Désirs postcapitalistes

by Mark Fisher, Louis Morelle (Translator)

Negli ultimi mesi del 2016, poco prima di togliersi la vita, Mark Fisher tenne una serie di lezioni e conferenze alla Goldsmiths University di Londra, esponendo i tratti essenziali di un nuovo progetto che la morte avrebbe lasciato incompiuto.

Prendendo le mosse da un quesito fondamentale - vogliamo sul serio ciò che sosteniamo di volere? - Fisher esplora il rapporto tra desiderio e capitalismo, e si domanda quali nuove forme di desiderio sia ancora possibile ricavare dal passato, dal presente e dal futuro. Dallo sviluppo e fallimento della controcultura negli anni Settanta all'elaborazione di una linea di pensiero sempre più fondata su quello che è ormai diventato un termine di uso quasi comune - l'accelerazionismo progressista - le lezioni di Fisher offrono un'occasione preziosa per riflettere sull'opportunità di approdare a nuove forme di coscienza e consapevolezza, e sulle implicazioni culturali e politiche che ne conseguirebbero.

Un volume indispensabile per comprendere quali sarebbero state le nuove direttrici che il pensiero di Fisher avrebbe sviluppato, inoltrandosi nei territori della psichedelia e spaziando tra sociologia e musica, filosofia, arte e letteratura.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, Economics, Sociology, Essays

400 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

Mark Fisher (1968 – 2017) was a co-founder of Zero Books and Repeater Books. His blog, k-punk, defined critical writing for a generation. He wrote three books, Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life and The Weird and the Eerie, and was a Visiting Fellow in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished, in the haste of catching trains and flights, trapped in the liminal space of stations and airports, even more eerie in the dismal light of pandemic regulations. That Fisher is as captivating a teacher as he was a brilliant writer, did come as a surprise, but not his transparent ability to blend theories and ideas with real life. Mark Fisher was a believer in a way out of the nightmarish spiral of capitalism right until the very end, and this comes across in his brilliant lectures. As with his writings, the air of sympathy, of kindness, of caring for something greater and beyond, is always present. I was instantly fascinated by his proposed syllabus and plans for the entire course, but of course we were denied the pleasure of watching how Fisher would conclude his intimate exploration of libidinal desire and how we can reclaim and reshape it to set the world free.

This book is immensely precious. It is a worthy companion to Fisher's published work as one of the influential cultural critics and thinkers in our time, and for the countless people he has inspired, a bittersweet trail of his ideas and theoretical aspirations, before he left us.

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Fisher is my great discovery 2021. I know 100 years after everyone else. Anyway, somehow I came across his 2009 book Capitalist Realism and then went down the Mark Fisher rabbit hole and found out that some of his former students/ colleagues just published a collection of transcripts from Mark Fisher's final series of lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London, in late 2016 called “Postcapitalist Desire” (Repeater, 2021).  It also shows what an amazing lecturer he must have been.
 
Within the Marxist spectrum of preferences and interests, I am definitely a lot more on the economic (rather than the cultural) end of thing and enjoyed this series of lectures on the relationship between desire and capitalism. This  relationship is also one of the things that really stuck with me wheni I read Fisher’s Capitalist Realism "To reclaim real political agency means first of all accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital".
 
The five lectures start off with covering various approaches to post-capitalism from counterculture in the 1970s to the ongoing left-accelerationist line of thinking (also something I haven’t quite fully conceptualized as such). Of course it’s infused with Fisher’s own thinking.  I haven’t read the key authors of most of the lectures, mainly because I find Lukács and Lyotard unreadable also because I don’t really know much (aka nothing) about Freud and Lacan (I think I need a Lacanian boyfriend for a while to walk me through all of those difficult texts before I switch back to the traditional Marxist. Also not a very feminist statement, I know. lol.). There are tons of thoughts about approaches to moving beyond capitalism, including thoughts about potential ‘post scarcity’ and post work society (some of the Paul Mason stuff).
 
What I found politically quite interesting (this is not the main point of the lectures but something I found interesting) is the return of “class” in the 21st century but in a way that serves the right rather the left, a return in the form of an identitatrian resentment. In late capitalism, ‘the poor’ identify with the rich and resent the professional class ‘liberal elites’ (reminds me of much in Ehrenreich’s must read on the professional middle class PMC), Fisher describes this as a result of the 1970s and onward identitarian capture of class which was necessary to neutralize class consciousness (in Fordism). So this is something I am going to follow up on.
 
I know this reads quite random but this is exactly how read these five lectures, somehow part of a coherent reading on post-capitalism (think Fisher’s main line of capitalist realism, ie that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism) but then I also read each lecture somewhat independently, mainly because I was struggling so much 🤷‍♀️

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read Fisher you'll mostly already know what you'll be getting here - A moving, creative critique of post-Fordist, neoliberal capitalism and the systemic ways it shuts down our beliefs in any possible alternatives. However, these last lectures of Fisher do seem to strike a more optimistic chord of possibility than his other writings. How sadly ironic given his end...

Definitely a springboard for your mind though as he opens up small gaps of possibility through his reading and presentation of critical texts by others. Certainly created a strong reading list for me.

As I just wrote for my review of Fisher's introduction to his last unfinished work Acid Communism Fisher's project seems very much Walter Benjamin's one of redeeming history through reexamination and bringing it to shine in its relevance for the present. I am also reminded of Thomas Pynchon's most optimistic work Against the Day in which Pynchon seems to posit a time in which everything could have gone another, less malevolent, direction.

[Andrew]

Who knew I'd be reading lecture notes for fun?

I'm used to a certain tone from Mark Fisher. What I'm not used to is (although it's hardly surprising) an almost-playful classroom demeanor. Fisher welcomes his students into the world of Lukacs, Lyotard, etc., and he almost makes me want to go back to read Lukacs and Lyotard and see if I can see them as anything other than bullshit-spinners.

And then one day, class ended, and it was not to resume. That incompleteness – which I did not know was part of Postcapitalist Desire, until I suddenly found myself confronted with an appendix – adds a whole other tone. Fisher the hauntologist haunts me again.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

a treasure

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The obvious inchoate nature of these lectures leads to a stage direction: [silence]. This volume boasts a dense introduction, one which I frankly found daunting. The lectures however recall the wonderful Foucault Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976.

There is an interesting reading of Marcuse, one both of and beyond the counterculture. There is also more than one vision of Universal Basic Income on display. Alas it didn't appear to be enough to sustain. This is followed by a heartfelt reading of Great Expectations and then attention to Lyotard who's bizarre reading of Marx appeared to be an antipode apart from the Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia project of Deleuze and Guattari.

The playlist at the end from Fisher's blog is an interesting inclusion. I have yet to be thrilled by Fisher's erudition or ideas. This was a pleasant detour despite such.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading the last words Fisher said to his students brought tears to my eyes. But just as he was pessimistic sometimes he also had high hopes. The fact that his students arrived to class even though they knew fisher was dead, started a reading group of the class’ syllabus, and that the group grew bigger than it originally was, is a testament of fisher’s hope in the future. That maybe desire can find its way beyond capitalism and wage labor.

[Ben Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading ideas through the lecture format, with alot of the conversational aspects preserved well by Colquhoun makes it quite exciting to read. Kind of feel like you’re there in a way, I guess. Obviously, Lecture Five is dense as shit, and doesn’t really get any clearer when they discuss it tbh, but I guess it be like that sometimes... I was more excited when Fisher spoke on the political-history side of things, which I hadn’t heard much from him before. The lecture on Jefferson Cowie’s book “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and The Last Days of The Working Class” is real good, and the recurring focus throughout the book on “where we are now” and “what do we do about it” is, if anything, simply helpful. Obviously, in the long shadow of his death, it’s quite sad to read what was meant to come, which was essentially more of the same. But still, definitely worth hearing Fisher this way, through the classroom.

[Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nonostante la presenza ossessiva di scostumatezze postmoderne (Deleuze eccetera eccetera), ti voglio bene. Mark Fisher, io ti amo. Esistono alternative ed esistono domani diversi. Esiste un mondo che dev’essere trasformato.

Rest in Peace <3

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

To what extent is our desire for post-capitalism always already captured and neutralized by capitalism itself? How are we supposed to combat the intensification of desire for consumer goods, funded by credit? p10

Is post-capitalism imaginable? Is it possible to retain some of the libidinal, technological infrastructure of capitalism and move beyond capitalism? p41

The fact is that capitalism- with its tendency to income inequality, information monopolies, and financial power- is running out of steam. It's time to start thinking of something new. p72

This book offers complete transcripts from the first semester of Mark Fisher's graduate seminar, up to the Christmas beak. When class reconvened in January it was all over.

I can hope that there are seminars right now led by his students, (some of whom made this book possible) hopefully with his forthright and open style. It seems we are sorely in need of opportunities for calm discussions. Of course I would have loved to argue with Fisher on a few points of contention. He almost gets my generation right! All told, Fishers work should not be confined to academia.

Not everyone can be in the middle. What are we in the middle of? Because if we're all middle class then, really, there is no such thing as class struggle anymore. p137


4/5 for GR
6/7

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book of transcribed university lectures I've read, followed after Borges' wonderful Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature. Fisher's book is a bit harder because unlike Borges, Fisher wasn't blind, so there are slides you as the reader rarely get to see (they're sometimes summarised in the footnotes). Unlike Borges, Fisher died in the middle of these lectures, so after lecture five it's over, forever, the other ten lectures are now hauntological.

What sets this apart from other non-fiction books: you as the reader are not as well-informed as the students in these lectures. Wonderfully smart people who are steeped in the materials, who've finished the precursor units recently, and who have clearly read the prep material in the syllabus (unicorns!?). For this book to work best you'd best read the syllabus before each week, just like in any other uni course (the syllabus is at the end of the book, for secret reasons).

What sets this course itself apart from most other STEM-y courses is that Fisher is trying to find something together with his students, it's closer to a proper research unit rather than a knowledge-vomit with following regurgitation. There's a rough outline along Marxist literature, Paul Mason, Marcuse, Lukacs, Lyotard, along which Fisher lectures, jokes, laughs, discusses where 'the left' might go after capitalism: postcapitalism, push through capitalism instead of fighting it.

What sets this book apart from other non-fiction books is that there's no 'one message', you get to learn a lot about the current streams of far-left thought around postcapitalism. It's a uni course after all, it's not nicely packed up in a string of arguments, you jump into the deep end of contemporary thought, no swimming vests provided.

It's sad that we lost Fisher. Covid-19 has in some ways broken the old, in other ways shown that the old is not sustainable anymore. A voice showing the way forward is needed.

[Milo Galiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

El Fisher menos gris y más colorido, menos triste y más alegre, menos desolado y más comunitario, menos hombre y más crítico. Curiosamente, el último Fisher.

Los libros de clases recopilatorias siempre me dejan un movimiento visceral incontrolable. No es un libro de tesis. Sí que aprendes mucho de él. Pero lo que más he sacado de este viaje es cómo el espíritu más alegre puede convivir con la descomposición silenciosa; o, quizás, cómo la composición con la vida no debe entenderse como una burda literalidad, sino que la alegría se nos presenta en la despedida, que no en la huida.

[Guillermo Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terminé Postcapitalist Desire de Mark Fisher y todavía le doy vueltas. No es un libro que te deje tranquilo; es de esos que te siguen al día siguiente, mientras pedaleas al trabajo o miras el techo de la sala.

Fisher murió en 2017, y esta edición recoge su último curso. Ahí está, titubeando, dudando, invitando a sus estudiantes a construir respuestas juntos. Esa imagen me hizo pensar en lo que debería ser la educación y rara vez es.

Comentario completo en ninjavolador.com

[putperest · Rating 3 out of 5]

i love it when leftists say "i know nothing about economics" and in the same breath dream about postcapitalist futures.
this lecture affirms three long-held observations:
1-leftism is infinite infantilization, "i deserve to not work, and have endless leisure via UBI, force the productive ones to take care of me."
2-leftism is inherently anhedonic to the point of self-destruction, i cannot keep count of all the depressed / suicidal leftists i know / have read.
3-not even fisher is sure about any of his readings on the titans of poststructualist left, deleuze, guattari, lyotard, young nick land etc - because 90% of it is obscurantist bullshit and academic circle jerk.
that being said, this was very cozy. switching to audio made it feel like a real lecture.

edit: let old nick land reply to fisher: hyperstition.abstractdynamics (dot) org/archives/008891.html

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

even though its just a transcript, reading fisher truly in his element really is special and heartbreaking at the same time. we truly were so lucky to have a thinker as innovative and as deeply empathetic as fisher at the same time as us.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow I really want to know how this would’ve ended. I’m so captured by Fishers intertwining of desire and capitalism- the libidinal economy if you will (I do feel like that could’ve been a game). But overall Fisher was really teeing up this impressive critique of critique - one we still hear pretty often. The only down side would be in order to get the full experience I do think I would’ve had to do all the supplemental reading but unless you’re in grad school who has the time

[˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚IOIZ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

hab nur die hälfte verstanden aber ich vertrau mark fisher blind deswegen weiß ich dass er nur schlaue sachen gesagt hat aber bin trotzdem todtraurig weil er sich geofft hat bevor er die vorlesung über cyber-feminismus halten konnte :-(

[Mazen · Rating 3 out of 5]

كانت بداية معرفتي بمارك فيشر في عام 2017، وذلك من خلال محاضرة كان يلقيها يتحدث فيها عن "إلغاء المستقبل" كتصوُّر يُروَّج من قِبَل المنطق الرأسمالي. للأسف، فارقنا الكاتب في نفس العام نتيجة معاناته من مرض الاكتئاب. ترك فيشر وراءه إرثًا ثريًّا يتضمن مدونة إلكترونية ومحاضرات كثيرة مصوَّرة ومسجلة صوتيًا. يُعتبر مارك فيشر من أبرز المنظِّرين في ما يُعرف باليسار الجديد، الذي يحاول أن ينتهج مسارًا مختلفًا عن اليسار التقليدي المتمثل في الأحزاب الكلاسيكية.

الكتاب الذي ألَّفه فيشر عبارة عن سلسلة محاضرات ألقاها تحت عنوان "رغبة ما بعد رأسمالية". اختار الكاتب هذا العنوان لمحاولة طرح تصوُّر جديد لنظام اجتماعي-اقتصادي بديل للرأسمالية، دون أن يصفه بأنه نظام اشتراكي أو شيوعي، وذلك بسبب ما لحق بهذه المصطلحات من تشويه جرَّاء ارتباطها بالسلطوية أو فشل النماذج السابقة. يرى فيشر أن فشل اليسار في تقديم بديل حقيقي للرأسمالية يعود إلى أن الرأسمالية لم تعد مجرد نظام اقتصادي يستفيد من الواقع، بل أصبحت قوة تشكِّل الواقع نفسه. فالواقع الرأسمالي ألغى أي محاولة، سواء كانت فانتازية أو واقعية، لتخيل شكل جديد للحياة لا يقوم على التراكم والربح القائم على الاستهلاك.

يرى فيشر أن حركة الثقافة المضادة التي انتشرت في الستينيات والسبعينيات كرد فعل على الرأسمالية الكينزية وتواطؤ الاتحاد السوفيتي مع أمريكا بعدم دعم حركات التحرر الوطني في الجنوب، كانت حركة ثورية وتقدمية مقارنة بالأحزاب اليسارية في ذلك الوقت. ففي فرنسا، خرج العمال والطلبة في مظاهرات حاشدة، مكتسبين وعيًا طبقيًّا وثقافيًّا أكثر راديكالية مما كان ينادي به اليسار اللينيني القديم، الذي كان همه الأساسي يتمحور حول السيطرة على الدولة عبر الحزب.

يشير فيشر إلى أن المجتمع الرأسمالي، خاصة في دول الشمال، نجح في إلغاء مفهوم الطبقة واستبدله بهويَّات فرعية. فأصبح الجميع يرغب في تصنيف نفسه على أنه ينتمي إلى الطبقة الوسطى فقط، دون أي انتماءات أخرى. بذلك، تحوَّل المجتمع إلى كتلة متجانسة من الطبقة الوسطى، وفقدت الهويَّات الطبقية التقليدية مكانتها. كما يرى أن اليمين الشعبوي نجح في تجييش الحس الطبقي للجماهير وتوجيهها في الانتخابات، كما يفعل ترامب مثلًا، الذي يخاطب الطبقة العاملة البيضاء في أمريكا ليس لإكسابها وعيًا طبقيًّا، بل لدفعها في اتجاه سياسي معين.

في المحاضرة الرابعة والخامسة، ناقش فيشر الحركات الفكرية التي دمجت أعمال فرويد مع ماركس، وتناول نظرة جان-فرانسوا ليوتار على ما يُعرف بـ"ماركسية الرغبة" وتشيؤ الواقع من قبل المنطق الرأسمالي. يجب الاعتراف بأنني وجدت صعوبة في استيعاب موضوع هاتين المحاضرتين بشكل كامل، وذلك بسبب جهلي بالكتب والنظريات التي تمت مناقشتها خلالهما.

[Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

like LSD, this book is a microscopic droplet containing the only doorway to liberation we'll ever find, no caveats. here we discover Fisher in all his grandeur—a sardonic blogger-philosopher splicing together the Freudian dreamwork of post-Cold War Silicon Valley, the anti-work hyperstitions of the 60s, the current degeneration of intersectional solidarity into false consciousness identitarianisms disarticuled from class, the impending necessity of Universal Basic Income, and the capital-libido meshwork ensuring the sweetness of wage slavery. taken together, we arrive at a wide-ranging corrective to what is meant by "accelerationism," its vision for our future, and how we begin that work.

while this is not an entry level text (the lecturers were indeed intended for Fisher's graduate students) it seems like one of the few written pieces of political salvation for a contemporary left caught between (to be only slightly reductive) rainbow BIPOC reformist capitalism and the romantic "folk politics" of direct action we-showed-up-ism. the book is both a memorial to Fisher as a true fountain of hope and a toolkit for the world we know we deserve. the prerequisites: a few tabs, some friends, Michael Jackson, farming equipment, and AI.

[Sean Quigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the world would be a (slightly) better place if Fisher had lived to complete this seminar and write Acid communism. Anyone who wants to do a reading group through the whole syllabus of this project hmu

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

en tus palabras, mark: no more miserable monday mornings! allá donde estés, gracias

[Nwaf · Rating 3 out of 5]

يناقش الراحل مارك فيشر أعمالًا رئيسية لماركوز وليوتار وغيرهما، مُناقشًا أسباب فشل مُستقبل الاشتراكية في الماضي، وكيف يُمكننا بناء مستقبل اشتراكي جديد انطلاقًا من هذه الأفكار. يستحق هذا الكتاب القراءة سواءً كنتَ اشتراكيًا أو شيوعيًا، أو مُحبًا للواقعية الرأسمالية، أو أي شخص مهتم بالفلسفة في القرنين العشرين والحادي والعشرين.

[Daan Leber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Door de behoorlijk ongeredacteerde transcriptie van de lessenreeks te volgen, wordt je helemaal meegezogen in de Mark Fisher Zone™

Het voortijdig einde triggert nog meer om zelf verder te denken

[Arnau Oriol · Rating 5 out of 5]

no sé perquè no l'havia llegit abans !

[Seppe]

Bijzondere laatste lessenreeks van Fisher in transcripties. Een eerste confrontatie met zijn teksten.

Geeft een verfrissend beeld van waar Fisher mee bezig was. De vraag naar mogelijkheden van een potentieel systeem na kapitalisme, mogelijkheden van links-accelerationisme, en de opvallende verknopingen met verlangen en kapitaal.

Het zijn lezingen in transcriptie, duidelijk met geëngageerde studenten wiens inbreng ertoe doen. Steeds worden teksten gelezen en besproken zoals Libidinale Economie van Lyotard en Eros en Beschaving van Marcuse. Freudiaanse ideeën van verlangen worden daar steeds gekoppeld met (neo-)marxistische opvattingen over kapitaal. Deze thema's zijn ook zaak in het hypothetische post-kapitalisme.

Ben verwonderd hoe Fisher en collega's verder het gedachtengoed van postmodernistische filosofen transformeren naar een invulling in de 21ste eeuw, en ook hoe dit verder zal evolueren binnen cultuurkritiek.

[Luke Charnley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accurately captures the experience of being in a lecture at Goldsmiths, for better or for worse. Digressions, abandoned lines of thought, interruptions are all preserved, but when you get a glimpse of what Fisher was striving towards in these lectures, it all clicks into place. Probably the least essential Fisher book, but still cool.

[Diego Parejo perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que es uno de los libros más emocionales que he leído en tiempo. La cercanía que expresa Mark Fisher con sus estudiantes, las respuestas a medio responder, los argumentos por elaborar. Es otro Fisher, no es un libro de teoría, sino un proceso de construcción de la teoría. ¿Qué hubiera podido salir de este curso inacabado?

[مصطفى الريس · Rating 5 out of 5]

شكرا لتكوين على ترجمة هذا العمل الخالد

[Daeonic]

"Hay alternativas y hay un mañana. Hay un mundo que transformar"

[Floris De Jongh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book presents 5 lectures all centered around the question: (how) is a societal transition beyond capitalism possible? Fisher introduces his series of lectures by showing the case of protests of the Occupy movement— a movement that essentially entails a protest against capitalism. A commenter on the affair locates a curious contradiction in the conduct of these protesters because they were both against capitalism while making use of their Iphones and standing in line for Starbucks. Any left-wing political movement that intends to formulate an alternative to capitalism must, in honesty, come to terms with this split between ethical claims and libidinal desire; between Marx and Freud. The failure to do so will just make the left collapse into a heap of impotent ethical claims that not only conceals the truth about desire but fails to address it. Indeed, capitalist production has a monopoly on our desires (even produces it) which are, as we know since Freud, fundamental to the way in which we act. This of course raises the question of agency; if capitalism is a pervasive sphere that, so to speak, covers everything it comes in contact with, leaving no “outside” from which a counter movement can mobilize, to what extent then do we hold transformative agency?

Some of the theories presented in lecture 3 following Lukács’s theory of consciousness attempts to answer this question in a positive light. In the immediate experience of subjects of bourgeois society, consciousness is, as it were, produced and maintained by the thing-ification of social structures in experience. Thing-ification (the term reification is used in the book) of social structures codifies flows of expectations, desires and actions within the subjectivity of individuals. Reducing consciousness — being of course capitalism’s way of producing docile subjects — should therefore be thought more so in line with awareness of social relations and one’s position in it, rather than phenomenological consciousness. Codified flows of social experience (“I am a worker and not a capitalist”; “I am a housewife” etc.) follow structures of hegemonic demand circumventing the possibility for counter-production and concealing ways in which social organization could legitimately be thought of differently. The way in which consciousness can be raised — and following Marx in this respect — is thought and only through the primacy of matter and practice. It is in coming together, in collectivizing, that group consciousness can develop and a standpoint in which the totality of things can be momentarily grasped. Comparing one’s situation with the other in a similar situation raises consciousness of the potentiality that oppression is not due to a lack in the individual but a product of societal structures. This consciousness raising forms a, so to speak, “outside” from which transformative agency begins. Revolution of the social domain must therefore always start from the side of the oppressed, because the oppressors are simply caught up inside the sphere that produces structures of oppression. The point about all this of course lies in extension to a different point Fisher has made in his book capitalist realism, namely, that counter-capitalist consciousness has receded over the years to the point of a widespread inability to imagine an alternative. Capitalism installs itself in communicative channels as a parasyte through technology and instantiates directives for everyday living and time expenditure. With the phone, we are more connected than ever but paradoxically enough more disconnected at the same time. Fisher claims, through his reading of Lukács, that capitalist ideology shapes the material conditions such that potentialities for consciousness are reduced to levels of unlikelihood. Technology therefore not only functions as a means to appropriate the knowledge and the labor power of the worker, confronting him as an alien power and rising above him in the workplace, but also as a means to prevent and halt counter-ideological production.

The question of desire is further taken up by lecture 5 by a reading of Lyotard and largely following Freud. The point here is that we all enjoy capitalism and, moreover, even our subjection to it (this is Freud’s death drive or the enigmatic idea that we enjoy displeasure because we can somehow possess it); there is no outside sphere because everyone is already given over to capitalism. Fisher’s own position of accelerationism seeks to push beyond our stale produced desires and capitalist realism; a project that stands within capitalism and seeks its end goal as borne from within it. This version of accelerationism marks a stance that is, I believe, inspired by Nietzsche’s attitude towards the death of god in that it is one that seeks positive affirmation of this explosive transformation that marks the new paradigm. Unfortunately, the rest of the lectures have been cut short due to Fisher’s unexpected suicide in 2017 while further lectures on his form of accelerationism where still on the syllabus.