Mark Fisher’s book is a revelatory description of the social and cultural atmosphere of the past few decades, which the author refers to as “capitalist realism” and which represents the “broad recognition that capitalism is not only not the only functioning political and economic system, but that today it is impossible to have any competent to even imagine an alternative’. The book, which grew out of Fisher’s keen sense of crisis, vividly reveals the far-reaching symptoms of this situation. He traces the impact of modern social order on cultural perception, how the human nervous system adapts to changes in the social fabric, as well as the impact of capitalist realism on mental health and bureaucracy, especially the education system.
But how to get out of the stagnation, if the cultural authority can no longer offer political resistance? Traditional right- and left-sided solutions turn out to be a dead end here, and the emergence of a new (collective) political subject would be necessary, which the author, unfortunately, could not wait for during his lifetime.
The book is supplemented by an afterword by Tõnis Kahu.
Mark Fisher (1968–2017) was a British cultural theorist, music critic and lecturer who emerged in the turn-of-the-century blogosphere under the name k-punk. He wrote on everything from politics to mental health, from J.G. Ballard to Burial. In addition to “Capitalist Realism”, the book “Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures” (2014) and posthumously the books “The Weird and The Eerie” (2017) and a large collection of unpublished writings “k-punk” (2018).
Translated by Neeme Lopp
Edited by Anti Saar
Consultant: Jüri Lipping
Language editor: Tiina Hallik
Designed by Maria Muuk
124 pages, in Estonian
Estonian Academy of Arts Press, 2019
978-9949-594-79-5