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Exiting the Vampire Castle
This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics. Exhausted through overwork, incapable of productive activity, I found myself drifting through social networks, feeling my depression and exhaustion increasing.
‘Left-wing� Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out� and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.
‘Left-wing� Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out� and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.
10 pages, ebook
First published November 22, 2013
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About the author
Mark Fisher
72books1,757followersMark 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 ŷ database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the ŷ database with this name.
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July 16, 2019An essay in which Fisher utilises some Nietzschean tools to criticise the modern, moralising left. In short, it's basically a polemic against what we can call identity politics. Now, identity politics is not necessarily a new phenomenon, in fact the grouping of individuals by common signification - whether affirmatively as an act of solidarity and empowered resistance, or as a target for concentrated oppressive attack - has probably been a feature of human socio-political organisation going all the way back; however, it is only very recently that 'identity politics' has entered the mainstream socio-political lexicon in and of itself. I suppose that it is the logical result of our ever-increasingly globalized and socio-politico-ethnico-etc interconnected world. Our histories are incredibly complex and interwoven, yet along certain lines of identity we bear the recordings of horrific oppression and repression.
Identities exist and subsist; we cannot merely wish them away and expect their structures to fade into the background; the problem, however, is when identity starts to become exclusive, starts to become transcendent, and starts to become restrictive. When "identitarianism" "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'm reminded of a fantastic passage from Deleuze - heck - I'm gonna quote the whole thing:
"And what do my relations with gays, alcoholics, and drug-users matter, if I can obtain similar effects by different means? What's interesting isn't whether I'm capitalizing on anything, but whether there are people doing something or other in their little corner, and me in mine, and whether there might be any points of contact, chance encounters and coincidences rather than alignments and rallying-points (all that crap where everyone's supposed to be everyone else's guilty conscience and judge). I owe you lot nothing, nothing more than you owe me. I don't need to join you in your ghettos, because I've got my own. The question's nothing to do with the character of this or that exclusive group, it's to do with the transversal relations that ensure that any effects produced in some particular way (through homosexuality, drugs, and so on) can always be produced by other means. We have to counter people who think "I'm this, I'm that," and who do so, moreover, in psychoanalytic terms (relating everything to their childhood or fate), by thinking in strange, fluid, unusual terms: I don't know what I am-I'd have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a non-narcissistic, non-oedipal way-no gay can ever definitively say "I'm gay." It's not a question of being this or that sort of human, but of becoming inhuman, of a universal animal becoming-not seeing yourself as some dumb animal, but unraveling your body's human organization, exploring this or that zone of bodily intensity, with everyone discovering their own particular zones, and the groups, populations, species that inhabit them."
The "Vampire Castle" is Fisher's concept for this new, vampiric, territory, that seeks to administer guilt at every corner, to isolate and to 'exclusivise', to cordon off and to "excommunicate". It's not about solidarity and raising consciousness: "The aim is not to popularise a leftist position, or to win people over to it, but to remain in a position of elite superiority, but now with class superiority redoubled by moral superiority too." Fisher is particularly sharp when he points out how this identity-essentialism functions to not only exclusivise certain groups and their o-so-intimate struggle, but also to essentialise those who may act or speak in a sexist etc manner as being sexist: "Their whole identity becomes defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioural slip."
The Vampire Castle is one of two main concepts that Fisher creates in this essay, the other being "Neo-Anarchism". This part of the essay is surprisingly weak, in fact, I have trouble understanding why it was included at all. In contrast to the intuitive yet thorough treatise on the guilt-priests, the section on neo-anarchism feels strained, unfocused and thin. It is constituted by only three paragraphs despite being formatted as a major section, and - more importantly - Fisher's argument against those who reject the viability of mainstream political struggle/praxis is really incredibly underdeveloped; I don't particularly understand how this segment fits in at all with the rest of the essay. (As an aside, I am slightly confused as to why at one point Fisher calls those he is critiquing the "post-structuralist left"; I do not think that post-structuralism is particularly aligned with our modern idpol-ers, and, furthermore, would actually describe Fisher's views on identity, as briefly outlined here, as being eminently post-structuralist themselves.)
These complaints aside, in this piece Fisher manages to clearly articulate some of the frustrations that currently diffuse and divide the modern 'left'. He calls for a reintroduction of class-based politics and a re-emphasis of class consciousness as the only tools that stand a chance of dismantling the capitalist machine. We have to come together and rebuild solidarity in our ranks, "we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication." This unity must come through class: "The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital."
Identities exist and subsist; we cannot merely wish them away and expect their structures to fade into the background; the problem, however, is when identity starts to become exclusive, starts to become transcendent, and starts to become restrictive. When "identitarianism" "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'm reminded of a fantastic passage from Deleuze - heck - I'm gonna quote the whole thing:
"And what do my relations with gays, alcoholics, and drug-users matter, if I can obtain similar effects by different means? What's interesting isn't whether I'm capitalizing on anything, but whether there are people doing something or other in their little corner, and me in mine, and whether there might be any points of contact, chance encounters and coincidences rather than alignments and rallying-points (all that crap where everyone's supposed to be everyone else's guilty conscience and judge). I owe you lot nothing, nothing more than you owe me. I don't need to join you in your ghettos, because I've got my own. The question's nothing to do with the character of this or that exclusive group, it's to do with the transversal relations that ensure that any effects produced in some particular way (through homosexuality, drugs, and so on) can always be produced by other means. We have to counter people who think "I'm this, I'm that," and who do so, moreover, in psychoanalytic terms (relating everything to their childhood or fate), by thinking in strange, fluid, unusual terms: I don't know what I am-I'd have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a non-narcissistic, non-oedipal way-no gay can ever definitively say "I'm gay." It's not a question of being this or that sort of human, but of becoming inhuman, of a universal animal becoming-not seeing yourself as some dumb animal, but unraveling your body's human organization, exploring this or that zone of bodily intensity, with everyone discovering their own particular zones, and the groups, populations, species that inhabit them."
The "Vampire Castle" is Fisher's concept for this new, vampiric, territory, that seeks to administer guilt at every corner, to isolate and to 'exclusivise', to cordon off and to "excommunicate". It's not about solidarity and raising consciousness: "The aim is not to popularise a leftist position, or to win people over to it, but to remain in a position of elite superiority, but now with class superiority redoubled by moral superiority too." Fisher is particularly sharp when he points out how this identity-essentialism functions to not only exclusivise certain groups and their o-so-intimate struggle, but also to essentialise those who may act or speak in a sexist etc manner as being sexist: "Their whole identity becomes defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioural slip."
The Vampire Castle is one of two main concepts that Fisher creates in this essay, the other being "Neo-Anarchism". This part of the essay is surprisingly weak, in fact, I have trouble understanding why it was included at all. In contrast to the intuitive yet thorough treatise on the guilt-priests, the section on neo-anarchism feels strained, unfocused and thin. It is constituted by only three paragraphs despite being formatted as a major section, and - more importantly - Fisher's argument against those who reject the viability of mainstream political struggle/praxis is really incredibly underdeveloped; I don't particularly understand how this segment fits in at all with the rest of the essay. (As an aside, I am slightly confused as to why at one point Fisher calls those he is critiquing the "post-structuralist left"; I do not think that post-structuralism is particularly aligned with our modern idpol-ers, and, furthermore, would actually describe Fisher's views on identity, as briefly outlined here, as being eminently post-structuralist themselves.)
These complaints aside, in this piece Fisher manages to clearly articulate some of the frustrations that currently diffuse and divide the modern 'left'. He calls for a reintroduction of class-based politics and a re-emphasis of class consciousness as the only tools that stand a chance of dismantling the capitalist machine. We have to come together and rebuild solidarity in our ranks, "we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication." This unity must come through class: "The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital."
July 8, 2019
"grim and demoralising pass, where class has disappeared, but moralism is everywhere, where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent � and not because we are terrorised by the right, but because we have allowed bourgeois modes of subjectivity to contaminate our movement."
"why would capital be concerned about a ‘left� that replaces class politics with a moralising individualism, and that, far from building solidarity, spreads fear and insecurity?"
March 27, 2025
It's like looking at an embarrassing photo of myself from half a decade ago.
March 27, 2025
Guys, I have a confession. I've been feeling greater and greater empathy for people like Ted Kaczynski, Mark Fisher, and JPEGMAFIA lately. People who turned against the left, because of its toxic sectarianism, intellectual domination, and outrage culture.
I used to call myself a Marxist, but I got sick of Trots. Then I called myself an anarchist, but got sick of punk cops. Now, I don't fucking know, anymore. I don't want to call myself anything. I don't want to have pointless petty disputes with traumatised kids who would rather lash out at potential allies than fucking build solidarity. I've spent half a decade researching and applying psychotherapy, because it felt so, so necessary to heal our communities, but when I brought it up at an anarchist café I was told it was white supremacist, classist, and homophobic (by a white kid—I'm Chinese, trans/nb, and come from a lower-middle class family). When I brought up liberation psychology, co-counselling, and anti-psychiatry, as movements that tried to dismantle such oppressions, I got no response—just thinly veiled disgust.
I don't agree with the politics Ted Kaczynski, Mark Fisher, or JPEGMAFIA—Teddy turned to terrorism, Peggy turned to individualism, and Fisher turned to pessimism—but the aggravation that put them on those paths? I fucking feel that. Fuck leftists who simply resent what they don't have, rather than reclaim it for emancipatory ends. Fuck punks who argue for horizontalism, while reinstating hierarchies they police from a grand tower of moralism. Fuck this shit.
Solidarity forever�always—but fucking hell, I understand why people leave our movements.
I used to call myself a Marxist, but I got sick of Trots. Then I called myself an anarchist, but got sick of punk cops. Now, I don't fucking know, anymore. I don't want to call myself anything. I don't want to have pointless petty disputes with traumatised kids who would rather lash out at potential allies than fucking build solidarity. I've spent half a decade researching and applying psychotherapy, because it felt so, so necessary to heal our communities, but when I brought it up at an anarchist café I was told it was white supremacist, classist, and homophobic (by a white kid—I'm Chinese, trans/nb, and come from a lower-middle class family). When I brought up liberation psychology, co-counselling, and anti-psychiatry, as movements that tried to dismantle such oppressions, I got no response—just thinly veiled disgust.
I don't agree with the politics Ted Kaczynski, Mark Fisher, or JPEGMAFIA—Teddy turned to terrorism, Peggy turned to individualism, and Fisher turned to pessimism—but the aggravation that put them on those paths? I fucking feel that. Fuck leftists who simply resent what they don't have, rather than reclaim it for emancipatory ends. Fuck punks who argue for horizontalism, while reinstating hierarchies they police from a grand tower of moralism. Fuck this shit.
Solidarity forever�always—but fucking hell, I understand why people leave our movements.
June 16, 2021
Sometimes I forget Mark Fisher belonged to a generation not quite boomer but with the boomer mindset anyway. Other times I remember what a remarkably cogent and stimulating theorist Fisher was! A half-brilliant, half-boomer(esque) exposition of the cancer that cancel culture is!
July 22, 2019
Half the essay is extremely lucid and the other half is drivel.
June 13, 2020
mmm hello based department ?
August 8, 2018
Rest in peace Mark, you fucking wonderful man.
March 24, 2021
In this essay Marxist cultural critic Mark Fisher takes the modern left to task for its shift to identity politics as its main tool of meting out justice and political change, while ultimately falling into the same pitfalls as market liberalism. Essentially a "it's market liberalism, but it can trade in Marxist terms and wears a Che Guevara shirt." I think his critique is a good one. Fisher is a good writer and that is evident in his phraseology and his illustration of the Vampire Castle itself. The Vampire Castle being the new left orthodoxy that functions as a well established fortress which sucks all of the good out of any left wing causes and only gives bad results like guilt... and not actually accomplishing anything. Essentially it is a Marxist fun vampire. It wasn't a fight getting through this even though Fisher and I diverge on several major points (only one of which I will be covering in this review because my friend baited me into it.)
The critique itself is simply that leftists have abandoned the class consciousness narrative that has been their bread and butter since the time of Marx, and have substituted it for identities that are themselves fungible and unable of actually bringing about societal change. Who are the people that are the main proponents of these movements and the ones who founded them? The petite-bourgeoise. Upper class and upper middle class college educated twenty somethings who think they are changing the world, but in reality just cementing themselves in their current place. All the while fooling the less astute with guilt trips and self-flagellation in contrast with the fun of Russel Brand. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear who has been through the university system or is on social media can see this. Fisher takes social media to task as the catalyst of how these ideas took over and I would say he is halfway right. It certainly has helped to fortify them and is the main way that "justice" is doled out. The upshot is Fisher's call to his readers to return to the roots of grandpappy Marx and move back to class conciousness. Overall, not a bad argument. If I were a Marxist I would certainly be a traditional one as I too agree that class is more fundamental than other identities. Much to Fisher's chagrin, as he takes a moment to recognize that the people who are on the other side of the aisle are much more aware of these things than most people on his own side. Yes, at least the intelligentsia and ruling figures are in most cases. So if you want to read a well reasoned argument against the current leftist and cultural zeitgest this is good, though not for general consumption he gets a little philosophical and theory heavy in parts which might alienate the unscaffolded reader.
But that isn't why I'm here. No, I'm here because one of my friends told me that this article "btfos Christianity" (btfo = blowing the fuck out of.) So did this one section in his article destroy the historic Christian faith to a point where it will no longer recover? Will I have to get a new job? Let us find out.
The paragraph in question is the following:
"The problem that the Vampires� Castle was set up to solve is this: how do you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim, marginal and oppositional? The solution was already there � in the Christian Church. So the VC has recourse to all the infernal strategies, dark pathologies and psychological torture instruments Christianity invented, and which Nietzsche described in The Genealogy of Morals. This priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is �"
Now I'll be honest. When I first read this I had to read it again because it was the first time I have ever seen a Marxist use Nietzsche as a positive reference, and it is in this reference that the seed of his error is planted. Fisher is a smart guy, but perhaps not a philosopher, or at least not a trained one. Now as a committed Marxist, Fisher is most likely anti-religious or at least apathetic towards religion. My guess is the first one because he looked for and found a commonality between Nietzcheian thought and Marxist thought: shared hatred of Christianity. In this regard I appreciate Nietzsche more than Marx as he takes this lack of God to its logical conclusion: morality is meaningless and the strong should rule over the weak. Funnily enough this is kind of the point of The Genealogy of Morals as he believes Christianity was an attempt by weak people to subvert the strong. Not an unfair interpretation, but historically implausible. Marx and his followers fall into what I like to call the "Vat of Teleological Redundancy." This is the "Why should I care?" question that ruins the secular philosophical mind. "Why should I care, Marx, that people are being oppressed?" *Insert appeal to humanity/emotion here* "But it isn't humanity's natural state to care for the neglected or those left out unless it serves some other purpose like in *insert multitude of historical examples*" *insert secular/Marxist teleological floundering* The ultimate conclusion being that once divine law is despatched of then there really is no reason for anything. Kind of the point of Nietzsche's whole "God is Dead" thing. Nietzsche falls in there too he just has to take an extra step.
Now the irony with Fisher's paragraph here is that he himself is a Christian in morality and doesn't realize that Nietzsche would not see the Vampire's Castle being the worse thing to follow Christianity, but Marxism itself. After all, what is worse than something that guilts the strong into humbling themselves? A system whereby the strong are forced and exploited into caring for the weak a la Marxism. Ultimately, Fisher and people who agree with this critique would end up making Nietzsche see me as a moral good and the modern left as the great evil that Christianity would produce. Is he wrong? Not entirely.
In short: don't mix Marx and Nietzsche there is a reason no one does that. Peace.
The critique itself is simply that leftists have abandoned the class consciousness narrative that has been their bread and butter since the time of Marx, and have substituted it for identities that are themselves fungible and unable of actually bringing about societal change. Who are the people that are the main proponents of these movements and the ones who founded them? The petite-bourgeoise. Upper class and upper middle class college educated twenty somethings who think they are changing the world, but in reality just cementing themselves in their current place. All the while fooling the less astute with guilt trips and self-flagellation in contrast with the fun of Russel Brand. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear who has been through the university system or is on social media can see this. Fisher takes social media to task as the catalyst of how these ideas took over and I would say he is halfway right. It certainly has helped to fortify them and is the main way that "justice" is doled out. The upshot is Fisher's call to his readers to return to the roots of grandpappy Marx and move back to class conciousness. Overall, not a bad argument. If I were a Marxist I would certainly be a traditional one as I too agree that class is more fundamental than other identities. Much to Fisher's chagrin, as he takes a moment to recognize that the people who are on the other side of the aisle are much more aware of these things than most people on his own side. Yes, at least the intelligentsia and ruling figures are in most cases. So if you want to read a well reasoned argument against the current leftist and cultural zeitgest this is good, though not for general consumption he gets a little philosophical and theory heavy in parts which might alienate the unscaffolded reader.
But that isn't why I'm here. No, I'm here because one of my friends told me that this article "btfos Christianity" (btfo = blowing the fuck out of.) So did this one section in his article destroy the historic Christian faith to a point where it will no longer recover? Will I have to get a new job? Let us find out.
The paragraph in question is the following:
"The problem that the Vampires� Castle was set up to solve is this: how do you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim, marginal and oppositional? The solution was already there � in the Christian Church. So the VC has recourse to all the infernal strategies, dark pathologies and psychological torture instruments Christianity invented, and which Nietzsche described in The Genealogy of Morals. This priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is �"
Now I'll be honest. When I first read this I had to read it again because it was the first time I have ever seen a Marxist use Nietzsche as a positive reference, and it is in this reference that the seed of his error is planted. Fisher is a smart guy, but perhaps not a philosopher, or at least not a trained one. Now as a committed Marxist, Fisher is most likely anti-religious or at least apathetic towards religion. My guess is the first one because he looked for and found a commonality between Nietzcheian thought and Marxist thought: shared hatred of Christianity. In this regard I appreciate Nietzsche more than Marx as he takes this lack of God to its logical conclusion: morality is meaningless and the strong should rule over the weak. Funnily enough this is kind of the point of The Genealogy of Morals as he believes Christianity was an attempt by weak people to subvert the strong. Not an unfair interpretation, but historically implausible. Marx and his followers fall into what I like to call the "Vat of Teleological Redundancy." This is the "Why should I care?" question that ruins the secular philosophical mind. "Why should I care, Marx, that people are being oppressed?" *Insert appeal to humanity/emotion here* "But it isn't humanity's natural state to care for the neglected or those left out unless it serves some other purpose like in *insert multitude of historical examples*" *insert secular/Marxist teleological floundering* The ultimate conclusion being that once divine law is despatched of then there really is no reason for anything. Kind of the point of Nietzsche's whole "God is Dead" thing. Nietzsche falls in there too he just has to take an extra step.
Now the irony with Fisher's paragraph here is that he himself is a Christian in morality and doesn't realize that Nietzsche would not see the Vampire's Castle being the worse thing to follow Christianity, but Marxism itself. After all, what is worse than something that guilts the strong into humbling themselves? A system whereby the strong are forced and exploited into caring for the weak a la Marxism. Ultimately, Fisher and people who agree with this critique would end up making Nietzsche see me as a moral good and the modern left as the great evil that Christianity would produce. Is he wrong? Not entirely.
In short: don't mix Marx and Nietzsche there is a reason no one does that. Peace.
May 31, 2022
Sterk stuk met enkele zeer rake, juiste opmerkingen en stellingen die aanzetten tot denken. "A left that does not have class at its core can only be a liberal pressure group."
January 10, 2023
Just as the culture wars of the 2010s were peeking over the horizon, Mark Fisher identified them and took a stand from a Marxist prospective. He was eviscerated. As I write this, the opportunity for a left based on unity and economics is gone.
I wish Fisher was still alive. He was a great thinker and as this essay shows, a good writer as well.
I wish Fisher was still alive. He was a great thinker and as this essay shows, a good writer as well.
February 14, 2023
Genuinely one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever read. Mark Fisher, with all of the gravitas for a teacher who just read a bad substitute teacher’s note, scolds “twitter leftists� for criticizing Russell Brand. Fisher will also claim, with a straight face that Brand is a genuine proletarian hero who is ACTUALLY spearheading “the revolution.�
Let’s get this straight Russell Brand, someone who has been in maybe three movies and has no long lasting cultural relevance is someone we should of utmost importance? Pathetic. While I can’t blame Fisher for not being able to see the future, it makes it all the more humorous considering that Brand is not a right wing libertarian (who likes Mark Fisher’s work? That’s odd, are these two ideologies compatible?)
I’m not trying to miss the forest for the trees, but the above point was to hard not to call out. The essay is about what would later be termed “Cancel Culture.� Mark Fisher was upset that his oofies we’re getting roasted on the tl, and took up the mighty pen set their critics straight. Again, worrying about cancel culture, while not necessarily outside of the realm of political debate, is a big bugbear for the modern day Right (there it is again, Mark Fisher and the Right seeming to converge. How odd?)
Mark Fisher, to me is a “Left Wing� Jordan Peterson. Another weepy huckster philosopher selling shit books that don’t really give you anything, but woo you with pop philosophy. Fisher going after “left intellectual moralists� isn’t really that different from Peterson’s ridiculous “Up yours, Woke Moralists� soliloquy.
I’d end this review with Tyler the Creator’s take on cyber bullying, but it is filled with words I’d rather not say.
Let’s get this straight Russell Brand, someone who has been in maybe three movies and has no long lasting cultural relevance is someone we should of utmost importance? Pathetic. While I can’t blame Fisher for not being able to see the future, it makes it all the more humorous considering that Brand is not a right wing libertarian (who likes Mark Fisher’s work? That’s odd, are these two ideologies compatible?)
I’m not trying to miss the forest for the trees, but the above point was to hard not to call out. The essay is about what would later be termed “Cancel Culture.� Mark Fisher was upset that his oofies we’re getting roasted on the tl, and took up the mighty pen set their critics straight. Again, worrying about cancel culture, while not necessarily outside of the realm of political debate, is a big bugbear for the modern day Right (there it is again, Mark Fisher and the Right seeming to converge. How odd?)
Mark Fisher, to me is a “Left Wing� Jordan Peterson. Another weepy huckster philosopher selling shit books that don’t really give you anything, but woo you with pop philosophy. Fisher going after “left intellectual moralists� isn’t really that different from Peterson’s ridiculous “Up yours, Woke Moralists� soliloquy.
I’d end this review with Tyler the Creator’s take on cyber bullying, but it is filled with words I’d rather not say.
December 19, 2023
It is possible for a version of a basically correct thesis to be so badly conceptualized it can simply be dismissed as wrong.
November 1, 2023
How interesting. This gave me a lot of new thoughts, new angles.
Feels dangerous. A pamphflet, article (or whatever this is) on social justice on social media channels.
I've read Capitalist Realism before and I found this through a post in Instagram in which "woke activism" was talked about in a critical way. It felt fresh and nice as I love critique. I think it should go both way, all ways. And this is a very tricky thing. Very, very tricky.
I absolutely hate the old, white men who say "nothing can be said nowadays", but I understand where it's coming from. And what is funny to me is that they can say whatever they want but what has changed is that now other people can say, too. Another thing: when they say "people are so sensitive nowadays" is just a display of themselves being sensitive, being unable to take any critique.
Can't we see how similar we are to each other? Please?
I'd say the first thing would be to admit that we are all the both good and bad. We all do mistakes. And hopefully, we'd all like to learn about them. If we focus on the issue, its background and the next steps, then we'd get pretty fast over blaming the victim and can focus on making the world a better place. I'm not into punishments, moralising, shaming and cancelling as I'm not sure if its good for the bigger picture and the actual issue. Because people do counterattacks, they grow cynical and revengeful when being punished. And, which is the clearest to me is that we've all done bad things.
Remember Hammurabi? Yeah.
I think that doing bad things is good. Because that is how you learn. I'm not saying doing something bad deliberately. But mistakes happen and when they do, we should listen. All of us. And after listening we should be a bit bigger and wiser. Listening is easiest when it comes from a place of love, not hate.
I remember a time when social justice warrior was a term that was used in a very demeaning way. Somewhere back in 2010 and 2011, navigating through tumblr. That was before it was "mainstream", pre-#MeToo and in a world that was a bit meaner, at least mean in a different way. And I remember my girlfriend at the time, the kindest person I know, still, posting pictures with a Native American headress, inspired by Kemp Muhl, bought from an actual Native American, getting absolutely smashed on the comment field of her blog. And I remember thinking how the hell is a white woman blame another white woman for wearing it. And I got scared and confused of the anger. Now I see there was a blind spot for the both of us (me and my GF) and it was an important issue to go through. Absolutely. Cultural appropriation. But still something about the way the discussion went got to me. It felt like the actual issue is somewhere else, the channel is somewhere else. Because I'm sure an article on the subject would've done the job. Not making the kindest, most compassionate person I know cry for admiring a culture, you know?
In this small book Fisher made a concept of the "Vampire Castle" from where the judgments are being thrown. Based on a very christian culture. And then referencing Nietzsche when he told that after christian morals we get hypocrites attacking others with psychological tools of torment. So what Fisher is getting at: the "Vampire Castle" exists so that people who have power and privilege can still appear as the victim. It's extremely interesting and complex.
Maybe the issue here is that the real problems lay in the structures and the way our world is built. The whole world is racist, sexist and unequal in the way it is built! Capitalism is oppressive, leaving behind trails of blood, would never work without it. Still wouldn't. And the people in power are laughing on their thrones when we fight each other for the right words and mistakes as we clearly share actually a common goal and similar values.
So: less moralising individuality and more solidarity. Let's not quit talking about issues and focusing on soft values, lifting those who are held down and destroying patriarchy, piece by piece. But let's maybe think about doing it from a place of empathy, understanding and love?
To me the best way to do it would be to understand where the issues originate. Men behave in toxic ways because they've been taught that, they've been living in a culture that encourages that. It makes you feel even more shitty which leads you acting more shitty, growing even more cynical and building a harder shell. So instead of saying "you are a toxic man" we could say "what happened to you", you know? It's not to downplay your issues. It's not a competition of who has the most scars. It's a quest to build a world where we don't hurt each other, where it's easier for all of us to breathe, feel safe, be ourselves, be equal.
I simply love the sentence "Hurt people hurt people" as it holds all the answers. We should all understand that we are in the same boat. Power and privilege are very real, yes, absolutely. Patriarchy, racism, all of it. But also they are things that hurt everyone of us, every day. Even Trump, you know. Actually that is why he behaves like he does. Just look at his parents.
And the problem with identity politics is that it divides into small groups where we simply can't seem to understand each other. I'd suggest creative ways of empathy: I can understand what it is like to be a woman as I'm a small, poor and scared boy, raised by women and both seen and felt the oppression of men. I fear men, too. Also women. I'm a scaredy cat. And also I can understand how it feels like to be seen as a second class citizen when being raised in a town where I'm a minority (for talking Finnish) and being overlooked by the Swedish, who look down upon the Finns. That doesn't mean I am being oppressed the way people from actually different cultures and backgrounds are, not at all. It's nothing compared to that. But it gives me a little platform from where I can build my understanding and empathy from.
Kurt Vonnegut said “I sympathise with everybody, damn it, and see why they are the way they are", that's a profound sentence to me. And you know, while finding the right wording for this quote, I stumbled upon a discussion where it was discussed if Vonnegut was a "nazi sympathiser" for feeling sorry for the germans in WW2.
Come on now. Come ooooooooon.
Feels dangerous. A pamphflet, article (or whatever this is) on social justice on social media channels.
I've read Capitalist Realism before and I found this through a post in Instagram in which "woke activism" was talked about in a critical way. It felt fresh and nice as I love critique. I think it should go both way, all ways. And this is a very tricky thing. Very, very tricky.
I absolutely hate the old, white men who say "nothing can be said nowadays", but I understand where it's coming from. And what is funny to me is that they can say whatever they want but what has changed is that now other people can say, too. Another thing: when they say "people are so sensitive nowadays" is just a display of themselves being sensitive, being unable to take any critique.
Can't we see how similar we are to each other? Please?
I'd say the first thing would be to admit that we are all the both good and bad. We all do mistakes. And hopefully, we'd all like to learn about them. If we focus on the issue, its background and the next steps, then we'd get pretty fast over blaming the victim and can focus on making the world a better place. I'm not into punishments, moralising, shaming and cancelling as I'm not sure if its good for the bigger picture and the actual issue. Because people do counterattacks, they grow cynical and revengeful when being punished. And, which is the clearest to me is that we've all done bad things.
Remember Hammurabi? Yeah.
I think that doing bad things is good. Because that is how you learn. I'm not saying doing something bad deliberately. But mistakes happen and when they do, we should listen. All of us. And after listening we should be a bit bigger and wiser. Listening is easiest when it comes from a place of love, not hate.
I remember a time when social justice warrior was a term that was used in a very demeaning way. Somewhere back in 2010 and 2011, navigating through tumblr. That was before it was "mainstream", pre-#MeToo and in a world that was a bit meaner, at least mean in a different way. And I remember my girlfriend at the time, the kindest person I know, still, posting pictures with a Native American headress, inspired by Kemp Muhl, bought from an actual Native American, getting absolutely smashed on the comment field of her blog. And I remember thinking how the hell is a white woman blame another white woman for wearing it. And I got scared and confused of the anger. Now I see there was a blind spot for the both of us (me and my GF) and it was an important issue to go through. Absolutely. Cultural appropriation. But still something about the way the discussion went got to me. It felt like the actual issue is somewhere else, the channel is somewhere else. Because I'm sure an article on the subject would've done the job. Not making the kindest, most compassionate person I know cry for admiring a culture, you know?
In this small book Fisher made a concept of the "Vampire Castle" from where the judgments are being thrown. Based on a very christian culture. And then referencing Nietzsche when he told that after christian morals we get hypocrites attacking others with psychological tools of torment. So what Fisher is getting at: the "Vampire Castle" exists so that people who have power and privilege can still appear as the victim. It's extremely interesting and complex.
Maybe the issue here is that the real problems lay in the structures and the way our world is built. The whole world is racist, sexist and unequal in the way it is built! Capitalism is oppressive, leaving behind trails of blood, would never work without it. Still wouldn't. And the people in power are laughing on their thrones when we fight each other for the right words and mistakes as we clearly share actually a common goal and similar values.
So: less moralising individuality and more solidarity. Let's not quit talking about issues and focusing on soft values, lifting those who are held down and destroying patriarchy, piece by piece. But let's maybe think about doing it from a place of empathy, understanding and love?
To me the best way to do it would be to understand where the issues originate. Men behave in toxic ways because they've been taught that, they've been living in a culture that encourages that. It makes you feel even more shitty which leads you acting more shitty, growing even more cynical and building a harder shell. So instead of saying "you are a toxic man" we could say "what happened to you", you know? It's not to downplay your issues. It's not a competition of who has the most scars. It's a quest to build a world where we don't hurt each other, where it's easier for all of us to breathe, feel safe, be ourselves, be equal.
I simply love the sentence "Hurt people hurt people" as it holds all the answers. We should all understand that we are in the same boat. Power and privilege are very real, yes, absolutely. Patriarchy, racism, all of it. But also they are things that hurt everyone of us, every day. Even Trump, you know. Actually that is why he behaves like he does. Just look at his parents.
And the problem with identity politics is that it divides into small groups where we simply can't seem to understand each other. I'd suggest creative ways of empathy: I can understand what it is like to be a woman as I'm a small, poor and scared boy, raised by women and both seen and felt the oppression of men. I fear men, too. Also women. I'm a scaredy cat. And also I can understand how it feels like to be seen as a second class citizen when being raised in a town where I'm a minority (for talking Finnish) and being overlooked by the Swedish, who look down upon the Finns. That doesn't mean I am being oppressed the way people from actually different cultures and backgrounds are, not at all. It's nothing compared to that. But it gives me a little platform from where I can build my understanding and empathy from.
Kurt Vonnegut said “I sympathise with everybody, damn it, and see why they are the way they are", that's a profound sentence to me. And you know, while finding the right wording for this quote, I stumbled upon a discussion where it was discussed if Vonnegut was a "nazi sympathiser" for feeling sorry for the germans in WW2.
Come on now. Come ooooooooon.
July 1, 2020
This is an essay about leftist infighting and the obfuscation of class consciousness by identitarianism. Fisher writes that the "The Vampires� Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities� recognised by a bourgeois big Other."Just as one might imagine, the drips of blood stumbling from leftist lateral incisors taste not of freedom but of power.
The subjectivizing and moralizing guilt machine left "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."
Their focus is not on raising class consciousness nor on the resistance of imperialist capitalism and its modes of domination, no, instead their focus concerns itself with the question: "how do you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim, marginal and oppositional?" And Fisher is quite serious about this concern, "This priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is �"
The guilt-mongers are concerned not with impersonal structural systematic critiques but with individual behaviors, cf. the second-law of the Vampire Castle, "Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and might lead to gulags."
When the mistake is made, one must essentialize that action into a normative character trait, "the victim (often from a working class background, and not schooled in the passive aggressive etiquette of the bourgeoisie) can reliably be goaded into losing their temper, further securing their position as pariah/ latest to be consumed in feeding frenzy."
Typical of anarchists that do not dare involve themselves in workplace organization, politics or media, the Vampire neo-anarchist "Purism shades into fatalism; better not to be in any way tainted by the corruption of the mainstream, better to uselessly ‘resist� than to risk getting your hands dirty."
The Vampire has been totally "seduc[ed] . . . into identifying with their own narrowly defined interests instead of the interests of the wider class". And, unfortunately, "there is little protection from the psychic pathologies propagated by these discourses."
Indeed, Fisher is onto something, the fear and insecurity propagated by the Vampire petit-bourgeois, that which poses absolutely no threat to capital with its dissolution of solidarity and collectivity, should be resisted, "it is imperative to reject identitarianism, and to recognise that there are no identities, only desires, interests and identifications."
But such an authentic resistance can only occur with a class consciousness, "The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital."
Such change "could start a virtuous cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy . . . We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. . . . we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication."
Such is the project of life. The distractions are temptations and to indulge is to forget circularity for linearity, the delectable and enticing allure of capital.
The subjectivizing and moralizing guilt machine left "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."
Their focus is not on raising class consciousness nor on the resistance of imperialist capitalism and its modes of domination, no, instead their focus concerns itself with the question: "how do you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim, marginal and oppositional?" And Fisher is quite serious about this concern, "This priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is �"
The guilt-mongers are concerned not with impersonal structural systematic critiques but with individual behaviors, cf. the second-law of the Vampire Castle, "Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and might lead to gulags."
When the mistake is made, one must essentialize that action into a normative character trait, "the victim (often from a working class background, and not schooled in the passive aggressive etiquette of the bourgeoisie) can reliably be goaded into losing their temper, further securing their position as pariah/ latest to be consumed in feeding frenzy."
Typical of anarchists that do not dare involve themselves in workplace organization, politics or media, the Vampire neo-anarchist "Purism shades into fatalism; better not to be in any way tainted by the corruption of the mainstream, better to uselessly ‘resist� than to risk getting your hands dirty."
The Vampire has been totally "seduc[ed] . . . into identifying with their own narrowly defined interests instead of the interests of the wider class". And, unfortunately, "there is little protection from the psychic pathologies propagated by these discourses."
Indeed, Fisher is onto something, the fear and insecurity propagated by the Vampire petit-bourgeois, that which poses absolutely no threat to capital with its dissolution of solidarity and collectivity, should be resisted, "it is imperative to reject identitarianism, and to recognise that there are no identities, only desires, interests and identifications."
But such an authentic resistance can only occur with a class consciousness, "The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital."
Such change "could start a virtuous cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy . . . We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. . . . we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication."
Such is the project of life. The distractions are temptations and to indulge is to forget circularity for linearity, the delectable and enticing allure of capital.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 19, 2019
Fair critiques into the 'libidinal-discourses' that exist online, especially as time has passed since publication, and therefore affecting frameworks offline as well, creating an atmosphere and discourse that I think one should be aware of and should be altered into a more productive, empathic mode for the 'left.' Of course this shift I feel requires further examination what norms we should develop, besides just comradeship and solidarity (perhaps these are the norms in entirety, but I would have liked a more tangible recourse and this probably wasn't the goal of the essay nor an easy ask or fair), while allowing for disagreement sans the hammer/cancelling as the first respond, keeping in mind the problems that lie inside the 'Vampire Castle.' Or in better words as highlighted by the website I read from:
"We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree � on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication." - Mark Fisher
"We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree � on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication." - Mark Fisher
January 23, 2023
embarassing proto-cancel-culture discourse. ultimately an idealistic analysis that fails to take into account how the structure of social media intentionally created and maintains this culture and instead places the blame at the feet of an imagined petit-bourgeois misleadership caste of "neo-anarchist" graduate school drop outs. the past ten years have not been kind to this essay. If it ever offered meaningful analysis, time has rendered that analysis obsolete. It's worth noting that Fischer's critiques of the 2013 left (which are, without exception, unevidenced and unconvincing) are now used by the most reactionary corners of the modern left. you can't help but wonder, if fisher were still alive, would he be shrieking on twitter about how drag queens are grooming children?
If you would like an in detail refutation of Exiting the Vampire Castle, I would recommend Matthijs Krul's excellent "Gothic Politics: a Reply to Mark Fisher"
If you would like an in detail refutation of Exiting the Vampire Castle, I would recommend Matthijs Krul's excellent "Gothic Politics: a Reply to Mark Fisher"
February 1, 2022
Based AF. The Left has become stagnant and locked in a loophole of identity politics that will doom us all. So has the rest of the world, but the difference is that leftism cannot afford it. We need to chill ffs.
"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."
Chad shit right there.
"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."
Chad shit right there.
September 7, 2022
Its a nice reminder that it doesnt matter if you were a philospher on the frontline of the cutting edge philosophy in 2003, you will just end up falling behind and you will wash up as another part of society (not that fisher was a notable thinker, he was quite boring) that talks and complains about twitter and worker councils. This is where all your political philosophers end up now as opposed to becoming mp's for a major party once they hit 40 (or god forbid a teacher!). This type of short letters everyone is exposed to constantly everyday should rinse off any taste for intellectual thought someone should dare to have.
January 15, 2020
One of his better works. Occasionally hits on some interesting points.
October 20, 2021
im out here lookin for alucard
December 27, 2021
Not really his best work lmaoo
January 17, 2022
Critiquing culture is all fun and games until you are the one getting critiqued
A brief article by Mark Fisher, the author who coined the idea of capitalist realism - which is essentially a bleak and despairing version of Margret Thatchers catchy slogan on neoliberalism “there is no alternative�. Though in defence of Fisher he did use more movie references.
What you get is Fisher, applying his highly evocative language to social media discourse / internet blood sports and calling for a move away from identity politics to more class-based identity. His arguments might not be all that developed but he was skilled in his use of imagery.
The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires� Castle. The Vampires� Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd.
A brief article by Mark Fisher, the author who coined the idea of capitalist realism - which is essentially a bleak and despairing version of Margret Thatchers catchy slogan on neoliberalism “there is no alternative�. Though in defence of Fisher he did use more movie references.
What you get is Fisher, applying his highly evocative language to social media discourse / internet blood sports and calling for a move away from identity politics to more class-based identity. His arguments might not be all that developed but he was skilled in his use of imagery.
The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires� Castle. The Vampires� Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd.
August 3, 2021
*Enters the Vampire Castle
"Where am I and how can I leave?"
Not always a fan of the examples here and the models he uses to explain things. However the main argument is right and its a brave bold move. The leftist infighting on social media is a tricky one and has led to many problems. Occasionally justified but we do need to take a step back from it, be bigger and think about the consequences. Fair play to him for addressing that.
"Where am I and how can I leave?"
Not always a fan of the examples here and the models he uses to explain things. However the main argument is right and its a brave bold move. The leftist infighting on social media is a tricky one and has led to many problems. Occasionally justified but we do need to take a step back from it, be bigger and think about the consequences. Fair play to him for addressing that.
March 22, 2023
From lame online reactions to a Russell Brand stand up set, Fisher was able to see the future...
Some understand this all intrinsically now, having been inundated with it for almost half a decade, but many still don't. Others are probably blissfully unaware... and others see it happening but deny it to themselves, lest they be bad people!
Sometimes I want to be Van Helsing the way these vampires be sucking....
Some understand this all intrinsically now, having been inundated with it for almost half a decade, but many still don't. Others are probably blissfully unaware... and others see it happening but deny it to themselves, lest they be bad people!
Sometimes I want to be Van Helsing the way these vampires be sucking....
Read
June 14, 2021isso não é exatamente um livro né
June 18, 2020
"This doesn't mean, of course, that we must always agree- on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreements can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication."
"Outside the Vampire's Castle, anything is possible."
"Outside the Vampire's Castle, anything is possible."
October 14, 2021
This is one of the works that fundamentally upended my perspective of the world; so much so that it remains in many ways the guiding thesis of my own personal politics. Mark Fisher was a man ahead of his time. It's a ruinous shame that he didn't live to see those times (rest in peace). Fisher trains his sights on what was at the time only a metastasizing tumor that would eventually become the cancer of Cancel Culture that has consumed the modern left, which in of itself is only the latest permutation of much older and persistent evil.
What makes this piece so powerful is the artfulness of the allegory paired with Fisher's incisive and uncanny foresight that moves effortlessly in stride with a patient and empathetic understanding of the circumstance that have given rise to this nightmare. We are all made victim, accomplice, and perpetrator by mechanisms capital, be that monetary or social. We're all slaves to the spectacle, even the so-called "masters". It is phenomenally difficult to escape the Vampire's Castle but the first step is recognizing that you're standing in its halls in the first place. Thank you Mark Fisher. Thank you for giving my mind the concept which empowered to be able to conceive of the belly of the beast I had spent my whole life in unwittingly.
What makes this piece so powerful is the artfulness of the allegory paired with Fisher's incisive and uncanny foresight that moves effortlessly in stride with a patient and empathetic understanding of the circumstance that have given rise to this nightmare. We are all made victim, accomplice, and perpetrator by mechanisms capital, be that monetary or social. We're all slaves to the spectacle, even the so-called "masters". It is phenomenally difficult to escape the Vampire's Castle but the first step is recognizing that you're standing in its halls in the first place. Thank you Mark Fisher. Thank you for giving my mind the concept which empowered to be able to conceive of the belly of the beast I had spent my whole life in unwittingly.
December 26, 2020
Such a powerful read. I had no idea this essay exists until I watched a critique on intersectionality and its (believed) role in "cucking" the leftist movement. In here, Mark Fisher tried to deconstruct the seeming divide between people who are supposed to work in solidarity. This stems from the numbers of strife in social media (esp twitter). By bitterly condemning people who may be presumed to have spoken/acted wrongfully, some people who claim to support the leftist movement do precisely the opposite by doing the capital's work for it. This does not mean we should all come into acquiescence with each other. No. We can't avoid contradictions but disagreements shouldn't necessarily take place to the extent of total exclusion (in today's terms, 'cancel culture'). This so called cancel culture uses shame to induce conformity- if you don't conform, people would feast at your nonconformity until you get cancelled, expelled, villified, and degraded. The thing is, you don't really get cancelled in a way that you are left alone, it's the opposite. You get cancelled in a way that the spotlight is directed at you.
With all this, i have but a loooooot of questions. In all our arguments in social media, do we just like to be the last man standing? Or iare they just some kind of masturbatory exercises of wit? Do we just find pleasure in dragging people who may or may not have said/done something against our own beliefs?
"We need to think very strategically about how to use social media � always remembering that, despite the egalitarianism claimed for social media by capital’s libidinal engineers, that this is currently an enemy territory, dedicated to the reproduction of capital. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t occupy the terrain and start to use it for the purposes of producing class consciousness. We must break out of the ‘debate� set up by communicative capitalism, in which capital is endlessly cajoling us to participate, and remember that we are involved in a class struggle. The goal is not to ‘be� an activist, but to aid the working class to activate � and transform � itself. Outside the Vampires� Castle, anything is possible."
With all this, i have but a loooooot of questions. In all our arguments in social media, do we just like to be the last man standing? Or iare they just some kind of masturbatory exercises of wit? Do we just find pleasure in dragging people who may or may not have said/done something against our own beliefs?
"We need to think very strategically about how to use social media � always remembering that, despite the egalitarianism claimed for social media by capital’s libidinal engineers, that this is currently an enemy territory, dedicated to the reproduction of capital. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t occupy the terrain and start to use it for the purposes of producing class consciousness. We must break out of the ‘debate� set up by communicative capitalism, in which capital is endlessly cajoling us to participate, and remember that we are involved in a class struggle. The goal is not to ‘be� an activist, but to aid the working class to activate � and transform � itself. Outside the Vampires� Castle, anything is possible."
June 6, 2020
Am I the problem?
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