The Work of Mark Fisher with Matt Colquhoun

I'm joined by Matt Cahun, also known as Xenogoth. He's a writer, blogger and DJ. He has written for VastAbrupt, the Some Journal of Art, Criticism and Theory, And the crisis journal for contemporary philosophy. He also currently writes his own blog, Xenogothic.net. The link will be in the description of the podcast. We're going to be discussing the work of Mark Fisher, also known as K-Punk, who was a writer, critic, cultural theorist, and teacher based at Goldsmiths University UK.

Initially achieving acclaim for his blog K Punk in the early two thousands, which Simon Reynolds described as a one man magazine superior to most magazines in Britain, something I can completely agree with. Fisher was also widely known and is still widely known for his text Capitalist Real Realism, which we'll be discussing today, which was published in two thousand nine.

alongside his other publications Ghosts of My Life published in twenty fourteen and The Weird and the Eerie published in twenty seventeen, both of which we will also be discussing today. So now into the discussion with Matt Cahun.

Okay, so I messaged you the question if you could five thinkers in a room and listen to the conversation, which five would it be? Have you still on this? Yeah. Uh I mean the main thing I was thinking of is Yeah. What kind of dinner do I want to have? Am I thinking if like people are gonna fall out or um Have sort of good conversation. Yeah, it's a I think that's why I have the question because'cause you could really you could really annoy some some philosophers you don't like.

Uh Gosh, um... I think it would be like Living or dead, it would have to be um Batai. Which he but I think just'cause he'd got on everyone's nerves and then I'd probably be interested to see what He'd be like with Nick Land. Uh especially now. Yeah, I was g I was gonna say, was it is it a young Nickland or an old Nickland? I'm not looking at my uh Yeah. Old Nicklands just to sort of see uh belligerent. I'm now trying to um look over my bookshelf to see for uh

Um actually no that's true. So I guess I'd try and I'd try and like get a lineage together. So maybe it should be Bataille, Land, Nietzsche, and like Deluxe or something and just see how they'd actually get on if they just end up uh some sort of successive belligerent Yeah, near the room. I think I'd like Yeah, I'd I'd uh yeah, I have to remember that I'd have to be in there too. I'd that's the kind of thing I'd think I'd like to watch from afar but Uh

Five minutes. Five minutes of just kind of terror. Yeah. Set them up, have like a nice spread and then sit behind like a two way glass or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right.

I was thinking about, you know, just discussing specific philosophers. And if you think about quite a lot of philosophers as clear places to start, um and I think we I think with Mark the clearest The clearest face. Oh that's probably what I should ask actually, is is what's your kind of history and where did you where did you first uh get into or hear about Mark's Mark's work? Um

I've actually tried to pin this down and not very successfully'cause it's kind of one of those things that I think just filtered in. Um I think I came to I I I was a big Hyperdub fan, which is Steve Goodman's label. Um, and I think I was listening to stuff that was on Hyperdub and I bought Steve's book. Sonic Warfare and through that learn about uh on the back of Sonic Warfare there's a um

like an endorsement from Kojo Eshin. So then I bought Kojo's book and I think via Kojo I then came to Mark and uh it was around when Ghosts of My Life came out. And I bought that book and then kind of realised I think I'd read K Punk before but hadn't really absorbed what it was and kind of just knew about n I I don't know, I think I just kind of knew about that circle sort of by being in other circles.

Yeah I think That's usually the way with the philosophers you become or the thinkers you become obsessed with is when you think back, you just have no real clue how you even I mean, especially especially with kind of C C C C R U and and Fisher and Land, that's a certain sphere where you just think, How the hell did I end up here?

I think that's I think that's part of the plan. I feel like not being able I think that's why I've tried to follow the breadcrumbs back quite so much, because it feels like some sort of C C I U Psyop that was sort of intended all along. A hundred percent. I'm gonna have to d find a C someone to do the C C L UF, so I think that might be Okay.

Coveting insanity.'Cause I I I've done the same thing of trying to you you're following You're reading some book and then you follow the smallest footnote and next thing you know it's kind of three AM and you're on web dot archive.org on the just the most obscure nineteen nineties site and you just think um have they constructed this? You know, is was this intended or are they just not very organized? Yeah. Um it's beautiful.

Yeah, no, it really is and I think it I think it's a fantastic way to do philosophy.

Uh and thinking original thinking. But yeah, I think um we definitely in a way have to start with capitalist realism because I I think most people would consider that Marx magnum opus. You know, that's that's the thing where it becomes quite serious because people a lot of people knew for c punk before long before actually capitalist realism. Um and yet that

That's the thing that at the same time puts him kind of almost officially in the in the runnings, you know, of a of a like a serious philosopher. But at the same time, because of its radical nature, keeps him just outside of it, which is Which is a really really interesting thing. So I think if we start with the title, you know, what what does capitalist realism mean? Uh well I guess the it's the the I think Mark offers a definition right in the start of the book, which is I think he he gets the

He gets the if not the the f the the the term itself,'cause I mean he was always making up sort of neologisms and things. Um But the general idea is from Jameson and or Zizek, which is that uh the end of the world is easier to imagine than the end of capitalism. Yeah. And I think guess Mark takes that idea, bottles it down into this really pithy really memorable quite marketable phrase, if anything, which I think is really important actually, um, and then just runs with it.

So yeah. So imagining imagining the end of the world is actually quite it's almost a very simple feat. You could imagine the globe exploding or wildfire, you know, if you were thinking of it in a literal sense, but if you actually try imagine or visualise or

encapsulate the end of capitalism, what is it you're tr you know you're trying to do there? I think that's somewhat what what he's trying to say is that capitalism is um I don't know if you'd agree with this, but it's it's morphed into something so absolutely strange. uh you know he he goes on later from the d Delezing Guattari quote that you know it's the unnameable thing. Um

And yeah. Um I don't know if you have any more to say on on the on on that initial initial nature of capitalism that he's he that Mark specifically is dealing with how he envisions capitalism as opposed to other people.

Well I think that I think that that that sense that you just described is what he is what's captured for him in that the first scene that he talks about in the book from um Children of Men. um where it's this scene in the film um where this the I think I can't remember the character, I'm gonna have to flick through it. Uh What's the character's name? Clive? No that was that there.

Yeah, so Clive Owen's character Theo he goes to visit um a friend in Battersea Power Station and in Battersea Power Station he's got Michelangelo's David, Picasso's Guernica, Pink Floyd's Inflatable Pig, all this stuff. Um Which at which at one point was all of these items were extremely emotionally charged at one point or another.

Yeah, so they're like they're cultural treasures is what he calls it. And I think the the fact that the world is more or less th the world is if not literally, it's kind of thinkably ended, like because people can't have children anymore. So there's kind of this this there's this new violence to that sense of the end of history. And yet still despite that end being very palpable for like society. The still discoffeted

um unnameable sort of power and force these objects have. And I think that's kind of what you described, right? It's that it's that that unnamable thing that comes with these objects that are basically they just signify, especially in this universe that the film's set in. they signify s massive amounts of wealth and power, but it's still it's d despite that being impotent in that point in history, it there's still something there and it's that sort of Eerie.

something that I think is what Mark thinks of capital being. Yeah. Because yeah, on the on the and in this section of the book he this is when he really he brings time into into relation with capital. And just across the page from actually there he says, you know, what

what happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises. And I think actually now I've I've just realised this right now actually that if you take the children of men, you know, complete, one hundred percent pure infertility as a metaphor, it wouldn't actually matter if they have children or not, because Because the youth the youth can't do anything anyway, so even if there was youth. it wouldn't be doing anything'cause capital has just completely completely taken it.

And I think it's there's there's actually a moment in the film that I always really reminds me of of kind of the irony of what Mark's pointing out and what the film's pointing out is I think there's I'm kind of also aware that your listeners might not be familiar with it, but so I'm not sure how to contextualize it. But there's a moment later on where Theo is going to meet um a character's name I can't remember again. He's played by Michael Caine anyway.

Um and they're kind of they're reminisc they're not reminiscing, they're kind of they're pondering on the future and what their sort of fate is and whatever. And then Michael Caine's character kind of breaks the tension by playing some like what's supposedly future music. And it's an Apex twin track that's just got like screams laden over it. Yeah, it's that from from memory it's one of the most kind of hairless. absolutely chaotic um Aphex twin tracks.

Yeah, but but then but then there's the strange irony that you've got this film from two thousand and six that's then using t using a track from what is it like two thousand and one to Which has barely changed. They add some screams onto it as if to make it somehow more hellish. But a a f a a a th uh what five year old track is used to signify a track.

a mu a future music, which I think there's like this weird sort of templexity in that moment in the film that kind of exemplifies this point that Mark's trying to bring out that yeah it's about this sort of impotence but then that's already sort of embedded in the film in all of it moments that you can't really escape that. Like it's it the the mindset that it's critiquing is is there even when it doesn't mean it to be.

So y it's one of the horrible absolutely horrifying things in in i if one takes capital in the in this way, which I think a lot of contemporary thinkers now are doing that is that you know You can't you can't just kind of halt this, you can't stop it. This process is ongoing, and it you know, just one paragraph down the page here, he says, the exhaustion of the future does not even leave us with the past. So, capital, not only is it continuing this this impotence, this

this death of youth and death of new new surprises, but the all it has to use as well is is the past. So the what the small amount of the past that we used to use imaginatively and creatively is now just getting absolutely kind of it's just spread it into the future so thinly that it's completely hollow.

And that hollowness is kind of what I think is super key for Mark in um yeah, I think that I think that hollowness is what's key throughout not just this but sort of all of his works, that there's always that

I don't know, I again it I think that's what m in fascinates me so much about Mark's work is that there's always this thing in the background that's not always necessarily capital, but there's just some unnamable thing. And naming that unnamable is kind of the inherent challenge that So much the thought that surrounds him tries to deal with.

So if you if you could somehow could find a definition for this thing, then perhaps that would be the like the first stepping stone to actually because I think I think Marx I mean it's it's quite clear then Marx's descriptions of capitalist realism that it's it's

It's kind of obvious that someone would want to overcome the But at the same time, uh, much like many thinkers, they they pose a problem but never really can find too many ways to actually there's not many tactics here to kind of overcome it. He said there's a there's a part at the end where he says that to come overcome capitalism it's so capitalism is so and capital is so Entwined with almost our ontology now, are being that you have to complete create this complete other thing to overcome it.

Uh as much as that's like a diagnoses that and he diagnoses it really well in capitalist rhythmism, I think, at least at that sort of point in time. Um It's not it's it's he kind of yeah, he d he diagnoses a problem at a moment in time, but it's not a it's not a new problem. And it's a problem that you have like in Foucault's later writings and that's huge for Dillas and Gouatterie. Um that sort of all the prostructurist stuff that it's always there.

And it's kind of like an update that sort of diagnoses these new fangled shiny bits that's kind of been developed to distract from that nevertheless ever present problem. It's even you know, it's that it's the spectre. It's the spectre that haunts that's kind of there all the way in Marx. It's like it's the same problem. But I wouldn't necessarily Sorry, oh um but I was gonna say I wouldn't necessarily say that there's no I mean maybe there's no tactics here, it's just a very short book.

And it's definitely a diagnosis. But I think that's what's kind of strange and what's so difficult about Marx work on the whole is that he had plenty of tactics and strategies and suggestions, but they never ended up in books. They were always

They were always in his essays that have sort of languished elsewhere and will probably come out later in this new another new posthumous public um collection coming out. But Yeah, Ulmark's tactics never sort of rose to the fore, but I think like he had plenty of them.

Okay. Um that's one thing I was gonna say there, perhaps because I did email you about this kind of linear way that we could go through it, but it's so it's so all his work is so completely entwined that you you've already brought up hauntology, which is uh one of the absolutely key key

theories that Mark's Mark works with and it um This idea that that capital uh I've just started this this page here, page four, and it says the power of capitalist realism derives in in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history.

And and it definitely consumes the past and uses that to its to its massive advantage. But it it also um completely depletes the future and the idea of future. So I think w if I'm reading Mark correctly here The the hauntology wasn't the typical horn of a ghost from the past, uh as in some cliche, it's th the haunting of an idea that we used to have of the future.

Um yes. Yeah, yeah. There's yeah, there's a twisting there. I always think of it less as like a I mean I guess'cause people people talk of hauntology, I suppose like being sort of that's like hauntology from Derrida, Derrida's using it as a play on the spectre from Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto or whatever. Um but But I think I almost feel like the the haunt bit is just kind of it's almost baggage from that old language of a spectre. Like I feel like

what Mark's talking about kind of necessarily needs the update of being like a um a hologram instead. Like it's not it's not some it's not the remnants of something that's dead and past. It's sort of uh it's it's just something that's not quite materialised. Like like um like I think I wrote a post about this on my blog that was about uh the the the the new Blade Runner film.

um with uh uh what's his name? Ryan Gosling, yeah Ryan Gosling's character Kay, um who lives with this Hologram girlfriend. And it's almost like she's not she's not a g she's not a ghost of something that he's lost. She's like a she's just the immaterialised she's an immaterialised future of domesticity that he desires. And I feel like that's kind of the the the the sp the the the baggage of the language of spectres is kind of like an it's it's it's an unfortunate

it's unfortunately open to misreadings in that way of of it being so focused on the past. But I think you're absolutely right that the future is what's key there, that it's it's uh Yeah, it's a it's an immaterial promise or something.

Okay, yeah, so thinking about that now actually, that's um that's interesting that you've put it that way because that it seems especially with this book and a lot of Mark's political writings, um, especially as well with he makes this actually quite clear in uh Exit from the Vampire It's quite a famous article, that he's always there's a definite underlying sense of an essence of Marxism and communism in Marx's work. But when like you said about him trying to escape from that old language.

he's also trying to escape from the didactic, finger wagging, uh old, old Marxism, which is, you know, extremely kind of maybe not militaristic in its actuality. That's that's arguable. Bye. the writing uh and the I'm just trying to think of the word, it comes across as very very uh authoritative at times and it's moving he's trying to move away from that, I think. Yeah.

Um I'm I think that I'm having a quick revisit'cause actually this is a I think it is one of it's a it's a brilliant text, but yeah, Run is super controversial. And I think still is very controversial. Um and especi especially so like Mark's using it to to sort of defend Russell Brand in a way and talk about the class consciousness that he sees as being it's almost like a I think it's like a lip service.

It's like that there's a I guess I guess the way that I see that article is that and I again this is something that i it runs through everything that he's done, especially in capitalist realism. that like if you were to frame the question of um the th the question of capitalist realism, which is why is the world easier to why is the end of the world easier to imagine than the end of capitalism?

And I guess that what he would diagnose that as is it's a kind of melancholy. And so the fact that mental health is so important to a lot of his writings that there's this kind of deflatedness, there's a it's a deflation of consciousness, whether that's class consciousness or otherwise. that is kind of endemic.

And I almost feel like why exiting the Vampire's castle was so controversial was that Yeah, he was kind of rejecting that finger wagging, but at the same time maybe diagnosing where that was coming from in a way that a lot of people didn't like or necessarily agree with that you know, that the the the the the bad we what do you call it there's a it's the stench of bad conscience and witch hunting moralism.

as if that's kind of a a reaction to melancholy, to sort of it's like a r grief response that people get upset and lash out or something. And I guess that there's a way that that's not really an easy thing to say. So I'm tr I'm just trying to where do you think this this old what Marx says is finger wagging kind of leftism is still coming from? That's quite a tough question.

I mean, yeah, but I think that's I think it's precisely that. It's it's this melancholy. It's like it's how so the the when the the the class was that Mark was teaching at Goldsmiths where I was a student before he died, the was where the the very first um lecture that he gave where he was talking about post capitalist desire, which is the name of the course, and talking asking questions of like, do we do we l d is there such a thing as post capitalist desire?

people kind of talk about a future beyond capitalism, but is that something that we actually do desire? How can we how can we quantify that? How can we sort of understand that desire and how we might realize it. And the way that he said he was thinking about that was because of left melancholy, which is like uh something that was diagnosed all the way back by Walter Benjamin, um, as like the the left has uh just uh has a natural propensity to being down on itself.

Um and I think that that's that's morphed in s so many different ways and directions and has been analysed by plenty of people. Mark would reference um Wendy Brown, um, as a writer that wrote and has also written a lot about left melancholy. Um and I feel like for him this finger wagging was precisely if this like

Is is i is a reaction to that. It's like to say that uh I don't know, it's like a bad mood, right? It's like uh it's it's it's kind of a a bad mood that's to be expected given the situation that we're in and that the left always diagnoses, but the left never seems to diagnose that it's it's it always seems to see itself as above these descriptions, as if to say that this is something that's affecting society. But we are the left, we are enlightened and we sort of are

are more aware of what's going on, so this doesn't affect us. But I feel like what he's pointing at is that this finger wagging and this moralism is precisely an effect of this kind of late capital malaise. that the left is sort of it's frustrated with itself of not being able to its own sort of lack of workable solutions or whatever.

Yeah. So the the left in some ways the what what Mark calls by the uh calls the late capitalist Malays, the kind of teenage I think depressive hedonism or hedonism, the left's kind of Would you say the left has kind of s subsumed itself into that, but from that the left is still trying to act as above, whereas in in actually A deluze and Wattari fashion, it's the left should see itself as kind of imminent too late.

Late stage capitalism to capitalist realism and actually move from that as opposed to trying to move from this kind of false position of already above.

above this thing. But really it's it's if it acts from there, all capital is doing is just subsuming it back into itself. Yeah. Yeah, so like the I mean Uh you could argue that the left has kind of already started to do that where it talks about like um I mean Mark being one of the people that

um the arguments that the the left doesn't really want a f a future beyond capitalism because it's always, you know, it's it can't let put down its iPhones or its Starbucks or whatever and can't stop using Uber or things like this. And that's kind of always a criticism that's fired that way. And so then you have these kind of um like f uh fully automated luxury communism or whatever, for example. So luxury communism understood as a

as a communism that retains all of the wealth of capital but also finds a wealth beyond it. So to say you don't have to you don't have to reject these material goods. to be a communist, you don't have to you don't have to reject these desires that we've kind of been fed.

you can move on to something else. And that's something that I think, you know, that's kind of besides the point, but it's to say that that's sort of the positive that's kind of been is being analyzed and is being sort of dealt with and discussed. But no one but then that's kind of left what the negative side of that is left behind and to say that, you know, if if if we can recognise that we desire these things

and they actually improve our lives or whatever. But we don't that doesn't consider the flip side that actually results in this kind of moralism, this sort of th th which is likewise products of the same system. But those aren't critiqued and analysed in the same way that the positives are. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think there is actually still some leftists who abide by that kind of silly

silly argument of and I think that there was actually a recent episode of uh Have I Got News th news for you that covered this. The the the very typical oh look at the Occupy protesters who are anti capitalist but they're they're all holding Starbucks as if

in something that isn't capitalist. In a world without capitalism there isn't going to be a coffee chain. You know, it's a s it's a ridiculous idea. It's you you you're still gonna have coffee and you're still gonna have mobile telecommunications devices. in a world without capitalism. It's just how those things are going to affect you differently because a a thing

what what's happening here and and what Mark diagnoses is that yeah, we ha we ha we have these things, but the way in which capitalism uses them intrinsically just kind of strips our lives of of a lot. Mobile phones are currently kind of destroying attention spans and they're they're filled with just kind of Well, rubbish and junk. Um, but I'm n I'm not entirely sure I agree that that would be v mu how how or how that would be different.

I mean I I guess that's that's that's an argument that would be taken into what is what is desire after capital. So i within these lectures, was there any finishing finishing place or or route that was being taken towards what desire might be after capitalism?

Um Unfortunately not. I mean there was it was a fifteen week course and only five of the the classes went ahead before Matt died. Um Uh but it was more of just like the background. So I think um the last class that he did before he died was on uh Jean Francois Liotard's Labidinal Economy. Uh what else did he do? I've got the reader around it somewhere. Oh, and there was and it was a bunch of obscure text too actually about sort of um post sixty eight politics in Europe. Um

the the the affinities the the the now lost affinity at that moment that was between sort of workers and students that now sort of is like a pipe dream. It was basically sort of antecedents that that were going to form com um uh acid communism. So I think it was his way of sort of testing out a bunch of ideas and yeah, showing the seeds for what would then become his

the f yeah, the finishing the finishing the the finishing comment on that course would be his book, which now, unfortunately, we will never get. But um I think there was a lot there was a lot of thought that had been developed on that phone. Okay. Do you have do you have a potential as much as you can overview of what the vision of Mark Fish's acid communism was gonna be.

Well well no. I mean uh no, I don't think I uh I I have my own interpretation. Um Okay, yeah, I think I think that's as much as as one could ask for.

Yeah, I mean I think that and that's kind of something to stress for sure because I feel like um You don't want to do a disservice to uh Well yeah, they'll do a disservice so they don't want to put words in his mouth, but I kind of feel like the the i Um I mean so as I understand it Acid communism as a phrase for Mark kind of grew out of um uh there's a lecture that he gave

at a like a design conference of all things. Um and he was talking about uh designer communism, which is kind of like uh a play on the sort of eighties insult of designer socialism, kind of like Champagne socialism. Okay.

And so he w he was to sort of playing with that. Um and it was initially sort of a phrase that came out as a joke,'cause to sort of say, Well, how do you how do you marry um a sort of twenty-first century understanding of communism with these other potentials that he felt had been um sort of left unfulfilled from the sixties and seventies.

uh seeing that time as a kind of um revolutionary period beyond the stereotypes in a way. Um for all the reasons. So yeah, so you have like the not just the the psychedelia of the sixties and the summer of love as like a kind of the sexual revolution or whatever, but also these massive political shifts both in the US and Europe and elsewhere.

Um and so I guess what Mark wanted to do with Africanism was to try and like Kaplan's realism, it's kind of like a pr it's a it's a provocation that he throws out there to try and um see what a revisiting of the mechanisms and things that were in play at that time could mean for us today. Um, in a time when they've generally been dismissed.

And I think but I think there's uh the issue with that which is is where my personal interpretation comes in, is that since Marx's death there has been there's been acid communism has kind of become quite it's kind of become a bit of a meme, which I'm sure you would have enjoyed. Yeah, yeah. So it was in The Guardian, it was in That was a bunch of other sort of left corner ones. All right. mainstream popular left wing publications.

Um and there are other sort of variants of of of the the play on that. I think there's also like I think I saw on Twitter there's like a a London radical mindfulness workshop thing that is now sort of running with those ideas. Um yeah, it was yeah, I think it's I mean I think they're yeah, they're adopting that phrase, but I think it just doesn't sit right with me at all because I don't it doesn't it doesn't relate to the work Mm.

It doesn't relate to Marx's work in a way that I think it should. Like I think that in talking about asset communism and the potentials of a sixties and seventies. just like with Mark's own work, I think that to to go back to that point and to then just sort of base that on a kind of new

sense of being a hippie or whatever, is that's a massive disservice to I think what he was doing. I think the ideas are rooted there, but to then dismiss everything that came afterwards and to just kind of idealize those things that were happening then and not really just up just just drag that into now without the kind of technological updates that so interested Mark.

All right. But I think I think you'd be correct, at least at least that's how I'd read it in saying that would be a disservice because if That would ha just taking the the ideas of the sixties and kind of dragging them forward and and just having having them again. would be to kind of ignore the overarching message of capitalist realism that actually that movement was itself. I mean sixties onwards you I I would argue you've got complete

subsumption into capital. I mean that there there there was new ideas, there was a lot of throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. Um and I think when Mark or in K-Punk actually says about the end of the 80s was P. Gabriel's sledgehammer. put this kind of stop to that the the era before that. Then you've got the small era of of the nineties with the C CIU and what they were doing and the cyberpunk thing. And beyond that, it just got it just kind of Th not much happens.

Yeah. Suggest to drag the ideas from the sixties forward again would almost be like just to do exactly the same thing again, which is the typical right wing argument against against communism is is, you know, oh, it wasn't real communism.

Which which that actually would be if they were to just simply do it again. Whereas the there was an interview you linked recently actually with Aaron Bastiani where he he articulates it very well about what what's kind of meant by well, he specifically is talking about fully automated luxury comedy.

Um but it bringing communism into a world where UBI is possible, automation is possible, you know, uh these things weren't possible back in uh Well I think it's I mean I think what what's key for that is it's like um like the way that Bastani frames it in terms of um yeah, so I think he says something like these new technologies allow for

The w away yeah, so like you say, automation, but also I think the the I mean the sixes ideas that Mark is bringing forward is like um I think in He references the Beatles um uh sort of anti work ethic of like stay in bed, float upstream, uh the sort of the Lenin and Oko's like bed protest is kind of it's kind of like an anti praxis like just um impotence. And to just say that, you know, we don't have to do anything.

And that's kind of as if as if to make that a kind of desire is that you don't it's you it's like that um I mean like you think about that now and what relevance that has. And I think I remember reading reports talking about we knew we now have this thing called presenteism or something. Like rather than having absenteeism at work where people call in sick all the time, you've got this thing that people now don't call in sick, even if they really should.

Um and that sort of being like a rolling problem. And it's like, well Well, truly to to t to combat that sort of new development in sort of the capitalist system of work, to to re to bring back those new anti work ideas and to kind of radicalize them. Uh as if not not to radicalize them, but to use them to radicalize um new conceptions of work. That's kind of a worthwhile endeavor.

I mean maybe maybe this isn't what f Fisher meant, but the the idea of anti work. i in its purest sense is i is quite silly because you need work in some form, but definitely a reconceptualization of what work means because like you said about the presenteers I think I've read an a a few articles on this and actually these these people who are who are should be off, you know, to take care of their health, which should come before pretty much everything.

they w they're not actually working when they go in anyway, uh, because they're too ill to work. So it's not it's not a case of production or uh productivity. It's a case of almost keeping up appearances for capital. Um so so what reconception of work looked like in A fish are right. Reconception of the work.

I think I actually this is something that I kind of wish I'd have the opportunity to ask Mark, is that um there's uh the blogger uh dam Yehu, um whose I think his book's called The Real Movement and his tagline on his blog is um communism is free time and nothing else. Which I think is the most brilliant provocation. And that's kind of what I imagine this kind of postwork society to be. It's like, well

If you're not working, what do you do in your free time? I mean, can make I've come home from work today and we're making a podcast, like and that's cool and that's like that's that's something That's kinda w you know, producing something, producing thought, thinking about things.

Um because we've got the time to. Um and I think that I I know personally that if I'd had I didn't have to work so much, I'd produce even more. I'd do things that I was passionate about. Um and that I think would nevertheless, you know improve the world in some way. I'd like to think so. Um I don't know how that works in terms of like, you know, but like like uh I guess it's like uh inventors.

Like the kind of the ideal of an inventor being someone that's just kind of like um compulsively creating things to bet society. Um it's kind of the mad scientist stereotype. Like that's communism. That's that's that's what do you do if you've got free time. And now and now I kinda wanna eat my words'cause I've got an image of like Rick and Morty communism. Yeah. Um That doesn't sound great. I think awful. I'd rather work retail.

As well. Um yeah. But I do not I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to kind of kind of push you a bit. Uh do you not do you not think that somewhat the world of postwork do you do you think it's a pipe dream or do you think genuinely that capital is is is genuinely kind of holding back the possibility of that for its own gain.

Um, I don't think capital's holding the possibility back. I feel like that's kind of the the horror of late capital and then and I think it's the fact that it's framed as a horror of like the horror of automation, the kind of Luddite the the the kind of Luddite sensibility that capitalism is almost sort of dragged with itself to kind of to kind of perpetuate itself for most, as if to say that this would stop things from being as they are.

Um it would it would mean that people were listless and had no sort of thing nothing to do. Um it's a generally awful thing. Um but we're seeing it happening and and it's if it's almost as if that like there's no there's no accounting for what capital wants to do. And I guess this is where you get these other controversies of people assigning agency to capital that you can't account for.

It's as if to talk about it as if it's making sort of decisions and if to say it's sort of it's whether that's Like as if it's holding itself back or it's holding people back. It's it's so entwined and it's so entangled that to I mean Yes, yeah. So so it's almost as if the fact that I think what where that comes in for Fisher and the importance of that, it's not necessarily just to say that um capitalism uh uh post Capitalism no. Post work.

society after capitalism to say that whether that Let me have a think of how I actually want to word this. Yeah, I I'm gonna try to take a guess here. that entire idea of work that we have, like literally almost the word work, is so intrinsically to archaic notions of capital and capitalism and productivity and production, th it's it's you you need a new language to move beyond it.

Um not necessarily. I mean, I'm not sure if you're The the word work in particular is kind of a tricky one because it always makes me think of um Maurice Blanchot, who I really like, at least in terms of his talking about communism and he talks about um He he writes this text responding to something that Jean Luc Nancy said to him, which is that um

Oh it's such a mess. That Bataille' Bataille's vision of communism is unworkable on purpose as if to say that uh it's it's a kind of community sensitive community that is inoperable by design because it's beyond work. And m m uh Blanchot challenges that by bringing in this sense of that it's not unworkable but rather it's it's

It's um unavowable. So it's not to say that we need a we need a new language, but it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about that there's this element to capital that is that is you can't really you can't assign language to. But there's also this part to the human condition that you can't assign language to that kind of comes in that in-betweenness.

There's an interesting quote actually, a it's I think a really good quote uh for this on page fifteen of capitalist religion. And Mark says Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker, but the living flesh it converts into dead labour is ours and the zombie it makes Zombi the zombies it makes are us. So there's there's an interest there's a really strange

n not so much hypocrisy, but almost kind of horror there that Fisher is is w in one sense taking away something, saying, look, capitalism is parasite, you just you just can't do anything with it. It's there. It's the unnamable thing and it's there. But it is it is making living flesh. It's making zombies which are us. But at the same time, in that same sentence, we're only zombies. It's not making us anything great. Thank you.

So there's a strange sense of okay, take up take up not so much arms, but aut automise yourselves, but you are still zombies. So I'm I'm not sure how Mark means what he means by zombies here maybe it is the traditional kind of just just dead consumers. Um but i do you think he's saying that we can we can own that?

I think I mean I think this is this is probably a really key passage and I think there's it reminds me of a lecture that Mark gave that's on YouTube, um which is called How to Kill a Zombie. Um and I feel like what Mark means by zombies here, or if not here, then definitely later when he sort of develops his thought more is It's like the neoliberal subject.

Um so the subject, the self under neoliberalism. That is kind of the that is that's the zombie. And it's not to say that we can own that subjectivity. And I guess this was what comes back to talking about post work. as if to say that we can't really imagine I mean we can when you frame it in the right way, but as if to say we can't imagine life without work.

And it's kind of the same it's kind of different shades of this same problem, which is the end of the world and the end of capitalism and that kind of playoff that I feel like it's and this is likewise this it's the thread I mean this is where Marx thought's obviously so convoluted as this is a thread that goes all the way to the end all the way to the com uh acid communism.

Whereas if it's where we can't imagine the end of the we we can imagine the end of the world, not the end of capitalism. We can't imagine the end of work. We can't imagine the end of the subject. We can't imagine a new sense of self. And I think that that's what uh there's a line even in capitalism that I won't be able to remember the or maybe I can remember the page. Sixty six. Yeah.

I'm I'm really ashamed that I r knew that. Uh oh yeah, so so yeah, Mark's talking uh he says it's my favorite line in the entire book and he says the required subject, the collective subject, does not exist. Yet the crises the crisis, like all of the global crises we're now facing, demands that it be constructed. And I think that that's like it's um

as if to say that what he means by that that there's uh you have to kill the zombie. You have to it's as if to say that that there's a limit to thought. Like that means you can frame it as like death is a limit of thought or whatever. And here you've got this thing that's like it's on the verge of kind of being a new subject or it has the potential to be a new subject or to just be beyond thought, but it kind of clings in there as this like undead but also unliving thing.

Yeah. That that ties in with this this this earlier quote that I that I love. It's Mark's really good at Really? uh condensing something that you can just kind of spiral out from into the God knows what, but he says capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable, which is just absolute kind of horror really. think about. One

phil philosophically the concept of horizon if you think if you think of I mean mostly Heidegger here, but horizon is in that which you know, that which humanity that's that's the limit. That's it. the limit of what you can think which in certain sense is what you can be ontologically. That's what capitalism occupies. So the subjectivity here in the and uh when you're saying you know the crisis to move beyond the subject. It it just sounds absolutely insane because you have to move beyond this.

You have to move beyond a horizon. So has that horizon which Mark's on about here is that has that been constructed? Um yeah, I think so. I mean I think that I think I think that's a great passage. Um particularly in the fact that it it it makes uh I I c I hadn't I didn't remember that passage but it kind of f fired off a reference in my brain, which is to Jody Dean, who's a writer that Mark really admired. And she wrote a book called The Communist Horizon.

Um and she gives a definition of horizon in there that I think's brilliant. I've kind of just joked at the PDF. Um I'm gonna read this whole paragraph actually'cause I think it's great and I think it it it addresses what you've just said um brilliantly. She says, um, well it's that say okay, so there's a lost horizon, right? She's talking about this sort of temporal the the horizon of history.

And she says, Uh I initially understood the term horizon in a more mundane spatial fashion, as the line dividing the visible separating Earth from sky. I like to pretend that I had in mind the cool astrophysics notion of an event horizon. The event horizon surrounds a black hole, a singularity. It's a boundary beyond which events cannot escape. While the event horizon denotes the curvature of space time affected by a singularity, it's not that much different from the spatial horizon.

Both evoke a line demarcating a fundamental division that we experience as impossible to reach, and thus that we can neither escape nor cross, although an external observer could s see us cross it.

Horizon, then, not tags not a lost future, but a dimension of experience we can never lose. Even if lost in a fog or focused on our feet, we fail to see it. The horizon is real with a capital R Not just in the sense of impossible, we can never reach it, but also in the sense of the actual format, condition and shape of our setting. And I take both these senses of real to be Lacanian, we can lose our bearings, but the horizon is a necessary condition or shaping of our actuality.

It's the the horizon is the fundamental dev division establishing where we are. So it's as if to say that and I think this kinda is kind of a key way of thinking about communism, if not in the way that I don't know if Mark thought about it this way, but it's a way that I ended thinking about it, is that it's kind of it's uh the horizon of communism is always shifted. And it's kind of the the I think what's radical about communism in Marx's framing of it is that

reintroduces a sort of temporality. It makes this kind of it brings back this sort of of pelos, of of progress, of moving towards something. Even if you can never reach it, it's always it's always a goal. Okay. So the horizon the horizon mark talks about that that that perhaps would be That quote I mean I I perhaps shouldn't say this, but perhaps that quote could at least be articulated better by saying

Uh it occ capitalism seamlessly occupies the event horizon of the thinkable. It you know, the thought of of even time. So history just getting subsumed not in a in a in a kind of a textbook history, but what what one can do with history, what one can learn with history. So this horizon I think with capital is it i it must be expanding in some way though because capital is

Capitalism is is moving in some direction. So I'm not sure what you could say this horizon is doing right now. Is it is it merely a a simulation of The way I mean this is where uh admittedly I always end up falling down with this kind of thought is that it's I think what's the same thing. There's the argument that you you you can't really you don't you can't you can't uh appreciate directions in which to go if you don't know where you are. Um

Well that's what I mean. I kind of I think that I tend not to I try and I I find it difficult to think about capitalism in that sense because I end up being f far more focused on the potentials of where to go. And that's kind of probably a backwards way of thinking about it and probably not but I just I think I I find it yeah, I think it's uh it's such a it's such a head fuck, frankly.

I d yeah, I don't I don't no, I don't think that's a bad way th of thinking about it because in a certain way I do th think Capital, I mean, it's not great to anthropomorphise it, but it would definitely kind of I think hate the idea of someone finding their bearings. Yeah. Because then then this this kind of vampiric parasite then isn't the one with the primary power.

this constant kind of fragmentation and if we're to talk if we're to speak the Loz and Quartari here, the constant deterritorialisation and re territorialisation completely just keeps people and communities and movements so fragmented and kind of in flux that there is just zero possibility for kind of okay, we need to go north. You know, there's no time or there's and yeah, even in time, there's no way you can do this. There's a the future's just been just Yeah.

I think that's interesting, i especially in you saying that we should go north as in'cause I I I'm not sure who said this. I don't know if it was Mark or if it was Land or Someone I think it might have been Land, but talking about Capitalism in terms of the thing, um as in John Carpenter's thing. Maybe it's not even Negostani. I can't remember.

And I think that's a great way of thinking about it, especially in that in that deluz g deluzogarian sense of like this so the thing being this alien that absorbs everything that it comes into contact with. And it's this kind of horrific entity. It's a de it deterritorialises, it's a deterritorialising entity.

that nevertheless re territorialises in its absorption of what is outside of itself. And that process in itself is horrific. It's kind of capitalism is if you're gonna give it agency and give it a give it a shape and a face, it's the it is the thing. Yeah. But then the but then the thing in that film

there's never the initial thing. It's kind of there's a there's a sense that it's just always been somewhere and perhaps isn't always aesthetically this way So you talk about face, it's kind of like has it taken this face or? Yeah. Yes, yeah. So you have the people at the characters in that film that the like they have that the uh

It's kind of like a who, doesn't it, I guess, of like who's who's the thing and who's not the thing. And you these people are kind of they're they're they are they're zombies, right? They're kind of turned into these s kind of mindless simulations of the person that they were. And then you piss off that you piss off that simulation and then you get the kind of Matt. Um

It you I guess you could call it r the reality, but then there's this there's this a certain sense that when you finally do witness the grotesque thing, yes, it's horrible. There's a there's a definite sense that That's... There's still something underlying that which you're never going to be able to get.

Yeah. The reality is there's no reality or something, or there's oh it's uh isn't it actually is this something that isn't this something that you said on uh on uh Twitter today, actually, which is you said capital makes representation is Okay, there's something I read too That no I uh th I've got that written in capitalist realism under the horizons of the thinkable quote, because you take this notion representation as as I always think of it as as like uh throwing a cloth on top of it.

A a cloth that kind of sticks right to the edges of the thing in itself, the real. So you can only ever see this cloth, you can only ever see the representation. But Capital can do whatever the hell it wants.

with this representation. And throughout time and throughout material and throughout space, that just completely ruins humanity. They don't know what they have to do. Because the reels the real's gone and they have you know, these this representation just completely can completely And that that sounds like the thing to me, really. Right. Oh. It doesn't bear it doesn't bear thinking about, but we will. Oh it doesn't but we do it anyway.

Yeah, it's it's kind of horrible because the more you discuss it then the you you realise his capital's is kind of probably laughing.

Yeah. But I guess that's partly it I mean I think that's at least something to say to to to drag it back to Mark's work, I think that's the key of the weird and the eerie. And that book being all about that horror. And I feel like that book especially with it being Mark's last book published before he died. And I I and this is partly also my critique of people kind of ad uh adopting c um asethomanism for these kind of mindfulness.

things or whatever else, this kind of neo hippidum, is that it rejects it rejects the fact that that was to come after the Wid Niri and it and and I think that the the horror of that book is so important to what was to come. In that very sense that The the the thing the even the thinking about the thing as like a as a thing, it's this kind of psychedelic, mutant, acidic Creature alien thing.

Yeah. And the horror of that is central to to to to pritify acid communism into nice niceness, mindfulness, yoga, retreat stuff. To to cut out to cut out the horror of the with me Eri. Uh what is it that's said in you to get into the heart of horror. It's the only the only way you can deal with horror is to be you know Yeah. The Hall of Darkness, right? It's the it's the the touch. That's the only way you can you but you'd have to come back from that as well.

Yeah, I mean the the boat journey is it's horrific at the end, but it's also mentitive. You know, it's not to say that you have to reject the that side of it, but that I think the two are you can't separate them and I feel like that's what Marx work was getting at that That the you have to take the rough with the smooth and to do one or the other kind of just to miss the point completely. They are necessary necessary bed fellows.

Yeah, so you say about the rough with this move, so that would kinda would that would that imply then that the left have this idea. Literally kind of a grass is always greener and then they they believe there's this way that we could just like kind of flick a switch and all of a sudden we're in this mood and the rough is like gone. And that's the left that that is kind of regressive and and Fisher wish to move away from

Um, yeah, well, um, I guess it's I think that the best way that that I think about this and I I wrote this in an essay uh on capitalist realism that I had published a couple of months ago is that um acid communism is is a project beyond the pres the pleasure principle.

And I think that ties into I mean, Mark was hugely influenced by Freud, especially in the Weird Nearing, all the way through, sort of that the psychoanalysis. He as much as he was unpopular, Mark was a big fan of Zhuzek and Lacan and all of that stuff. Um and I feel like that the left hasn't yet moved beyond its pleasure principle. It's its utopian politics are important and necessary for imagining new futures.

But it's a pro it's not to s and it's not to say that that's not worthwhile, but it is a project that must go beyond that as well. That's kind of um You know, it's that it's Eros on Thanatos. It's death and death and death drive and life drive, whatever the other one is. D well desire, right? It's uh Um those two things are they are the engine of the subject for Freud and I think for Mark II. And to take one of those things out, then you've broken your engine. You're not gonna move anywhere.

The left is almost ignoring the death drive. Have I missed the point? Well no no no no. I mean I think that's that's one way of putting it. I don't know if it's ignoring it or maybe it's I think that it can't ignore it because it's kind of acting it out i in a lot of ways. It's kind of it's like it doesn't it's it doesn't know it's there almost. It's like it's it's expressing and sort of showing its subconscious death driveness all the time. But it's like it chooses not to see it.

I mean I I kind of I still as much as I I end up like critiquing the left a lot, I still kind of consider myself a leftist and I feel like that's not uh I don't think the left's ignorant. Or at least it's not stupid. It's ignorant in the sense that it doesn't it's it I don't think it r i uh on a populist level, it doesn't It doesn't fully appreciate the mechanisms that Coexisting in a time which capitalism is you know, that's capital left that behind a long time ago.

I think it's something that one of is on one of Nick Land's posts and he sort of he he acknowledges that the left has produced the best analysis of capitalism. Um and that's kind of and he and he kind of acknowledges that. But I think what's what's kind of missing from that is to say that but the left doesn't have a very good analysis of itself.

And I feel like that's where I think the right has quite a decent analysis of the left, especially in like things like the cathedral. I feel like the cathedral as polemic as it is

Highlights a lot of left of the left blind spots that it doesn't attune to. And I think if it did that and kind of was more honest with how it uh honest about it not its failures and its successes and how it has shaped the world as a kind of hegemony beyond it's kind of the it doesn't you know the left not acknowledging the fact that it's kind of it does it sort of sets the boundaries at the moment.

Okay. So the left always always kind of always sees itself as soon as the process changes, the left's always trying to find a way to separate itself and be above it in some way. Or create a structure wherein it can be above it.

Um yeah. I I um or b uh even below it, I feel like this is I feel like this is the this is the the left melancholy that Walter Benjamin talked about and Wendy Brown and even Mark, I think, especially sort of in the like we were saying before about the Vampire's castle and I think like that moralism that he's talking about comes from that

sort of s um disenfranchisement with itself and kind of like attacking itself. And I feel like it's the The the left has been, for all of its failures and it's and it and it holds its failures sort of very it always thinks about its failures and never its successes. And I think that the the the point of the cathedral is sort of a as a as an analysis. Um What that?

very polemically suggests is that the left's been very successful in kind of setting the tone for politics, um, for sort of shifting that you know, people talk about the Overton window or whatever, that it's kind of shifted backwards and the left kind of hasn't really appreciated the power that it's had in setting the agenda in a lot of ways and continuing to do that. And the right r can rightly rebel against that and and sort of want to

follow its own goals, but I think then the key is that the left just the the the blind spot is just not realizing that it's managed to do that in the first place. As if to say that that's just that the th the The environment that we have now that the right is so deeply against, the left sees it as common sense. Um But doesn't see the establishment of that as common sense as a victory for itself. Okay. Yeah, I'm excited.

Um okay. I think I think as as you've I think that's a good kind of thing. point to stop with regards to the leftism. But we we did briefly then move on to the weird and the Erie, which I think is um On my first read through it was you kinda I kind of thought there's so many references going on and I didn't take too much through it and then when I went through again there was more coming out of the woodwork and I've I've underlined a few quotes here and there's one that

Going back to what we were saying about this kind of horizon, Mark says for what is any saying in real uh in realist fiction if not the same kind of system? How is any reality effect achieved except by authors using the literary equivalent of simulatory techniques?

Um and he's referencing here a Philip K. Dick story where this small town is revealed to be this kind of intricate system of pasteboard frontages, hypnotic suggestions and hallucinations. Um And I think m one thing Mark does with this idea of the horizon is he takes it away from that kind of metaphysical Heideggerian notion, which is this grand notion of uh kind of anthropomorphic agency and it really takes it away from that that kind of

serious philosophical calendar, not to say that capitalism isn't serious, but and then it puts the horizon back into reality, into the realism and says, you know, this horizon is is kind of around the corner. Well it's like it's it's I mean to drag it back into the philosophical it's it's the it's like the Kantian transcendental, right? It's a it's a it's a much easier way to kind of understand that concept. Um but most importantly for this book is to also You know, show a way beyond it.

to to to show that the horror I think there's a I mean I think there's another part in the book where Mark's talking about the he talks about the outside and the outside as a as a kind of the Kantian idea is super central to the whole book. But he makes but he stresses in the introduction that the uh terrors are not all there is to the outside.

And it's as if to say that that yeah, that sometimes sometimes the horror of the outside is simply revealing the nature of the status quo. Um as if to say that you you i i it it gives you it to to take a new vantage point. As if to say that like the w the from the the the the Dean the Jody Dean quote from earlier where she talks about

that, you know, a horizon is it's impossible to reach, you can't escape or cross it, but an external observer could nonetheless see you do so, even if you couldn't perceive that you were doing it. And I think that that that element that's always in a lot of sci fi, I think that sees those sees those stories as being kind of a key to suggesting what we could do with a sort of shift in perspective which doesn't have to be quite so radical and absolute as a sort of Philip Gay Dick novel.

It can be as you know, as simple as shifting perspective in terms of dunno, politically or whatever, or just at least being more open to different viewpoints. Yeah.

Um so I think perhaps it should define the weird and weird and the eerie here just quickly, maybe starting with I've got the one for weird. So Mark says the weird is constituted by a presence, the presence of that which does not belong So I don't know if you can think of any examples or if you have anything to say about this this idea of the weird in terms of what we've kind of already spoken about, if there's anything you can think of.

Um Or or if you have anything kind of general to say about uh the mid in the Erie. The weird's a tricky one. I feel I I I I went through this book really slowly last year and I was I it was part of a reading group. We went sort of read a chapter once a week and we went so deeply into it and kind of as you said I have the same experience of I read it.

in sort of one sitting the first time and kind of glossed through it and then later found that there was so much more in there. Um but in saying that the weird was kind of always the one that sort of felt slightly more slightly more obvious in a way. As if you kind of you know when something's weird. Um

Yeah. Which I guess is kind of w it's links into what we're saying about the thing, like the not realising the thing because of the the way this person like a person's behaviour, this person that's become a zombie or whatever or um Uh like my like so my my my one of my favorite films is uh the nineteen seventies version of Version of the Body Snatchers with like uh just um Donald Sutland in

and the whole sort of horror of um the kind of the the red terror of that film of it kind of this uh underlying analogy of communism and the cold war and and the the weirdness of Um people the the the the characters in that film can't attest to um the the way that something is off. So they'll like their their their loved one will be replaced by a plant alien or whatever and grown overnight.

and the next day that they'll know that that's something's not right. They their behaviour does not fit into what this person that's known. But the horror is that that that no one else can relate to that. And I feel like that's kind of that's an exemplary example of the weird for me, that it's that yeah, that there's something that you know doesn't fit and and on a social level that can be really horrifying.

say whether or not this is or isn't weird but it's almost like meta weird in um ditches blue velvet when the yellow man I think that's that's all his name is just kinda yellow suit he gets killed and then they leave the room and come back in and this guy who's got a bullet through his head Which is kinda normal in terms of watching a film, you know, people people can get shot. But the the he's still just stood he's just stood up straight.

And hasn't fucked with the floor and everything else about the shot is completely completely. Uh but you're you're left with this idea that the weird then is Okay, is the director allowed to do that? And I you know, oh he can just he's he's given himself permission to just say like, oh no, your character doesn't fall over, he just stands there now. Um it's like this meta weird kind of like you were saying about Mark saying about shifting your perspective.

It's ways like that where you just kind of you you know, you almost need someone, you need to see films like that to say, you know what, you're allowed to do this. You know, you're allowed to just Move your perspective. Um, I'm gonna definitely gonna watch Invasion of the Body Status style. I've yet yet to watch. Oh it's great. Yeah. I could talk about that film all day. Uh but I won't. Um

Yeah, it's a great one. Um but I feel like there's so many I mean there's so many more examples. Um So I guess the weird in that in the sense of what we've been talking about, the weird is kind of the um expanded out from that context is uh I guess it's the the the the horror of automation, right, that we were talking about before or something. These these things that don't belong to the status quo. Yeah. Um that will sort of they

Yeah, yeah, they're there. They're kind of there with the people talk about things being weird all the time. Donald Trump in the White House, can you could say? I'm finding that actually a lot because when you talk to when you talk to people about automation, people have this idea of those kind of seventies almost Soviet style cartoons where you've got like robots with big arms to

on conveyor belts. But then when you say well actually uh automated checkouts that you know, self served checkouts, they I think they replaced on average about Two to four workers, I think. And that's automation. Uh and then where when you say to people about okay, well I think it's out of thirty two million jobs in the UK in the next ten years, one million of them definitely will be automated. People just kinda say things like, Oh, well that'd be nice. But then there's this kind of

the weird there is the acknowledgement of no, literally is already happening. Like these kind of these I mean, this is almost go going into the rump of hyperstition where these weird fictions from the kind of golden era of sci-fi. You know, that we've always dreamed of

are now actually becoming reality. And and when that when you see that reality, it's like, okay, this shouldn't that's a fiction, you know, that shouldn't be a ri the real. I'm just trying to think of any more examples. I don't know if you I don't know if you'd agree if that's weird but

No, totally. I mean I think that I think in a way and I think what's important to s to m to say here in this context anyway is that like Um I guess part of what we glossed over before in talking about Ghosts of My Life that in part of the thing that Mark's talking about in terms of time. And so the book's a collection of a lot of cpunk posts and Mark always gave his sort of special position to music.

And he's mourning the fact that the new has kind of disappeared from music. There's nothing that's kind of there's nothing weird about music anymore in a in a pop sense. Pop's not weird enough anymore. Which you can kind of argue isn't necessarily true anymore, and I think that's maybe why Mark moved beyond that. But But I think the weird miri kind of exemplifies that there are other forms of aesthetics, other forms other forms of fiction, other forms of art that can nevertheless

tell us something about the moment that we're living in. Um and I think that that's exactly it in a way, that h how do you how do you quantify the actual of what we've what you've just said in terms of automation in a way that's kind of culturally resonant. And I think that's a lot in a ways that's what's kind of difficult for that that's kind of what struggles to be grasped.

in that sense of no future or whatever, that the future is still happening, but we have kind of lost the way to talk about and comprehend it and kind of um articulate it. I think Mark does call it a haunt, you know. Um...

The way it's really difficult to talk about because we we've come up with these these examples, but what kind of happens when you think of the example is either your brain kind of w in thinking about them gets a bit weirded out and you just can't kind of you can't structure them in such a way where you can articulate it very well because what's weird y it's it's um uncanny in in a way, you know. You just know something's odd.

uh a very new a animatronic or android kind of robot types when they start talking and things, you know it's a robot, but it's the absolute kind of effort it's putting into to try to be human. The your brain's going like, No, I don't want that. That's not that shouldn't B.

Okay, so then if you we move on to the eerie, Mark says the eerie concerns the unknown. When knowledge is achieved, the eerie disappears. कर दो कर दो कर दो Um well I think the way that I always think about the eerie, at least you'll so you define the weird as uh the something that's there that shouldn't be. Yeah. And and the eerie is uh I think the best This um definition that Mark gives in the book itself as he says it's the it's the failure of absence.

No, it's the the presence of uh what is it? Yeah, failure of absence and a failure of presence. Okay. So it's kind of it's a it's a it's a it's the absence of presence and it's the presence of absence. Okay. It's that it's that strange. in between this, it's the it's the spectre that we talked about with capitalist realism, right? It's the it's the it's the hologram, it's the immaterialized feature that is there but uh but is also not there, that's kind of uh

somewhere in between. And I guess that's kind of the the I mean, that's part of the the to draw on your example and this is where this book ends up getting really convoluted too, is that um So the example of that guy in uh blue velvet. Yeah. And there you've got there you've got someone that they've they've they've been shot, but then you you have this

th despite their character being removed for one of their words, they're still there. There's there's there's there's an absence of life and there's a presence of life nonetheless. And that in betweenness is kind of the is the eerie, weird quality. I feel like lynches are kind of really I think Mark talks about Lynch a few times, but he's kind of the worst example to use to try and define to try and split the two because he's always somehow both at once because Lynch just can do that.

But that's the way oh yeah, to talk if you talk to to think about them both at least in spatial terms of something that's yeah, the weird is something that's there but shouldn't be, the eerie is something that is neither there nor nor not there. Like the future, I guess, is maybe Mark's way of What well what Mark doesn't say, but I think we can implicitly draw from

The another another good example perhaps of the eerie would be uh Andrey Tarkovsky's stalker. Um hopefully you've seen that. Uh of the zone in general. Um and all they're kind of doing in this film is Yeah, which makes it sound very simple, it's three three men I mean there is the the whole

narrative with the room at the end, but that's not needed for this discussion. It's up to the point is three men kind of just walking through derelict rural uh I think it's Estonia. Um, but in the film it's kind of a strange place where nothing really happens but it's short and discussed in such a way that everywhere they are there is still something else there. So it's I think Mark actually says the presence of nothing at some

Yeah, it's uh it's definitely it's it's th that the whole concept is hinged on that sense of paradox, I think. Okay.

Is there anything uh there anything you feel we we should uh discuss? Or anything you know you really uh heart of Marx's work that you like. Uh yeah, I mean well there's so much of it. Um which is part of what's that's something to love and also there's so much of it to love. Um I think one thing that I'd wanna

I should have mentioned G T before actually. It's um Mark's essay Good for Nothing, um, which he wrote for The Occupied Times in twenty fourteen, which I think is such an important text for him and it might actually be kind of an apt note to end on. Um I don't know if you've read that, I can send you a link.

Perhaps while I'm skimming this, if you could give a brief Yeah, well I mean I th the overview I guess is that I think what's I guess it's the challenge of Marx work now and I think that there's something that

I the reason I didn't say this to you before, Omis, is that I wondered whether it was even worth bringing up. But now that we've kind of given this really broad overview The the the these threads that are there throughout all the twenty years of Mark's work and the other thing that's always there is his own depression and his own writing about his depression. Overly sure on bringing up or not. You can you could discuss his work without it, but you'd be doing it a huge disservice.

any ideas would somewhat you'd feel there's something missing because there's a lot of philosophers you could you could Mm. You can leave the biography completely alone. I mean if you take can or Descartes, you know, you could leave the biography. But you take certain certain other philosophers and a to a s certain degree you read something and you kind of do need to know what kind of person they were.

Um and Mark certainly I think f well a hundred percent falls into this this category of personal biography becomes a philosophy and is completely integrated in with his work.

Yeah. I think and I think that's kind of what that's kind of why I'd suggest this essay really in a way because this is that's basically what this is about and I think it's key in the the the end of the very first paragraph here where he talks about where he says um I offer it my own experiences of mental distress not because I think there's anything special or unique about them, but in support of the claim that many forms of depression are best understood and best combated.

through frames that are in personal and political rather than individual and psychological. And I feel like that's that's so key for almost everything that we've kind of talked about so far is that there's the the as I think as much as Marx work what he's what he's gearing up towards and what was potentially to come with aside communism is kind of a radical a suggestion that a a kind of practical suggestion that we need a radical break from how we understand ourselves as as humans, as subjects.

under this kind of hegemonic order that is capitalism. And I think there's a one of a um In the in the introduction to acid communism, Mark's kind of talking about that explicitly, where he's drawing on Foucault and Foucault's use of acid um in Death Valley. Uh and Foucault talks about uh would later write about what is necessary is to sort of radically embrace or become this other this this other kind of subject.

Uh and I think that's what Mark talks about in capitalist realism in terms of a collective subject. And it's what and that sense of collective subject s as some as a as a complete reimagining of how we understand ourselves is kind of what carries all the way through.

And I think part of that for Mark is that where this where his depression is so important for him as a thinker is that it's not only it it's it's kind of the paradox of his thinking where it's how do you how do you f how do you think it's the horror of his thinking, which is how do you think beyond anything that is currently knowable to you?

And I feel like his depression in a way is kind of it's it is it is the epitome of a double edged sword of that thinking, is that Mark uses his depression to diagnose the condition that we're in.

um really adeptly and kind of quite surgically and at the same time his depression is kind of is is likewise uh allows him to better think that beyond. It's as almost to say that like His depression is kind of necessary to his thinking beyond himself as as a I mean, not to romanticise that or to kind of say that people can't imagine futures unless they're depressed, but I feel like it's... it it it gives it it gives him a certain r recklessness with the subject that allows him to

Um no, I don't know. I guess it's personalizing it. It's like personalising it is kind of the way to talk about it, but also the wrong way to approach it completely. Like, you know, it's a it's It's it's for him it's it's he's using his own experiences in a way that's totally impersonal. Um but you can't at the same time get away from

the personal nature of that. It's kind of like the weird paradox of of what depression means socially and for the individual subject. And I think his work demands both of those things. He does he says on uh page thirty seven of Capitol's realism the current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mentalness. The chemical Biologization of mental illness is, of course, strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. You know, um, considering mental illness.

as an individual chemicobiological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. So once again this this uh you know the parasite of capital even kind of takes your your personal your personal

you have this illness that that's that's extremely personal to you and yet capital is is benefiting from it. Um But to move move back to, you know, strictly personal mental illness it's it's i there's that difficult double bind there with the with any any author in st kind of illness or um ailment is it's almost unfalsif well it is unfalsifiable to say whether their work would even exist or what it would be like have it i if that hadn't been there. You know, it's it's it's extremely tough.

What to say about it really? Well I think I mean that's the way that I think I guess that's what's important is that So I mean so it uh in this good for nothing text, towards I mean, Mark's talking about his personal experiences, but s towards the end he sort of says that w we can we we all un un depression um well, I'm trying not to blur this with my own interpretation but

I think t even to go right back to what we were talking about in the beginning of uh talking about this this capital as this uns d having this unspeakable quality. And that coming through in Blanchot and talking about communism is likewise p having it's this community that's sharing the unshareable. And I think that that's kind of what

the in a similar way that Mark uses depression. Is that yes, it's a it's something that he has quite a a very personal experience with Um but it's kind of in recognizing the fact that it's not it's a it's a it's an it's a It's a problem that we understand individually and we need to be better at understanding it collectively. And he says at the end that collective depression is the result of ruling class of the ruling class projects of resubordination.

as if to say that like, you know, that just that the whole the whole modus operandi of capitalism is to just depress you of to depress you about Monday mornings and Sunday nights and and um to the cost of living and commuting and all of that stuff is just it w is wears you down and and that is all part of this project of subordination under capitalism. sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

Yeah, right. So it's like the so it's uh it's uh it so Mark talks about it rather than depression, you could also talk about it as like a consciousness deflation deflation. And he kind of I think he he In this text in particular he's talking about his own background as a a working class background. Um and he kind of ties the two together of saying that, you know, depression and class consciousness depression as a deflation of consciousness and class consciousness as

having been deflated. They're kind of they're they're they're two intrinsic things that have been f separated for far too long. And a major part of his project I think is to try and recombine those. And less so in a lot of his books, but in his essays in particular.

um of seeing what can happen if we collectively understand depression as kind of this thing that we are all kind of going through in some sense and not individualizing it and using that new knowledge to improve um improve society and improve all of our lives in a way of of kind of breaking out of that project that's kind of keeping people down.

Um and kind of use it, you know, rather than it's kind of a revolutionary rhetoric really. It's kind of it's uh it's uh d telling the workers to rise up but framed in a way that is totally in tune with the with the the discourse around mental health that's now so prevalent. And I think he was really tapped into that.

And I think there's a a a you know, a a further kind of key thing to say on that is that And this is something that Kojo Eshin said to me sh uh last year after Mark had died and he said that, you know, m just because Mark killed himself doesn't mean that his work has to stop working. it might have stopped his ideas and his kind of his uh his optimism for the future might have stopped working for him. But it doesn't mean that it has to stop working for anybody else.

And I think encapsulated in that is this very collective sense of what Mark was trying to do. You know, to try and to try and say that Mark It's trying to say that whatever for whatever reasons Mark died, to say that that has to have any bearing on his work in a in a sort of or a biographical way. Um is kind of to miss the point of the project. And it's kind of and if anything, the the tragedy of what happened to Mark kind of

strikes that project in stark relief, I think. And kind of renews the necessity of thinking about not just depression but capitalism as a whole in that way. For him. And for all of us. Yeah. Okay. I think um yeah that was one of an ending Every erudite kind of reflection on um the connection there between between Depression and and Mark's work and I dunno I think you know I I couldn't say much more on that, so perhaps we should end there. Right. Okay. Thanks very much. Brilliant. That was fun.