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A review by hikemogan
K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher by Mark Fisher, Darren Ambrose, Simon Reynolds
3.0
This consists of several hundred pages of essays taken from Mark Fisher's K-punk blog and put into book form, separated by common subject or themes into chapters. You can read the sparks of certain ideas and concepts from one essay-- notions almost just being toyed around with at first-- turn more seasoned and concrete in others. The concept he's probably most well-known for, capitalist realism, is nearly ubiquitous.
Fisher's writing probably requires a specialized set of prerequisites to be enjoyed in its entirety. It would certainly help to be an older Leftist Gen-X man with an advanced degree in one of the social sciences, British, and a veteran of Madchester in the 1980s. By the way, that previous sentence is basically how the chapters break down if you're curious. For the rest of us, it's better to pick and choose the essays to skip over. I gave it a shot but I sunk pretty quickly when it came to the numerous essays on contemporary British politics or academic level philosophy. In total, I gave up on what well could have been about 1/5 of these essays. I chalk this down to the translation through mediums that occurred by taking a set of blog postings (highly topical, current) and freezing them into book form. Though with all that said, I just as often found many of the essays so profound that I stopped in my tracks.
Still, is all Mark Fisher ever contributed to our collective discourse was the capitalist realism, that would be more than enough. The idea is simple: as Margaret Thatcher warned "There is no alternative" [to capitalism]. Starting in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last (theoretically, at least) counterbalance to Western style capitalism, even imagining another economic and political system besides laissez faire is becoming more difficult by the day. Not only is there no realistic alternative in sight, it's hard for even the most strident Leftist to think of what a comprehensive alternative would look like.
Fisher's writing probably requires a specialized set of prerequisites to be enjoyed in its entirety. It would certainly help to be an older Leftist Gen-X man with an advanced degree in one of the social sciences, British, and a veteran of Madchester in the 1980s. By the way, that previous sentence is basically how the chapters break down if you're curious. For the rest of us, it's better to pick and choose the essays to skip over. I gave it a shot but I sunk pretty quickly when it came to the numerous essays on contemporary British politics or academic level philosophy. In total, I gave up on what well could have been about 1/5 of these essays. I chalk this down to the translation through mediums that occurred by taking a set of blog postings (highly topical, current) and freezing them into book form. Though with all that said, I just as often found many of the essays so profound that I stopped in my tracks.
Still, is all Mark Fisher ever contributed to our collective discourse was the capitalist realism, that would be more than enough. The idea is simple: as Margaret Thatcher warned "There is no alternative" [to capitalism]. Starting in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last (theoretically, at least) counterbalance to Western style capitalism, even imagining another economic and political system besides laissez faire is becoming more difficult by the day. Not only is there no realistic alternative in sight, it's hard for even the most strident Leftist to think of what a comprehensive alternative would look like.