One theme that runs through Fisher’s writing is the individualization and depoliticization of mental health. The utility of individualizing problems, as neoliberalism does, is to prevent us from identifying and pursuing those solutions - chiefly because the solutions will inevitably involve undermining the profits and redistributing the wealth of the capitalist elites who run society and want to keep it that way. They therefore must have collective political and economic solutions. There is a society beyond individuals - and, as a corollary point, the setbacks and catastrophes sustained by individuals usually have collective political and economic causes. “There is no such thing as society.” Fisher knew otherwise. “There are individual men and women and there are families,” said Margaret Thatcher. Together they constitute a vital perspective for anyone who seeks to contribute their energy to the struggle against capitalism and for socialism. Three major themes emerge in his political writing, each a refutation of some common lie or a refusal of some sham consensus: society exists, capitalism is not forever, and the Left must fight to win. I read it the way I imagine it’s meant to be read: incompletely, out of order, in fits and starts.
But his work contains blueprints for a new generation of socialists, tens of thousands of whom have been energized - in the US, in his native UK, and around the world - since his suicide in January 2017.Ī new collection of Fisher’s k-punk essays from Repeater Books clocks in at over eight hundred pages, including his book reviews, film reviews, political writings, music reviews, interviews, and other assorted essays. That vision was of a global society dominated by capital, bludgeoned by neoliberalism, but straining nonetheless, weakly but perceptibly, for revolution.įisher didn’t live to see anything like a revolution. It was his vision of the world, intricate but discrete, which bundled all his observations together into a coherent whole. Ballard, Jurassic Park and Vogue photo-shoots, Batman and Lenin, financial collapse and dance music.īut what made him such a valuable cultural critic wasn’t his dazzling breadth of commentary. On any given day you could log onto his blog k-punk and read about Sigmund Freud and J. Mark Fisher was prolific, piercing, witty, humane, and omnivorous. A review of k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), edited by Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018)
0 kommentar(er)
