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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
si merita cinque stelle ma ne do quattro come reminder per il me del futuro di rileggerlo quando avrò le competenze necessarie a capirlo meglio.
challenging
informative
fast-paced
Although it brings up interesting points, it is too obtuse. It could have been written way easier.
informative
slow-paced
Absolutely phenomenal work. I cannot recall the last time reading through a book left me this angry and depressed. Diagnoses the illness of our time with absolutely clinical precision and leaves not a single stone unturned. Proceed at your own risk, not for the faint-hearted.
Fisher is unquestionably brilliant, and his diagnosis (as well as his prescribed solution) is fabulously scathing. required reading for any 21st century citizen unsure of the forces governing our lives. simultaneously pragmatic and visionary about the most pressing issues confronting today's left.
my only criticisms: wished he had spent less time on needlessly complex pop culture references and more time formally developing some of the more meaty concepts ("market Stalinism," "business ontology," "Marxist Supernanny," "Capital in the form of a call center" etc — the ideas here were fantastic, but wished less was left up to interpretation). his engagement with Jameson, Zizek, and Wendy Brown in particular all felt as though they could have been fascinating full length essays.
overall, it felt like the first morsels of an underdeveloped magnum opus (which, sadly, it probably was). but i cannot recommend it enough to anyone interested in transcending the debilitating cliches of current activism and confronting the desperate collective need for new forms of strategy against capital and empire.
ps: read the last chapter for a solid clarification of Fisher's (and all his pals') association with so-called accelerationism, a profoundly misunderstood project of political reinvention.
my only criticisms: wished he had spent less time on needlessly complex pop culture references and more time formally developing some of the more meaty concepts ("market Stalinism," "business ontology," "Marxist Supernanny," "Capital in the form of a call center" etc — the ideas here were fantastic, but wished less was left up to interpretation). his engagement with Jameson, Zizek, and Wendy Brown in particular all felt as though they could have been fascinating full length essays.
overall, it felt like the first morsels of an underdeveloped magnum opus (which, sadly, it probably was). but i cannot recommend it enough to anyone interested in transcending the debilitating cliches of current activism and confronting the desperate collective need for new forms of strategy against capital and empire.
ps: read the last chapter for a solid clarification of Fisher's (and all his pals') association with so-called accelerationism, a profoundly misunderstood project of political reinvention.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Ableism
If Fisher's work is the alternative, I'm not sure if I want it.
An incredible book by a wonderful thinker. Fisher breaks down exactly how capitalism has invaded nearly every facet of our lives, and presents itself as the default reality. Very excited to read his other works.
Capitalist Realism is an interesting mix of sharp, original insights and ridiculous tangents - the kind of filler you would never anticipate in a book of about 80 pages. On the one hand, Fisher illustrates the ways in which we accept certain ideas and philosophies as "reality" and "the way things are" alongside realities of bureaucracy and the transformation of our society into a giant panopticon. On the other hand, he insists that Kids These Days can't appreciate Nietzsche because of a laundry list of sins that, while supposedly a modern cultural illness rooted in capitalistic hedonism and consumerism, could quite easily have been written by Socrates himself. (The relevant quote: "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." - Socrates (469-399 B.C.))
Worth a read for the anti-capitalist insights but unfortunately bogged down by personal axes to grind about University auditing of professors.
Worth a read for the anti-capitalist insights but unfortunately bogged down by personal axes to grind about University auditing of professors.