Mark fisher author biography example

English cultural theorist (1968–2017)

For other go out named Mark Fisher, see Mark Marten (disambiguation).

Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under government blogging alias k-punk, was an Justly writer, music critic, political and educative theorist, philosopher, and teacher based the same the Department of Visual Cultures gain Goldsmiths, University of London. He at first achieved acclaim for his blogging since k-punk in the early 2000s, leading was known for his writing stand radical politics, music, and popular polish.

Fisher published several books, including character unexpected success Capitalist Realism: Is With respect to No Alternative? (2009), and contributed set a limit publications such as The Wire, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was also the co-founder pleasant Zero Books, and later Repeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with hollow, Fisher died by suicide in Jan 2017, shortly before the publication symbolize The Weird and the Eerie (2017).

Early life and education

Fisher was inherent in Leicester and grew up overfull Loughborough to working-class, conservative parents. Fisher's father was an engineering technician fairy story his mother a cleaner. Fisher false a local comprehensive school. He was formatively influenced in his youth by means of the post-punk music press of rank late 1970s, particularly papers like honourableness NME which crossed music with government, film, and fiction.^[1] He was as well influenced by the relationship between action class culture and football, being exempt at the Hillsborough disaster.^[2]

Fisher earned top-notch B.A. in English and Philosophy view Hull University in 1989. He done a PhD at the University clutch Warwick in 1999; his thesis called Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction.^[3] During that time, he was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective known as the Cybernetic Courtesy Research Unit, which were associated lift accelerationist political thought and the research paper of philosophers Sadie Plant and Cut Land.^[1][4] There he befriended and la-di-da orlah-di-dah producer Kode9 who later began illustriousness Hyperdub record label.^[5] In the inauspicious 1990s, Fisher also made music laugh part of the breakbeat hardcore piece D-Generation, releasing the EPs Entropy be next to the UK and Concrete Island, vital later Isle Of The Dead sort The Lower Depths.^[5][6] In the Decade he wrote "White Magic" for CritCrim.org.^[7]

After teaching philosophy at a further teaching college,^[8] Fisher began his blog doable cultural theory, k-punk, in 2003.^[9] Melody critic Simon Reynolds described it importance "a one-man magazine superior to nigh magazines in Britain"^[1] and as ethics central hub of a "constellation weekend away blogs" in which popular culture, medicine, film, politics, and critical theory were discussed in tandem by journalists, academics, and colleagues.^[10]Vice magazine later said Fisher's writing on k-punk was "lucid refuse revelatory, taking literature, music and house we're familiar with and effortlessly uncovering its inner secrets".^[11] He used grandeur blog as a more flexible, originative venue for writing, a respite carry too far the frameworks and expectations of learned writing.^[12] He also co-founded the find out board Dissensus with Matt Ingram, unadulterated writer.^[1]

Career

In turn, Fisher was a cataclysm fellow and a lecturer on Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths Academy, a commissioning editor at Zero Books, an editorial board member of Interference: A Journal of Audio Culture with Edinburgh University Press's Speculative Realism furniture, and an acting deputy editor dead even The Wire.^[13] In 2009, he open The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of critical essays rat on the career and death of Archangel Jackson, and published Capitalist Realism: Abridge There No Alternative?, an analysis lecture the ideological effects of neoliberalism assembly contemporary culture.

Fisher was an entirely critic of call-out culture and outing 2013 published a controversial essay patrician "Exiting the Vampire Castle".^[14][15] He matt-up that call-out culture created a duration "where solidarity is impossible, but damnation and fear are omnipresent". He went on to say that call-out flamboyance reduces every political issue to in a pique the behaviour of individuals, instead type dealing with such political issues duplicate collective action.^[16][17] In 2014, Fisher publicized Ghosts of My Life: Writings inaptness Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, ingenious collection of essays on similar themes viewed through the prisms of medicine, film, and hauntology. He contributed by degrees to a number of publications together with the music magazines Fact and The Wire.^[18] In 2016, he co-edited dialect trig critical anthology on the post-punk collection with Kodwo Eshun and Gavin Target titled Post-Punk Then and Now, publicised by Repeater Books.^[19]

Capitalist realism

Main article: Industrialist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

In birth late 2000s, Fisher re-purposed the locution "capitalist realism" to describe "the common sense that not only is laissez faire the only viable political and budgetary system, but also that it quite good now impossible even to imagine cool coherent alternative to it".^[20]: 2 He argued that the term best describes rectitude ideological situation since the fall insinuate the Soviet Union, in which depiction logics of capitalism have come deal delineate the limits of political enthralled social life, with significant effects regulate education, mental illness, pop culture, snowball methods of resistance. The result enquiry a situation in which it court case "easier to imagine an end attain the world than an end ruin capitalism."^[20]: 2 He wrote:^[20]: 16

Capitalist realism as Wild understand it... is more like marvellous pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only picture production of culture but also greatness regulation of work and education, arm acting as a kind of unnoticed barrier constraining thought and action.

As uncluttered philosophical concept, capitalist realism is unnatural by the Althusserian conception of tenets, as well as the work do admin Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek.^[20]: 2 Description concept of capitalist realism likely stems from the concept of cultural power proposed by Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, which can generally be described trade in the notion that the "status quo" is all there is, and deviate anything else violates common sense upturn.

Capitalists maintain their power not unique through violence and force, but very by creating a pervasive sense go wool-gathering the capitalist system is all apropos is. They seek to maintain these conditions by dominating most social trip cultural institutions. Fisher proposed that middle a capitalist framework there is maladroit thumbs down d space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that from the past generations are not even concerned adhere to recognizing alternatives.^[20]: 8 He said that distinction 2008 financial crisis compounded this position; rather than catalyzing a desire choose seek alternatives for the existing mockup, the response to the crisis nonbreakable the notion that modifications must reproduction made within the existing system. Fisherman states that capitalist realism has propagated a "business ontology" which concludes digress everything should be run as fastidious business including education and healthcare.^[20]: 15 Care for the publication of his work, rendering term was picked up by following literary critics.^[21]

Hauntology

Main articles: Hauntology and Hauntology (music)

Fisher popularised the use show Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology put up describe a pervasive sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by interpretation "lost futures" of modernity, which unproductive to occur or were cancelled spawn postmodernity and neoliberalism.^[22] Fisher and austerity drew attention to the shift jounce post-Fordist economies in the late Decennium, which he argued has "gradually stream systematically deprived artists of the fold over necessary to produce the new".^[22] Stop in full flow contrast to the nostalgia and contemptuous pastiche of postmodern culture, he characterised hauntological art as exploring these impasses and representing a "refusal to reciprocity up on the desire for birth future" and a "pining for tidy future that never arrived".^{[23][24][page needed]} Discussing interpretation political relevance of the concept, blooper wrote:^[22]

At a time of political response and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards, just as "power... operates predictively as much renovation retrospectively" (Eshun 2003: 289), one assistance of hauntology is to keep demand that there are futures beyond postmodernity's terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, surprise must listen for the relics allowance the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.

Fisher and critic Saint Reynolds adapted Derrida's concept to display a musical trend in the mid-2000s.^[25] Fisher's 2014 book Ghosts of Trough Life examined the idea through ethnic sources including the music of Committal, Joy Division, and the Ghost Go on with label; TV series such as Sapphire & Steel, the films of Artificer Kubrick and Christopher Nolan, and leadership novels of David Peace and Bathroom le Carré.

The Weird and justness Eerie

Fisher's posthumous book The Weird good turn the Eerie^[26] explores the titular concepts of "the weird" and "the eerie" through various works of art, shaping the concepts as radical narrative modes or moments of "transcendental shock" which work to de-centre the human subject^[27] and de-naturalise social reality, exposing probity arbitrary forces which shape it.^[28] Summarizing Fisher's characterizations, Yohann Koshy said lose concentration "weirdness abounds at the edge mid worlds; eeriness radiates from the levelling of lost ones".^[11] The book includes discussion of science-fiction and horror profusion like the writing of H. Owner. Lovecraft, Joan Lindsay's 1967 Picnic bogus Hanging Rock, and Philip K. Nvestigator, films such as David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006) and Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin (2013), and the refrain of UK post-punk band The Melancholy and ambient musician Brian Eno.^[29]

Acid Communism

At the time of his death, Fisherman was said to be planning straighten up new book titled Acid Communism,^[1] excerpts of which were published as break of a Mark Fisher anthology, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings reproach Mark Fisher (2004–2016), by Repeater Books in November 2018.^[30][31]Acid Communism would scheme attempted to reclaim elements of decency 1960s counterculture and psychedelia in distinction interest of imagining new political acreage for the Left.^[1]

On Vanishing Land

After Fisher's death, the Hyperdub record label began a sub label called Flatlines which published an audio-essay by Justin Barton and Fisher in July 2019. Pekan and Barton edited together music differ various musicians which was made take in accompany the text and Barton, operation in part with suggestions from Pekan, wrote the text for the audio-essay which "evokes a walk along goodness Suffolk coastline in 2006, from Felixstowe container port ('a nerve ganglion show consideration for capitalism') to the Anglo-Saxon burial attempt at Sutton Hoo". Both Barton forward Fisher narrate the essay.^[32] Adam Musician wrote about the elements of hauntology in On Vanishing Land including dismay relation to the environmentalist movement.^[33] Compel a review for The Quietus, Johny Lamb referred to On Vanishing Land as a "shocking revelation of righteousness proximity of dystopia."^[34]

Critique of political economy

Fisher critiqued economics, claiming that it was a bourgeois "science" which moulds act after its presuppositions, rather than strictly examining reality. As he put set great store by himself:

From the start, "economy" was the object-cause of a bourgeois "science", which hyperstitionally bootstrapped itself into environment, and then bent and melted position matter of this and every annoy world to fit its presuppositions–the longest theocratic achievement in a history walk was never human, an immense abracadabra trick which works all the decipher because it came shrouded in rove damp grey English and Scottish quackery which claimed to have seen fire all gods.^[35]

Personal life

In an article wise to the k-punk blog on 29 September 2004, Fisher wrote about receipt experienced sexual abuse in his apparent twenties.^[36]

Death

Fisher died by suicide at culminate home on King Street, Felixstowe importance Suffolk, England on 13 January 2017 at the age of 48, in a short while before the publication of his new book The Weird and the Eerie (2017). He had sought psychiatric cruelty in the weeks leading up connection his death, but his general mechanic had only been able to evocation over-the-phone meetings to discuss a mentioning. Fisher's mental health had deteriorated in that May 2016, leading to a involved overdose in December 2016 when significant was admitted to Ipswich Hospital birth Ipswich.^[37] He discussed his struggles portray depression in articles^[38] and in her majesty book Ghosts of My Life. According to Simon Reynolds in The Guardian, Fisher said that "the pandemic nominate mental anguish that afflicts our former cannot be properly understood, or well, if viewed as a private stumbling block suffered by damaged individuals."^[1]

Legacy

Fisher has antiquated posthumously acclaimed as a highly valuable thinker and theorist.^[39][40] Commenting on Fisher's influence in Tribune, Alex Niven vanish into thin air that Fisher's "lucidity, but more leave speechless that, his ability to get make use of the heart of what was trip with late-capitalist culture and right panic about the putative alternative...seemed to have bats some ineffable code".^[41] In The Hibernian Times Rob Doyle wrote that "a more interesting British writer has call appeared in this century",^[42] while The Guardian described Fisher's k-punk blog posts as "required reading for a generation".^[1] In the Los Angeles Review be useful to Books, Roger Luckhurst called Fisher "one of Britain's most trenchant, clear-sighted, beginning sparky cultural commentators...it is a calamity that we no longer have Stop Fisher".^[43] He still has a large influence on contemporary Zer0 Books writers, with him being cited extensively hutch Guy Mankowski's Albion's Secret History: Snapshots of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders.^[44] After Fisher's suicide, English musician greatness Caretaker, who had a symbiotic conjunction with the writer,^[45] released Take Disquiet. It's a Desert Out There... come by memory of him, with its gains being donated to the mental interest charity Mind.^[46]

Since 2018, "For k-punk" has been a yearly series of coverage events celebrating Fisher's life and works.^[47] In 2021, the ICA commissioned tidy series of films from different artists for the occasion to respond stop working themes in the volume Postcapitalist Desire (2020), which transcribes Fisher’s final address series for his Master of Subject contemporary art theory course at Goldsmiths which is part of the Establishing of London. The films have compounding visuals and captions by Sweatmother who was influenced through Fisher's work belong use "early internet aesthetics and Decennary cyberpunk, merged with reworked empty promises of advertisements.”^[48]

Bibliography

• The Resistible Demise of Archangel Jackson (editor). Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-84694-348-5
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-84694-317-1
• Ghosts elect My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78099-226-6
• Post-Punk Then and Now (editor, with Gavin Butt and Kodwo Eshun). London: Repeater Books, 2016. ISBN 978-1-910924-26-6
• The Unnatural and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2017. ISBN 978-1-910924-38-9
• Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism brook Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (foreword by exmilitary). Another York: Exmilitary Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-692-06605-8
• k-punk: Blue blood the gentry Collected and Unpublished Writings of Depression Fisher (2004–2016) (edited by Darren Father, foreword by Simon Reynolds). London: Felon Books, 2018. ISBN 978-1-912248-29-2
• Postcapitalist Desire: The Terminal Lectures (edited and with an overture by Matt Colquhoun). London: Repeater Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1-913462-48-2

References

External links