazed when a 20 something American tells me that they love Ghost Box. There is a hipster store, Mount Analogue, in Los Angeles that has a whole section for Hauntology, even the BFI DVDs. Huh?

Not sure I agree that you can't consciously make something Hauntological. Boards of Canada were clearly aiming for something uncanny with Music Has the Right to Children and they achieved it, that record was the primary, initiating experience of the H effect for me. That and Position Normal's Stop Your Nonsense.

I do however agree that at its most powerful, it comes at you unexpectedly, involuntarily from music or other pop cultural things that don't resemble H as now understood and codified. Or from your personal life.

RJL-H:

For me, I'm applying, repurposing, the word/term for something that already exists and that has existed, in all likelihood, for quite some time. In fact, I often come back to the word Otherness. I see that Alan Garner has, upon occasion, used Otherness to describe aspects of something that we'd now likely categorise as Hauntological.

You could of course argue, why join the party? Why not just stick with Otherness?

I've done a little work with Simon Costin's Museum of British Folklore and Simon once mentioned that Americans seem to be more interested in British Folklore than the British. This is understandable, I think, but I'm also seeing something similar happening with Hauntology.

SR:

I think every country or nationality, let's say, has its own Hauntology. Potentially anyway. This sort of cultural or para-cultural substrate of common experience that you don't really notice until it's gone.

Certainly the cluster of music that, for better or worse, I've come to call Hauntology, is very British, and also generational, it resonates for people who were children in the 1960s/70s and a little bit 80s. But non Brits do seem to pick up on aspects that do something for them, a non specific evocative-ness and out-of-timey effect.

Otherness is good although I would say that what further defines it as sensation is this odd alloy of intimacy and otherness... A part of yourself you'd lost or forgotten that's returned to yourself. A self othering. In that sense definite analogies with analysis in the Freudian sense. Which makes sense if one is talking about cultural unconscious, etc.

So it's not a totally othering, disorientating experience, as in mystical, paranormal, or hallucinatory, like drug experiences or going insane. It's gentler, a twisting, or tinting of the everyday. Rather than deranging, a sort of cosy mild unease or dissociative feeling. Reverie rather than Rapture, in the saint Theresa sense.

The one thing that came through more clearly when doing the chapter in Retromania, was the extent to which my idea of Hauntology-as-music-genre, and my affection for it, is based around nationality. And I make this opposition between nationality and nationalism. Nationalism is political and it’s an ideology of national greatness or exceptionality. Nationality is pre-political I think – it’s the things I share with all other Britons including so many I have nothing in common with politically or in terms of chosen allegiances (musical, artistic, etc). Nationality in that sense is the pre-chosen, the given rather than what you consciously seek out or align yourself with. There’s this term people use, I’m not sure of the provenance in terms of either who coined it or even what discipline it comes from (Sociology? Anthropology), but the term is “lifeworld” – and I guess it means the realm of customs, everyday life, accents, gestures, rituals, routines, habits, common sense, food etc. I suppose Antonio Gramsci would say this kind of stuff is actually ideological, it’s part of hegemony (Roland Barthes also analysed this kind of thing under Mythologies). But to me it’s more like the common inheritance of phrase and fable, idiom, and also, the arbitrary stylistic and design quirks of the typography used on everyday articles, the look of shops and public institutions, etc.

I was just in the UK last week and being an expatriate now I notice this stuff that I would not have noticed when I lived there and it was all I knew. Also I just learned to drive so I’m paying more attention, but you know, things like road signs – where my mum lives in west Hertfordshire, signs like “weak bridges” or “traffic calming area” (for a zone with bumps in the road to stop drivers going too fast and running over little kids, presumably!). It’s in that kind of thing that the soul of a nation resides. That’s where Hauntology does cross over into the realm of the hobbyist, which is frankly nostalgic and fetishistic of the bygone, musty, etcetera.

A lot of Hauntology taps into this kind of thing, and largely the elements of the nation-soul or lifeworld that are fading away. Although whenever I go to England I am quite amazed by how unchanged it is, indistinguishable, in large part, from the 1970s or 80s Britain, that I remember. Old people still look the same. The main differences between then and now seems to be mobile phones and coffee.

At one UK Hauntology event (the Wire salon, I think) that was made available on the web, I seem to recall someone in the audience complaining about Hauntology as this picture of a white Britain, before the impact of immigration and multiculturalism. Which seemed like typical academic intersectionalist point-scoring. But no one on the panel had a good answer to that line of attack, they were a bit blindsided and flummoxed! Certainly the voices used by Moon Wiring club, etc., are evocative of a certain era of television and the BBC and tend to be posh, thespian or white regional working class. But in the case for the defence, should be noted that Belbury Poly did a couple of reggae based tunes! Also a lot of this stuff becomes part of the culture of immigrants as they assimilate, especially those who were born here. The black British theorist Paul Gilroy wrote about his love of Englishness, hedgerows and cricket etc., in this book 'Postcolonial Melancholia'. About how he was as affected by growing up with all that surrounding him as anybody. He also wrote an essay called 'Analogues of Mourning, Mourning the Analog' that approached a kind of black-music Hauntology, based in his nostalgia for an era of transnational black music, vinyl statements from US soul and funk to Jamaican reggae, the 1970s, etc. His feelings that something had been lost with the transition to hip hop and video-based, digitally-produced black pop.

RJL-H:

That's an interesting question, is Hauntology racist? Like you say, every country or nationality has its own Hauntology. Potentially anyway. Right now, Hauntology might seem a little pale, but that could change.

As alluded to previously, I've no doubt that our emotional response to our environment alters our perception of it, but do town planners, and related, responsible for so much Hauntology or more specifically Psychogeography, consider such things, knowingly?

"In terms of plan forms for new villages he expressed a clear preference for the 'squared' type, with all its potential for diversity, such that 'in the future, as in the past, every village can be different from every other village, and that every village may be an individual place' (p.63). To this argument Sharp identified potential dangers: the danger of producing an overelaborate and over-sophisticated pattern, the danger of producing a completely rounded finite design, inhibiting organic change and the danger of designing overlarge public amenity spaces. Spaces, he argued, should be closed for climatic, pictorial and psychological reasons (as a contrast to open country views)" Town planner, turned college Professor, John Pendlebury, commenting on Thomas Sharp's 1946 book The Anatomy of the Village, in 2007.

SR:

I knew I’d spoken about this somewhere before, it was actually in an interview last year for someone’s blog, when I was asked if I missed London:

“I do miss London, and England, for loads of reasons, too many to list really. Beyond friends and family, just the fabric of daily life. The hedgerows and meadows and copses. The calm modulated tones of Radio Four. The weather – I actually miss things like rain, sudden showers, mist, fog, frost. There are about 20 different kinds of rain in the UK, whereas in LA, when it does rain – which is rarely – it’s more like an on/off switch, like a shower. London specifically, obviously I miss the parks – Brockwell Park and Hampstead Heath, above all. I think they have idyllic connotations partly because I was born in London and lived there until the age of 4, so a place like Brockwell Park on a really nice day has a kind of dream-like quality to me. Quite a lot of things that I miss about the UK are actually gone or are going (like record shops, the weekly music press, the BBC). So the homesickness is about a country that doesn’t even exist anymore. Yet conversely, whenever I go back, especially once I get outside London to places like the Tring/Berkhamstead area, where my parents live, or Durham and Swaledale in North Yorkshire, where my aunt and uncle live – I get a striking sense that the UK hasn’t actually changed that much since I was a boy. Old people look more or less the same, the landscape is more or less the same, except that haystacks now get covered in black bin-liners. There’s still allotments and canals, with brightly coloured barges and flooded fields beside them. Pubs and beer gardens. Village fetes, etc. Everyone has science fiction phones, people are dressing a bit sharper and flashier and punk rock is taught in middle school, as part of popular culture courses. But essentially, at heart, the country is the same. For better and worse”.

Re: the 'is Hauntology racist' question, I think it’s a non-issue really. Artists don’t practice affirmative action. Institutions and corporations do, or should. Artists are drawn to and inspired by what they’re drawn to and inspired by. To me it’s like saying to an angler, “by being interested only in catching fish you are being implicitly derogatory or exclusive towards hunting animals and birds”. Not in the least: it’s that something about the experience of sitting by a canal for hours and hours, often in vain, speaks to that person.

Anyway, the other thing about so much Hauntology-as-genre is its relationship to hip hop. Very much present in BoC and key in the genesis of Position Normal, and remains part of the make up of Moon Wiring Club, which is all about beats, loops, samples. Ghost Box is more rooted in psychedelia and radiophonics, but there’s a connection to 90s electronica, trip hop, big beat – people like Luke Vibert/Wagon Christ, who were exploring that intersection between breakbeats and library music back in the 1990s.

RJL-H: Those first two Wagon Christ albums are really interesting. Phat Lab. Nightmare and Throbbing Pouch. I have a white-label of Phat Lab. somewhere. It was in with a bunch of promos I bought from John Stapleton. It was obviously surplus to requirements, for whatever reason.

RJL-H:

So, to close us out, all things in consideration, what's the future of the past?

SR:

Very healthy, in the sense that the past isn’t going away and there’s going to be even more of it about. More and more of it, all available at once, every era overlapping, and with micro-industries dedicated to excavating both new information about things we already know about, and things from that time that were virtually unknown or had slipped into obscurity. So the past will be super-abundant, but increasingly over-written and re-written. Its shape will keep changing. In the 80s, things like minimal synth and Italo-disco didn’t really exist, as concepts and areas of music that the majority of music fans knew about. Now they are actually entities on the historical landscape. This kind of adjustment of the canon has always happened. Figures that were central in their own era fade away, and others that were less prominent become in retrospect much more crucial than they appeared to people at the time. But it happened slowly, in a much organic way, and in a way that actually spoke of changes in the present: the past as a mirror to the present’s concerns and outlook. But now there are almost vested interests behind this kind of frantic rewriting and over-writing of history. There are little industries of reissuing, documentary-making, and so forth, on the look-out for stuff that’s been neglected.

The other thing about the popcult (and unpopcult) archaeological frenzy is that it has a tendency to saturate these works and artists from the past with information that is oddly constraining in terms of their ongoing cultural life. They become fixed.

For me as a historian, which is what I am now primarily, it’s important to try to recreate what people felt at the time and the limits of what they knew. Most people buying a Bowie album in his 70s prime, or Joy Division’s Closer when it came out, didn’t know all the personal biographical stuff informing it, or all the kind of esoteric allusions that limn a record like, say, Station to Station. They didn’t have any way of knowing these things then - like for instance, with Ian Curtis, we just didn’t know about his wife, his mistress, or even his epilepsy. That wasn’t the meaning of the music. The suicide came out of the blue and seemed to be a product of the intensity of the lyrics and the unforgiving, bleak worldview. Unfortunately because of his widow’s memoir, and the movie Control, all that personal stuff has now become the meaning, in a quite reductive way. What the historian or dedicated fan-blogger who does bring in all those references and biographical correlates into their analysis does, is actually a kind of anachronism or hindsight-wise distortion of how these records were received and what their significance was.

But equally, it’s a moot point whether we can ever truly know the past. We are always harnessing it for our current purposes, recruiting to a contemporary agenda. It is a mirror for our narcissism, our obsessions and anxieties.

#Simon Reynolds #Hauntology

0 notes

yellow-yarrow · 1 year

Text

they should invent a philosophical writing style thats not boring or incredibly hard to understand

#thinking about reading lyotard again and also delueze but im not smart enough to get it #downloaded the ccru writings only because of mark fisher and jesus christ..jesse what the fuck are you talking about #well i mean its more like esoteric ramblings than philosohphy #still i find it really interesting #i need to read anto-oedipus to understand libidinal economy better so i can finally make that d.e. post

8 notes · View notes

themovieblogonline · 1 year

Text

Al Pacino Turned Down Han Solo As Star Wars

Could you imagine an Al Pacino Han Solo? Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon that has had a profound impact on American culture since its debut in 1977. Al Pacino was a fresh faced force in Hollywood in the late 70s. The epic space opera created by George Lucas has not only captivated audiences worldwide but has also influenced and inspired numerous aspects of American society. The Star Wars franchise has become deeply ingrained in popular culture, with references and merchandise appearing everywhere from TV shows to Halloween costumes. The iconic lightsaber, Darth Vader's mask, and Chewbacca's roar are just a few examples of the franchise's cultural impact. One important aspect of the franchise could have been very different if actor Al Pacino made a different decision early in his career. Yes, Pacino almost joined Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, and Peter Mayhew in a galaxy far, far away as the rogue smuggler, Han Solo. The 82-year-old actor was discussing his lengthy career during a talk at The 92nd Street Y in New York on Wednesday when he recalled his brush with "Star Wars" (via Variety). He explained that he was offered so many projects at the time because he was the "new kid on the block." Pacino said: "Well, I turned down 'Star Wars.' When I first came up, I was the new kid on the block... you know what happens when you first become famous. It's like, 'Give it to Al.' They'd give me Queen Elizabeth to play." He went on to say that he passed on "Star Wars" because he didn't understand it, although he didn't say what specifically confused him about the script. He then joked that because he didn't play Han Solo, it led to stardom for Harrison Ford. The star said: "They gave me a script called 'Star Wars.' They offered me so much money. I don't understand it. I read it. So I said I couldn't do it. I gave Harrison Ford a career." The idea of Al Pacino playing Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise is incredibly fascinating. One can only imagine the intensity and raw energy that he would have brought to the role. It is fascinating to consider how his portrayal of Han Solo would have influenced the character's trajectory and the franchise's direction as a whole. Al Pacino has always been known for his dynamic performances and his ability to bring complex characters to life. From his iconic role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather to his portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface, Al Pacino has consistently delivered some of the most memorable performances in film history. His charisma, intensity, and natural acting ability make him an ideal choice for any role he takes on, including that of Han Solo. If Al Pacino had been cast as Han Solo, it is certain that the character would have been imbued with a different energy and sensibility. The character's witty one-liners and cocky swagger would have taken on a different dimension, and it would have been fascinating to see how this would have influenced the franchise's trajectory. The idea of Al Pacino playing Han Solo is intriguing. It is one of those "what if" scenarios that will continue to spark the imagination of Star Wars fans for years to come. Al Pacino's dynamic acting abilities, combined with his undeniable on-screen charisma, would undoubtedly have resulted in a memorable portrayal of the beloved character. It is truly a shame that this casting never came to fruition, but it is always interesting to speculate on what could have been. Read the full article

0 notes

kauzekapp · 1 year

Text

idea

I want to take the opportunity of this first blog post to portray a bit who I am and what my research is about. Additionally, I want to talk about my inspirations and be, to a certain degree, as transparent as I can be.

Much inspired by the blogs of many institutes (especially those on hypotheses.org), I felt like it would be wasteful to not document my PhD progress. Perhaps, this blog inspires peers to do the same. Networking is one of the primary functions of this blog. Much of academia is, is it not? What institute are you affiliated with? At what university are you working? Who is your advisor, what summer school have you done, how many articles have you published, what are they about, and so on and so forth. This is something I have to get used to, and, frankly, not much to my liking. I want to read, research, teach, and write.

Research and teach especially. In the upcoming winter semester, I will hold an introductory class on literary theory. A vast field, I know. That’s what makes it interesting. Every time I think I know my way around the theory ocean, I find something that pulls me back to the shore. Documenting that process is thus also a function of this blog.

Speaking of functions, I am currently learning how to code. Python, to be precise. My thesis’ methodology is distant reading, a term coined by literary scholar Franco Moretti. As the name suggests, it is an antagonism to close reading. Essentially, my corpus (contemporary Luxembourgish novels) are analyzed with the help of computational methods. In the distance then I might find new information during analysis.

Here, let me create a metaphor: imagine a beetle. Good, let’s call him Gregor. Gregor looks at a tree. Of course, because Gregor is close to the floor, Gregor can recognize and study the trunk and roots and fallen leaves in detail. However, Gregor only sees part of the trunk and roots. He does not know what the other side of the tree looks like. Let’s imagine a jackdaw. Its name is Kavka. Kavka is flying above the tree. Kavka sees the leaves, the branches, the fruits, and he also sees every side of the trunk and roots, even Gregor. Sure, Kavka can’t decipher everything in detail either, but Kavka sees a lot more. Gregor does close reading. Kavka does distant reading. It is qualitative research vs quantitative research. Although both are not mutually exclusive.

The Kafka references too are part of my thesis. Distant reading is, technically, part of the comparative field of world literature. Luxembourgish literature, on the other hand, is a small literature. I therefore must work out a sound argument why the intersection of both would benefit my research, as well as add to both fields of study. Kafka is involved here because of his concept of minor literature. I have yet to figure out what my opinion about minor literature is. What I know at the moment, is that I have to kill Kafka, in a Barthian sense, naturally. Don’t worry, I admire Kafka.

I also admire Mark Fisher. Mark Fisher is mostly known for his book Capitalist Realism (2009). But Fisher also had an undeniable, prominent presence in the blog-o-sphere with his influential blog K-Punk. This blog is much inspired by his writing style and his illustrative way of giving examples, as well as reading society – be it culturally, socially, or politically. I am not saying I have his talent. On the contrary, my lack thereof suggests a goal which I have to strive for.

Well, enough for today.

#phd diary #small literature #world literature #literary theory #kafka #close reading #distant reading #luxembourg

1 note · View note

muschiosa2 · 2 years

Text

“Is There No Time?” A Conversation with Mark Fisher

LEIGH CLAIRE LA BERGE

I met Mark Fisher some years after Alison Shonkwiler and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to include his work in our edited volume, itself a very Fisher-derived project, Reading Capitalist Realism (Iowa, 2014). I was in Cambridge, England at a conference on aesthetics and politics and Mark had come down for the day from London. This was the spring of 2016. In the United States, the presidential primaries were in full swing and, following the logic of American cultural imperialism, they were the talk of, well, the storied dining halls of the University of Cambridge. Like many progressive and Leftist onlookers, both in the United States and abroad, Mark was particularly excited about the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Could it be? He wondered. Was it possible?

I said I thought it was doubtful. Not because, I, the native informant, explained Bernie didn’t have popular support. I was sure then, and remain so now, that many of Bernie’s ideas were quite popular and would be broadly endorsed were they ever to see the light of day. But, of course, voting in the United States is its own labyrinthine procedure. Observers outside the country rarely understand this; indeed, observers inside the country struggle with it, too. Every state, and we have 50, has its own voting rules. Primary elections, as opposed to general, elections have their own rules. Votes don’t count equally. Before the primary election even started, a substantial minority of super delegates—remember those? Mostly lobbyists who buy seats in the upper echelons of the Democratic party—had already pledged their support for Hillary. Then you have to find your polling station. It may have moved without notification, as mine did that year. You may not be registered to vote. Even if you are registered, it still might not work. Technical issues, voting irregularities. And this is only the primary! In the general election, the difficulties expand considerably, as people of color are regularly “scrubbed,” or removed, from voting lists. The more conservative the state, the less likely people of color will be able to vote. Formerly or currently incarcerated people can’t vote. Identification requirements change. With a system like this, the philosopher Dehlia Hannah once said, you don’t need a conspiracy.1

Mark looked amazed. “The thing is,” he said, “there is no time. That’s how they get you.” When he said that, I understood it in response to my explication of American voting impasses. And it’s true: it does take time to vote. It takes energy. It takes frustration. And it still doesn’t work. But that’s not all he meant. He hoped to indicate, too, an attenuation of time as possibility, time as community, time as both a feeling of access to the present—to respond, organize, and critique—as well as access to the past, to understand history. Likewise, time forms our conduit to the future and in it we might plan how things could be different. Of course, one thinks of Marx’s famous line from The Germany Ideology as perhaps the ur-ideal of how “having time” might take a social form:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.2

Mark did function in various capacities: teacher, critic, editor, blogger (back when that was a term), academic, theorist. But perhaps better he occupied a role increasingly needed and uncommon on the Left: that of public intellectual. And I don’t mean, it must be said, liberal intellectual. We do have plenty of those, and their thoughts occupy the pages of The Nation, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among others. Mark’s critical interests were not directed toward carbon credits or public-private partnerships; he was engaged in systemic and structural criticism of our present. There was another distinguishing difference of Mark’s critical production: not only was he a public intellectual of the Left, but his subject area was, of course popular culture, particularly music — a “post-rave John Berger” he was once called by Simon Reynolds.3 We might also call him a pre-Facebook internet critic.

What I mean with that comment is that, in retrospect, Mark’s editorial work and organizational work was at least as important as his theoretical work. To be a public intellectual means not only that one’s work circulates in public; it means now, and probably always has meant, rather, that one creates publics for one’s own work as well as the work of others to circulate in. Publics do not come to us pre-formed; the work of the intellectual is thus not to curate but to cultivate. Mark of course cultivated critique after critique and discursive space after discursive space from the consumerist effluvia in which we, the “consumer-spectator,” to use his term, find ourselves always-already immersed.

Rereading Capitalist Realism some years after its publication is then to be reminded, almost randomly it feels, of some of the more idiosyncratic content that continues to attest to the truth of Deleuze and Guattari’s famous claim that capitalism is a “motley painting of everything that has ever been believed.”4 They meant ideology, but this haunting of the discarded past permeates popular culture as well. As I re-read Mark’s book in preparation for this dossier, I can honestly say that I had not thought of Kurt Cobain or Nirvana once since, well, I last read the book. The re-emergence and stabilization of the very effluvia that destroys history is one of the risks inherent in the kind of methodology that Mark pursued. Now, again, I’m thinking about Nirvana. Object as symptom, symptom as readable, readable object as potentially utopian object.

We know this method, of course; it seems a mix of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, the former provides the site for periodization; the latter offers the introduction of subject “supposed to” do any number of things: know, recycle, consume, experience anxiety and/or depression. Any account of Mark’s legacy, of course, must grapple with this question: does the methodology work? Is its critical apparatus realized? Mark’s gambit inCapitalist Realism was that, as suffocating and penetrating as the real was – presented by Jameson in his 1984 essay, “Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” – things have now gotten worse. That ethical inflection is not presented as such, of course. Rather it is presented as a narrative of an expanding capitalism that, somehow, always manages to be a little more totalizing.

For me, that argument has never been persuasive. It wasn’t when Jameson made it, and it wasn’t when Mark updated it. Jameson had already said, as Alison Shonkwiler and I noted in our own introduction to Reading Capitalist Realism, that “those precapitalist enclaves of nature and the unconscious” have now, too, entered into circuits of production and reproduction. That would seem to be all of it, right? No more time, no more nature, no more unconscious. Mark would then add that the future, too, had been colonized by capital. Thus, citing Jameson and Žižek, he recycles the line that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Mark qualifies the sentiment by noting that “it is now impossible to even imagine a coherent alternative,” to such a state of affairs (2, italics mine.). In the postmodern 1980s, he tells us, “there were still, at least in name, political alternatives to capitalism” (7). Even as Mark does provide more specificity of social texture than Jameson, for example his discussions of higher education in the UK, he too does endorse an over-arching narrative of totalizing decline.

I see in this claim, however, a foreshortening not of the object of criticism, i.e., capitalism, but rather a foreshortening of criticism itself. This kind of argument confuses registers of historical time, narrative time, and argumentative sequence. It all too easily becomes yet another sacrifice on the altar of Leftist melancholia, Walter Benjamin’s well-known worry that an over-attachment to various forms of Leftist impossibility, as well as the pleasure sustained from the critique of them, may assume the place of the political and critical operation itself. Perhaps more to the point is Benjamin’s trenchant if unheeded caution in The Arcades Project that: “There has never been an epoch that did not feel itself to be ‘modern’ in the sense of eccentric, and did not believe itself to be standing directly before the abyss.”5 There is little currency to be found critically in attempting to supersede another epoch’s abyss; all abysses are abysmal. More interesting, I think, remains the catalytic force through which multiple registers of the present are culled together and juxtaposed. And that, in its best moments, is what Capitalist Realism does.

Why has this book endured? Looking back, one thing we can certainly say about Mark’s book is that it’s short. I mean that as a compliment. It’s easy to read, and it has circulated with ease across multiple continents and locations. We might encounter it at a museum, a gallery, an activist space, a community bookstore. And it uses a sonic and felicitous term, capitalist realism, to tell us directly something that many of us already know, or already think we know, even if we’re not sure how or why we know it. Namely, that what is real is always pre-selected, thus it is realism, and that the social forces doing the selecting hope that the selecting itself will be a site of capitalization, that they will engender and re-engender an object and subject of capital. Thus, it is capitalist realism. It hardly matters that the term wasn’t Mark’s originally; it became his.

What kind of book is Capitalist Realism?Perhaps the historian of science Lorraine Daston and the literary critic Sharon Marcus might provide a clue. They have recently introduced the idea of the “undead text,” which they define as a text whose claims resonate beyond its autochthonous discipline — that may even have become outdated in its original disciplinary setting — yet continues to live a transdisciplinary life.6 Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one such example, they suggest. Kuhn’s book is short, essayistic, lacking in long scholarly engagements as often found in cumbersome footnotes; in its first printing, it even lacked an index. An undead text seems in retrospect to be oriented around a single claim, a big claim, one that often resonates in a single phrase. Kuhn offered “the paradigm shift” to explain how scientific knowledge is structured historically. Benedict Anderson, another of their examples, offered the “imagined community.” Simone de Beauvoir suggested that women were “the second sex,” yet noted that “one is not born but becomes a woman.”7

It seems to me now that Capitalist Realism might very well join this august pantheon of undead texts. In what discipline should we place Mark’s book? Cultural Studies? Media Studies? Literature? Film Studies? A cursory glance around the internet shows it appearing on courses in each of these disciplines. In fact, I located it on a political science syllabus as well. Indeed, I actually found a class simply called “Capitalist Realism.” It seems to have many homes. But it could also have no homes. This is the risk and the pleasure of making the big claim, of generalizing, of refusing the genres of so much academic writing and then, of course, of refusing the genres that separate our own habits of thought, otherwise known as academic disciplines. These habits Mark refused, and we are all better for it.

But of course, Mark was not simply struggling against history even though, as Jameson has said, “history puts its worse foot forward.” He was also fighting the feeling that contemporary history generates in so many of us, those who intercept its worse foot. We, or at least I, can’t know the vicissitudes of his depression, but, his work encouraged us to consider the fact that there is certainly something deeply impersonal, un-individual, and deeply uninteresting about depression. And this, I think, relates to time. Depression often generates the feeling of an endless time that is accompanied by an acute enervation. When will this feeling dissipate? Hopefully in the future. But there is no future as depressive time doesn’t seem to advance; it stalls. In the midst of a depression, there is no access to a reparative past nor is there the fantasy of a reparative future. But capitalism has a cure for that. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the real of the capitalist realist than the doctor who shows up to cure the pain, for a price, of course.

One of our most-cited popular (non-medical) studies of depression, namely Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon, is deserving of more study in this regard.8 The author relates his own struggles with severe depression and shows us—indeed tells us—again and again, that money saved him. Fittingly, Solomon’s father was the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company that distributed, among other things, anti-depressants. Solomon’s Wikipedia page is instructive:

Solomon is the oldest son of Carolyn Bower Solomon and Howard Solomon, former chairman of Forest Laboratories and founder of Hildred Capital Partners; he is brother to David Solomon, also of Hildred Capital Partners. Solomon’s subsequent depression, eventually managed with psychotherapy and antidepressant medications, inspired his father to secure FDA approval to market citalopram (Celexa) in the United States.9

As a result of his best-selling and prize-winning book, Solomon became and continues to be a kind of progressive public intellectual who claims, among other things, that depression is a real disease, it is not the subject’s “fault,” and that, with the proper medical treatment, it can be managed. More can and should be written about this liberal narrative of depression. I introduce it here to demonstrate a certain possibility and freedom to be found in Mark’s own writings about depression and to show, again, that it is possible to cleave the boundaries of capitalist realism.

Echoing what he had written in Capitalist Realism,Mark noted in The Guardianthat “depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities. We need to reverse the privatization of stress and recognise that mental health is a political issue.”10 He there cited the late David Smail who he called a “radical therapist” and who was part of the anti-psychiatry movement.

Smail talked of friendship and support as the mechanism for managing depression. He himself was an anti-establishment thinker. But we need not be too quick to condemn the master. In fact, Freud himself once said, in a letter to Karl Jung, that “psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.” But love takes time and, as we all know, time is money.

Dehlia Hannah, in conversation with the author, March 19, 2013.

Karl Marx and Friedrich, The German Ideology. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

Simon Reynolds, “Mark Fisher’s k-punk blogs Were Required Reading for a Generation,” The Guardian,Guardian News and Media(18 Jan. 2017). www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/٢٠١٧/jan/١٨/mark-fisher-k-punk-blogs-did-٤٨-politics

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1994) 34.

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000) 545.

“Undead Texts: Grand Narratives and the History of the Human Sciences,” Columbia Department of English and Comparative Literature (Accessed November 2018).www.english.columbia.edu/events/undead-texts-grand-narratives-and-history-human-sciences

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex(New York: Vintage, 1973) 301.

Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

“Andrew Solomon,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation (28 Nov. 2019). www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Solomon

Mark Fisher, “Why Mental Health is a Political Issue,” The Guardian,Guardian News and Media (16 July 2012). www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental-health-political-issue

0 notes

hauntinglyhumorous · 2 years

Text

Week 1 and 2 Reflection

What is Hauntology? When I was enrolled in the class I genuinely misunderstood what Hauntology originally was. I assumed it would be more about death, dying, ghosts, etc. I was happily surprised when I learned the actual context of the word. It’s more about the idea that while we look forward to the future and remember the past, we are still haunted by “lost” futures. I think that idea is so damn interesting. I think it’s so interesting because it is so true. In the article “What is Hauntology?” Mark Fisher writes, “Haunting can be seen as intrinsically resistant to the contraction and homogenization of time and space. It happens when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time”. He then proceeds to mention how this idea is seen in the movie The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. I liked this example in his essay due to the fact that while the reading itself is dense, I can easily understand what he means by referencing the movie. In the whole movie, Jack Torrence is haunted by the hotel and is being controlled by it to relive the past. It’s a beautiful way to view the film and made me want to rewatch it to see how my viewing may be changed.

CCK Philosophy on Youtube has the video, Hauntology, Lost Futures, and 80’s Nostalgia which I genuinely think has been my favorite video I’ve seen in a while. He opened the video with a reference to the Fallout video game franchise which I absolutely adore. Fallout is all about retrofuturism is like the future that we dreamed of in the past (like in the 50s). But it’s also all about a lost future. The whole plot of Fallout is that nuclear fallout happens in the post-war 50s causing the future of the world to be this retro punk world. It is by far the most interesting video game franchise in my mind, full of ideas of what the future could have been, had the world been lost to nuclear bombs (which was a VERY real threat in the 50s).

In closing, CCK Philosophy said a quote that I really loved and resonated with, “We never encounter things as fully present. We can only make sense of any present moment by comparing it to the past”. Damn. It’s sad how really fucking true that is.

0 notes

jesse-eisenberg-interview · 13 years

Text

Facing Jesse Eisenberg

by michael ventre | February 23, 2011

Although it would be difficult to match Facebook’s membership count of more than 500 million, the movie—directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin—seems to have earned almost as many admirers, and Eisenberg has received widespread praise, including a Golden Globe nod, for his captivating portrayal of the Facebook impresario. As the nominations started piling up for The Social Network, we caught up with Eisenberg to discuss the film, his life since it hit the big screen and his own computer skills. How did you first hear about Facebook? JESSE EISENBERG: My cousin Eric Fisher told me about the site. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, and he was in computer science and involved in building websites. He is incredibly creative, and he was completely in awe of it. There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not the film is an accurate portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. Do you feel it was? JE: It’s so hard to say. What I know about Mark Zuckerberg is what everybody else knows about him, and that is only what has been made public. I never met him. We heard early on Facebook didn’t approve or wasn’t involved, so it became impossible to meet him. How did you go about researching your character? JE: Mark wrote his college essay about fencing. I took some fencing lessons because I noticed he has a uniquely straight posture I don’t have. When I read he was a fencer, I thought his posture might be attributed to that. But it was more interesting to me what that meant psychologically—the competition, what dangers there are [with fencing].

In preparing for the role, you listened to Zuckerberg’s voice on your iPod while driving to work. Why? JE: I got the recordings from 链接 and put his interviews into MP3s. I listened to them so I could get into the spirit of what that person would be going through, what the pressure of being on 60 Minutes was like. Have you encountered any negative fallout from people who see the film and then associate you with the character? JE: My mother saw it, and she said her reaction was that she wanted to slap me and then hug me. That seems to be the common reaction from people over 25. It seems those under 25 see Mark as a hero.

What do you have in common with the character you played? JE: We are both socially uncomfortable. There is also the fact that when something bad happens in our lives, instead of lashing out and blaming others, we become creative. I’m most creative when I’ve been embarrassed or rejected. Will this be your first time making the rounds of award shows? JE: I went to two award shows before—the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the National Board of Review Awards—for The Squid and the Whale. It’s nerve-wracking. I didn’t want to win because I don’t like public speaking. Does the buzz surrounding the film and the possibility of winning awards make you nervous? JE: It’s been impossible for me to figure out the appropriate response to all this because I have nothing to relate it to. It’s uncomfortable to receive attention. What are you looking forward to about the awards season? JE: Every time I’ve worked with people on a movie, you spend two months with them and then you tend not to see most of them again. So I look forward to seeing the people from this movie again. It’s kind of a celebration of the experience you had together. Are you on Facebook? JE: I never use it. I’m not on it. Somebody told me there’s a page up. It’s not actually me. In The Social Network,��you worked with two of the most intense individuals in Hollywood, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. What was that experience like? JE: David Fincher is known for being very meticulous, and he is. It was a great blessing. He believes in doing scenes as many times as it takes. I’ve been a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin’s work for many years. It was a great honor to play a character he created who was so endlessly fascinating to me. Aaron Sorkin is known for his rapid-fire dialogue. Was it a challenge to deliver those lines? JE: In my experience, the only time dialogue is challenging is when it doesn’t match the character. That was never the case with this script. Obviously, Zuckerberg is a computer whiz. How would you rate your computer skills? JE: Very average. I just don’t have an interest in learning about computers beyond what I need to know. Facebook changed Zuckerberg’s life. How has The Social Network changed yours? JE: I don’t really know yet. I’m just excited about being in quality projects that I like and getting the chance to play interesting characters like this one.

SOURCE

#jesse eisenberg #2011 #the social network

0 notes

hs-is-loml · 3 years

Text

all works are listed below!

who I've written for as of 12/03/2023 are: owen joyner, harry styles, conrad fisher, daemon targaryen, aemond targaryen, aegon ii targaryen, xavier thorpe, rafe cameron, charles leclerc, carlos sainz jr, coriolanus snow, and tom blyth.

my favorites are marked with ꨄ

one-shots

jealousy

summary: owen’s best friend (reader) comes to surprise owen in vancouver. owen gets jealous that you text charlie and you’re ignoring him.

the truth always comes out

summary: owen and his secret girlfriend always have to sneak around on set. who knew keeping a secret relationship was hard not mention each other had separate love interests in the show. maybe it slowly becomes too much for either of them. let’s see who breaks first.

being best friends with owen.

summary: this is what i think being best friends with mr. owen patrick joyner would be. lowkey bff to something more.

you don’t need me anymore

summary: you’re owen’s best friend/girlfriend from oklahoma. you flew out to meet the cast in the beginning of shooting. but now it’s the last few weeks. you coming to visit owen but notice how different he’s gotten. and an extra of dirty candy keeps flirting with him. lots of dialogue

baking with owen

summary: blurb! filming for a video with owen and you baking cookie or at least trying to. and how it would most likely turn out.

blurb

grammy nominated boyfriend. ꨄ

summary: you're at harry's side during his performance at the grammy's.

multi-part story

isn't the same without you. (part one)

for you, always. (part two) [save yourself a little heart ache of me not finishing this story because school started and stop here]

flashbacks of you. (part three)

making you blush. (part four)

summary: another summer at Cousins isn't what you expected it to turn out to be. you've spent every summer there with your family and the Fishers. you didn't expect some feelings to unravel and reveal themselves by the start of it. (ONHOLD)

one-shots

i've never stopped.

summary: coming back to Cousins for the summer after skipping out last year after a rough breakup with your ex-boyfriend, conrad fisher. you hoped that maybe both he and his family had forgotten about you, but it seems like you’re in for a treat.

no shame. ꨄ

summary: returning back to Cousins felt different compared to all the other years. everything around you felt like it was changing but maybe it was for the better.

two-part story

baby honey (part one)

only angel. (part two)

summary: you and conrad have a complicated relationship but that doesn’t stop him from keeping you on his mind. But will you forgive him after what happened?

one shot

till the end of time.

summary: as times change you are closer to being wed off to another, and rising concerns between you and your beloved appear. will you end up together in the end?

two-part story

bound. ꨄ

as i am yours.

summary: you didn't realize when you stood beside aemond during the night when he lost his eye would solidify your stance in the war. (both could be read as stand-alone)

multi-part series (ongoing)

love looks good on you.

series masterlist.

summary: aegon ii targaryen and viserra velaryon's souls are intertwined. will they be able to prevent the tragic ending of the house of targaryen? or will they fall at the pressures of it all?

NO LONGER WRITING FOR THIS CHARACTER

blurbs

idiot.

summary: maybe you're a little frustrated that xavier found so much interest in wednesday addams all of the sudden.

don't make me say it again.

summary: xavier is close to snapping when you don't realize what he has been hinting at.

avoid.

summary: after thinking about something bianca said to you a few days ago, you started to create a small distance from your boyfriend. which of course he noticed.

salt in the wound.

summary: rumors get in between xavier and you. people always say don't try to save a sinking ship. maybe you should listen to them.

one-shot

frustrations lead to confessions. ꨄ

summary: maybe all you needed was a little help to make xavier realize his feelings for you or when both of you are jealous and it leads to more

the way i love you. ꨄ

summary: xavier and you are weird pair of "best friends" always reaching towards something more, but neither having the guts to talk about it so plainly, until now.

two part story

defending.

in defense. (SMUT)

summary: wednesday tells you about her suspicions about xavier but you come to his defense and are determined to find proof to prove her wrong. in part two xavier thanks you in more ways than one.

blurb

remember that.

summary: rule one don't mention pogues around rafe. rule two never mention about quitting on him.

social media au

ever letting go. ꨄ

summary: while the f1 couples are slowly breaking up, fans are stressed and try to protect the last ferrari wag standing.

married to who. ꨄ

summary: y/n and her husband have been so private that fans would've never thought she was married to an F1 driver of all people or when fans are starting to make connections and figure out who y/n's husband is

one-shot

you know this.

summary: moments of charles and reader throughout the years that show they are so obviously meant for each other so carlos gives them a small push. (they are basically together but without the title...)

social media au

there's no way. ꨄ

summary: carlos and you have been best friends since childhood but everyone can tell you're something more especially the fans. or when carlos and you are together but try to pass it off as best friends until more people catch on

one-shot

another pawn in your game.

summary: you felt betrayed by coriolanus and lucy gray's act in the capitol zoo. or coriolanus coaxes you into thinking what he did was okay.

social media au

still love him more. ꨄ

summary: some fans can't get over your past relationship with a certain famous ferrari driver while others are obsessed with your new boyfriend.

2K notes · View notes