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Mark Fisher

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Mark Fisher
Fisher at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011
Born(1968-07-11)11 July 1968
United Kingdom
Died13 January 2017(2017-01-13) (aged 48)
EducationUniversity of Hull (B.A.), University of Warwick (Ph.D.)
Known forCritical theory, philosophy, music criticism, blogging, political theory
Notable workCapitalist Realism (2009)
k-punk blog (2003–2015)
SpouseZoë Fisher
Websitek-punk.abstractdynamics.org

Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017) was a British writer, critic, and cultural theorist based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 21st century, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.[1][2] Over the course of his career, he contributed to publications such as The Wire, The Guardian, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound.[3] He also published several books, including Capitalist Realism (2009), Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014) and The Weird and the Eerie (2017).

Biography

Fisher earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and philosophy at Hull University (1989) and completed a Ph.D. at Warwick University in 1999 entitled Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction.[4] During this time, Fisher was a founding member of the interdisciplinary research collective known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit.[5] He spent a period teaching in a further education college as a philosophy lecturer[6] and began his blog k-punk in 2003. It has been called "one of the most successful weblogs on cultural theory."[3] Music critic Simon Reynolds described it as "a one-man magazine superior to most magazines in Britain" and as the central hub of a "constellation of blogs ... some of which are written by practicing philosophers or others involved in lumpen academia" in which popular culture, music, politics, and abstract theory were discussed in tandem.[7] Fisher also co-founded the message board Dissensus with writer Matt Ingram.[8]

Subsequently, Fisher was a visiting fellow and a lecturer on Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, a commissioning editor at Zer0 books, an editorial board member of Interference: a journal of audio culture and Edinburgh University Press's Speculative Realism series, and an acting deputy editor at The Wire.[9] In 2009, Fisher edited The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of critical essays on the career and death of Michael Jackson, and published Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?, an analysis of the ideological effects of neoliberalism on contemporary culture. In 2014, Fisher published Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, a collection of essays on similar themes viewed through the prisms of music, film, and hauntology. He also contributed intermittently to a number of publications, including Fact and The Wire.

Fisher died on 13 January 2017 at the age of 48.[10] His wife confirmed that he had taken his own life.[11]

Work

Hauntology

In the mid 2000s, Fisher popularised the use of Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology to describe a pervasive sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by the "lost futures" of modernity, which were purportedly cancelled by postmodernity and neoliberalism.[12] Hauntology has been described as a "pining for a future that never arrived;"[13] in contrast to the nostalgia and retro revivalism of postmodernity, Fisher defined hauntological art and culture as typified by a critical foregrounding of the historical and metaphysical disjunctions of contemporary capitalist culture as well as a "refusal to give up on the desire for the future."[14] Discussing the political relevance of the concept, Fisher wrote:

At a time of political reaction and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards, when “power . . . operates predictively as much as retrospectively” (Eshun 2003: 289), one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity’s terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.[15]

Fisher and others have drawn attention to the shift into post-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which Fisher argued has "gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new."[16] Fisher's 2014 book Ghosts of My Life examined these ideas through cultural sources, such as the music of Burial and Joy Division, the films of Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan, and the novels of David Peace and John Le Carre.

Capitalist realism

Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? (2009) popularised the critical concept of capitalist realism as a mode of cultural analysis in relation to neoliberalism, describing it as the widespread ideology that capitalism is the only viable political-economic system.[17] As a philosophical concept, capitalist realism is indebted to an Althusserian conception of ideology, as well as to the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek.[18] Fisher proposed that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures. He proposed that the 2008 financial crisis compounded this position; rather than seeking alternatives to the existing model we look for modifications within the system. He defined the term as pertaining to:

a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.[19]

In Jeremy Gilbert’s words, the term denotes,

both the conviction that there is no alternative to capitalism as a paradigm for social organisation, and the mechanisms which are used to disseminate and reproduce that conviction amongst large populations. As such it would seem to be both a ‘structure of feeling’ [...] and, in quite a classical sense, a hegemonic ideology, operating as all hegemonic ideologies do, to try to efface their own historicity and the contingency of the social arrangements which they legitimate.[20]

Fisher's work has inspired other scholars to adopt this frame of reference.[21]

Books

  • The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson. Ed. by Mark Fisher. Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1846943485
  • Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?. Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1846943171
  • Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1780992266
  • The Weird and the Eerie. Repeater Books, 2017. ISBN 978-1910924389

References

  1. ^ Ravens, Chal. "Mark Fisher, influential music writer and theorist known as K-Punk, has died BY CHAL RAVENS, JAN 14 2017". Fact. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
  2. ^ "Mark Fisher « Interview « ReadySteadyBook - for literature..."
  3. ^ a b "Mark Fisher -- Zero Books -- Author Profile".
  4. ^ http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.340547; thesis available at https://web.archive.org/web/20101224015635/http://cinestatic.com/trans-mat/Fisher/FCcontents.htm.
  5. ^ Dazed (1 June 2011). "Nick Land: Mind Games".
  6. ^ Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, 'Capitalist Realism and Neoliberal Hegemony: A Dialogue', New Formations, 80--81 (2013), 89--101 (at p. 90); doi:10.3898/NEWF.80/81.05.2013.
  7. ^ frieze
  8. ^ Reynolds, Simon. "https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/18/mark-fisher-k-punk-blogs-did-48-politics?CMP=twt_gu". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 January 2017. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  9. ^ "Fisher, Mark, Goldsmiths, University of London". gold.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  10. ^ "Capitalist Realism Author Mark Fisher Dies". The Quietus. 14 January 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
  11. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/18/mark-fisher-k-punk-blogs-did-48-politics
  12. ^ Mark Fisher - The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology
  13. ^ Stone Blue Editors (11 September 2015). William Basinski: Musician Snapshots. SBE Media. pp. Chapter 3. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  14. ^ Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books, May 30, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78099-226-6
  15. ^ Mark Fisher - The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology
  16. ^ The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology
  17. ^ Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative? (Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero, 2009), p. 9.
  18. ^ Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?. Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1846943171
  19. ^ Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative? (Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero, 2009).
  20. ^ Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, 'Capitalist Realism and Neoliberal Hegemony: A Dialogue', New Formations, 80--81 (2013), 89--101 (at pp. 89--90); DOI:10.3898/NEWF.80/81.05.2013.
  21. ^ E.g. Reading Capitalist Realism, ed. by Alison Shonkwiler and Leigh Claire La Berge (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014).

External links

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