[HN Gopher] Mark Fisher's "K-punk" and the futures that have nev...
___________________________________________________________________
Mark Fisher's "K-punk" and the futures that have never arrived
(2018)
Author : keiferski
Score : 174 points
Date : 2022-03-25 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| youngventier wrote:
| I enjoy thinking about the hauntologies in our time. I found it
| very funny that so many lo-fi videos on youtube are made to
| imitate a 90s anime style. Something about the videos and style
| is comforting to me and others despite us having never lived
| through that time. Synth-wave and other genres on youtube also
| try to imitate a past that never was. Modern hyper-pop of the
| 2020s does the same to the early 2000s.
|
| The concept of Hauntologies was first introduced by Jacues
| Derrida[0]. I think it goes hand-in-hand deconstruction.
|
| As an aside, poolside.fm, in addition to being a cool project,
| also imitates a past that never was[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida [1]
| https://poolsuite.net/
| gg2222 wrote:
| Wow .. poolsuite site made smile. Opening it on my 4K monitor
| reminds me of when I first used Solaris on a Sun Microsystems
| Workstation. The monitors felt super high res (compared with
| normal PCs at that time).
| KMag wrote:
| Remember those early Sun optical mice that required you to
| use them on a special mouse pad that had a high-contrast
| pattern on it for the mouse to track?
|
| I'm a bit sad that I recycled my (freeby, thank you
| reuse@mit.edu) SGI Indy when I moved from my first to my
| second apartment after college. "An Indy is and Indigo
| without the go.", but it was a really beautiful computer
| case, and a 64-bit MIPS CPU would still be fun to play around
| with.
| keiferski wrote:
| The poolsuite site is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
| nkurz wrote:
| I glanced at the history and noticed you also submitted this
| same article 3 years ago. That time it got no upvotes. Why
| did you decide to submit it again now? And any guesses as to
| why it "caught" this time?
| pizza wrote:
| Re: nostalgia for when you were not yet born: things like that,
| with the hyperaestheticism etc, are designed to be 'coded' (ie
| comprised of referential symbols) in the alphabet of "your
| imagination of that time", which was pressed into your thoughts
| via social influence. It is an affirmation of what you've been
| told that time was really like- so it seems like a refuge or
| safe haven where everything makes sense. In some sense, they
| are like, well, bait- it's like "well mass media that can
| operate during the present is not enough. How about a mass
| media that is constantly extending itself retroactively into
| the past as well?"
|
| This is not shade on you. I myself love all kinds of vaporwave,
| probably to a fault. I think this is part of why The Weird and
| the Eerie was tough to read for me- you can tell Mark was
| exasperated about things that should not be juxtaposed. And I
| can't help but think these "un-pasts" were probably an obstacle
| to improving the present.
| KMag wrote:
| I would love to write a small program (maybe called
| ThrowbackFriday) that on Friday afternoon would kill my X11
| window manager and randomly select a window manager popular in
| the late 90s, or a wm emulating the Win95 look and feel. It
| should also fire up a music player skinned to look like WinAmp
| and play some GnR, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Pearl Jam, REM,
| Nirvana, Men Without Hats, Toto, Chumbawumba, Hootie and The
| Blowfish, etc.
|
| Did anyone else remember using twm window manager with Java
| Swing apps in the early 2000s? Most window managers would
| ignore nonsense commands to resize windows down to 0x0 pixels,
| but twm would oblige. I ran twm with 1 px borders and no window
| menus (to maximize screen real estate), so I needed to watch
| the redraw carefully to get a good idea at my starting point
| for a game of "hunt the pixel" to find the 2x2 pixel border and
| drag the window back to my desired size. I played "hunt the
| pixel" much more often than actual games.
|
| Ideally, ThrowbackFriday would be configurable where you'd give
| it a year range to emulate.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > As an aside, poolside.fm, in addition to being a cool
| project, also imitates a past that never was[1].
|
| Very much so. It even looks like a 90s _movie_ OS (e.g. like
| the mash-ups on the computers in Office Space, familiar but
| from nowhere).
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm, I ended up buying it based on the fragments cited by the
| article. I do need a fun read and this looks enticing.
|
| This is probably one of the few advertising types I actually
| accept: reviews.
| futureproofd wrote:
| It's good to see the occasional Mark Fisher thread here. On the
| topic of Hauntology and lost futures, I think this guy does a
| great job of explaining it through the analogy of the Fallout
| videogame series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
|
| Analogies through pop-culture is something Mark Fisher also did
| very well to get his point across, and appeal to a broader
| audience.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Mark Fisher was the most important intellectual voice of our
| time.
|
| _Capitalist Realism_ is a must-read:
| https://files.libcom.org/files/%5BMark_Fisher%5D_Capitalist_...
| quazar wrote:
| Mark Fisher is not even the most important intellectual voice
| from Warwick.
| oxff wrote:
| It is Nick Land.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Who is Nick Land important to?
| throw_away2 wrote:
| Some fave quotes:
|
| "There are certainly conspiracies in capitalism, but the
| problem is that they are themselves only possible because of
| deeper level structures that allow them to function. Does
| anyone really think, for instance, that things would improve if
| we replaced the whole managerial and banking class with a whole
| new set of ('better') people? Surely, on the contrary, it is
| evident that the vices are engendered by the structure, and
| that while the structure remains, the vices will reproduce
| themselves."
|
| "The delusion that many who enter into management with high
| hopes is precisely that they, the individual, can change
| things, that they will not repeat what their managers had done,
| that things will be different this time; but watch someone step
| up to management and it's usually not long before the grey
| petrification of power starts to subsume them. It is here that
| the structure is palpable -- you can practically see it taking
| people over, hear its deadened/deadening judgments speaking
| through them."
| witherk wrote:
| After reading a little bit of his work, I couldn't really make my
| mind up about Fisher. Some passages feel pretty clear headed a
| satisfying to read.
|
| "There are certainly conspiracies in capitalism, but the problem
| is that they are themselves only possible because of deeper level
| structures that allow them to function. Does anyone really think,
| for instance, that things would improve if we replaced the whole
| managerial and banking class with a whole new set of ('better')
| people? Surely, on the contrary, it is evident that the vices are
| engendered by the structure, and that while the structure
| remains, the vices will reproduce themselves."
|
| But then at other times, he seems fall into the same traps that
| makes me hate a lot of postmodern(or whatever this is) writing.
|
| -Constant references to other writers, only to use their
| polysyllabic neologisms 2-3 times without any explanation. I
| wouldn't mind this so much but this book usually sold as a good
| starting point.
|
| -Defining things with grandiose, nearly contradictory analogies.
|
| -A deep pessimism, sometimes I feel I'm reading some kind of
| anti-Pangloss.
|
| "This makes capitalism very much like the Thing in John
| Carpenter's film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely
| plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything
| with which it comes into contact. Capital, Deleuze and Guattari
| says, is a 'motley painting of everything that ever was'; a
| strange hybrid of the ultra-modern and the archaic. In the years
| since Deleuze and Guattari wrote the two volumes of their
| Capitalism And Schizophrenia, it has seemed as if the
| deterritorializing impulses of capitalism have been confined to
| finance, leaving culture presided over by the forces of
| reterritorialization."
|
| It makes me frustrated, because I feel like Fisher really does
| have a lot of interesting things to say. But the only time I can
| bring myself to hate the state of world this much is if I spend
| too much time on twitter or in mandatory HR trainings.
| [deleted]
| Coolerbythelake wrote:
| A key point "just because something is current does not make it
| new." Worthy of consideration more often.
| pea wrote:
| For anyone interested in a perspective on the current woke/anti-
| woke zeitgeist from someone on the left, I would highly recommend
| Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle":
| https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam...
|
| > The Vampires' Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is
| driven by a priest's desire to excommunicate and condemn, an
| academic-pedant's desire to be the first to be seen to spot a
| mistake, and a hipster's desire to be one of the in-crowd. The
| danger in attacking the Vampires' Castle is that it can look as
| if - and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought -
| that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism,
| heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression
| of such struggles, the Vampires' Castle is best understood as a
| bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of
| these movements. The Vampires' Castle was born the moment when
| the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became
| the quest to have 'identities' recognised by a bourgeois big
| Other.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Why should we be interested in an anti-woke perspective from
| the left, when it's just repeating what the _right_ has been
| pointing out for a long time now? The basic point that "woke"
| ideology makes a mockery of genuine efforts to effectively
| address issues of prejudice based on race, sex or sexual
| orientation is far from new; indeed it has been raised many
| times before.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Why should we be interested in an anti-woke perspective
| from the left, when it's just repeating what the right has
| been pointing out for a long time now?
|
| The obvious reason is ad-hominem thinking is very human and
| natural, and people will be more receptive to the same
| message sent by someone otherwise aligned with them than
| someone otherwise opposed to them.
|
| Another possibility is that this article just plain expresses
| it better, more effectively, or captured an important nuance
| that your preferred people missed.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| But the right has always been working to address prejudiced
| attitudes; their disagreement with the left on these issues
| is one of framing and preferred methods (e.g. not
| everything has to be a "struggle against X!" - and such
| rhetoric is in many ways a pointless distraction from more
| relevant dynamics), not so much broader social aims.
| shigawire wrote:
| >But the right has always been working to address
| prejudiced attitudes
|
| Are conservatives not by definition trying to conserve
| the status quo?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Are conservatives not by definition trying to conserve
| the status quo?
|
| IIRC, in the American context there are very, very few
| conservatives like that. Everyone has some revolutionary
| project they're working towards, they're just very
| different and incompatible.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| This does not resonate at all with my experience growing
| up in a conservative region of the upper Midwest.
| dwater wrote:
| I imagine in this context conservative refers to members
| of the conservative political class and not conservative-
| voting citizens, who are mostly irrelevant to the goals
| of the conservative political class.
| brimble wrote:
| It is _very_ important, in some contexts, to distinguish
| between Republican voters and Republican politicians.
| What you hear if you talk to the former can be wildly
| different from what the latter deliver and even what they
| make planks of their party platform.
|
| Notably, the voters tend not to like neoliberalism and
| globalization and to be big fans of "why don't they
| just..." solutions for various problems--say, "why don't
| they just build a wall at the border?" Sound like any
| recent, prominent R politicians? Yep--he seems to have
| noticed the _large_ gap between the Republican Party
| platform and what the average Republican voter you talk
| to at a diner says they want, then exploited that gap,
| which worked because the gap is _very real_ and _pretty
| large_.
|
| This occasionally got a bit weird, like in some of his
| speeches about how he'd provide "beautiful" healthcare to
| everyone, which seemed strangely close to some kind of
| (very vague) messaging about adding a public option of
| some kind of universal coverage and was met with cheering
| by his audience. This is because left- and right-wing
| populism in the US share a surprising amount in common,
| but those issues and commonalities are often ignored or
| deliberately sidelined by party elites. This is related
| to how laws that get passed and policies that are enacted
| are disturbingly disconnected from public sentiment
| generally.
|
| (none of this should be taken as an endorsement of the
| former president, I'm just observing the lay of the
| electoral landscape and how he exploited that. I am also
| not claiming that a similar difference between typical
| voters and party leaders/platform doesn't exist for the
| Democrats--it absolutely does. This is all probably a
| result of our really shitty FPTP elections.)
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| Part of the problem with the distinction is what's being
| conserved and how different groups in the movement define
| this.
|
| From one perspective, A lot of rank-and-file
| "conservatives" are probably more likely to take the
| social conservative stances in earnest, while being open
| to progressive economic policy, while the majority of
| their leadership absolutely prioritizes economic
| conservatism over the social element. The leadership
| merely uses the social aspects as a carrot to motivate
| what voting-base they can get, co-opting social
| conservative leadership into their own ranks, while
| obscuring the United States Chamber of Commerce lobby
| agenda. Rank-and-file conservatives are given
| reinforcement by their leadership to disapprove of
| progressive economic policy aesthetically, but are not
| ultimately able to fully overcome the pull of some of the
| material benefits that could be politically had without
| wrapping specific progressive political agenda into one
| big package with cultural divisions.
|
| And that's not to deny that their aren't small
| business/contract work types that are both socially
| conservative and economically conservative through-and-
| through, but they aren't numerous enough to fill out the
| vast voting ranks need.
|
| You could probably make the case that the Democratic
| Party are the real economic conservatives in a sense;
| Wanting to maintain the 30 or 40 year globalizing
| economic status quo, whereas "conservatives" that
| identify with the Republican party want to roll back to
| an idealized past, with a more nationally focused, but
| still liberal economy.
|
| Then there is also the problem of popular US politics and
| their terms being too narrowly scoped when considering
| political movements from a fuller perspective.
| "Conservatives" call Democrats leftist as a pejorative,
| when neither Democrats or most self-identifying leftist
| would really consider the Democratic party far from
| center on economics, and probably conservative from a
| global perspective.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You might be right. The few people that do try to align
| with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or
| even "neo-reactionaries". Their broad ideological stance
| makes for an interesting Western counterpart to Neo-
| Confucianism on the Chinese internet.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You might be right. The few people that do try to align
| with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or
| even "neo-reactionaries".
|
| I disagree. The "neo-reactionaries" I'm familiar seems
| ridiculously, over-the-top radical. It's like
| libartarianism taken _so far_ it had an integer overflow
| and wrapped around to monarchism.
|
| It's not conservative to want to blow up society an
| replace it with a mockery of an old one that rejects what
| _everyone across the political spectrum_ actually
| believes now.
| [deleted]
| DarylZero wrote:
| They're not trying to conserve the status quo as such,
| just conserve the status of the powerful (which may
| require changing with the times).
| smm11 wrote:
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Conservatives by definition are about hierarchy,
| privilege, and institutionalised bias in favour of some
| groups at the expense of other groups.
|
| https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-
| protec...
|
| You could argue that progressive mechanisms like
| affirmative action are just the same in reverse, and it's
| true that progressive politics in the US still has a
| conservative tinge.
|
| But there are differences. AA is seen as a temporary
| rebalancing measure, while conservative privilege is seen
| as the natural and divinely ordained order of things, for
| all eternity.
|
| It's essentially personal monarchy, as against anti-
| conservatism which is more layered and complex.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > But the right has always been working to address
| prejudiced attitudes
|
| Do you really think this is how anyone on the left views
| the situation?! Folks on the left watch all the right-
| wing efforts to block LGBT rights, oppose Black Lives
| Matter, ban a religious minority from entering the
| country and conclude, "yep I disagree with those guys on
| issues, but it is true they're the ones working to fight
| prejudiced attitudes"?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's a dog whistle for stuff like mens rights activism,
| all lives matter nonsense
| antiterra wrote:
| Imagine you are playing a soccer match and there's an
| unfair referee who gives the other team 30 undeserved
| goals. You protest and, at the half, they replace the
| referee with a genuinely fair referee. Is asking for
| further remedy to make up for those 30 undeserved goals
| the other team received 'prejudiced?'
|
| Player A joins the match for the other team after the
| half, but does not have the opportunity to make a goal
| that puts his team in the lead because the team's score
| has been adjusted from the unfair treatment. Has Player A
| been unfairly discriminated against?
|
| Should your team just be happy they are now in a fair
| meritocracy and just get on with making goals instead of
| whining?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, the one thing you can count on the Real World is for
| it to be simple and measurable... But let's keep the
| soccer metaphor.
|
| Player A's game is long ended. They won't even play
| again. But it's a long championship and they are winning.
| Now your team is on the last round and will tie with them
| on points if you win, but will lose on the goal-count
| tie-breaker. Should the referee grant you 30 goals on
| your game with an entirely different adversary?
|
| And your adversary is on the same situation, they will
| also tie with A's points if they win. Now what should the
| referee do?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why should we be interested in an anti-woke perspective
| from the left, when it's just repeating what the right has
| been pointing out for a long time now?
|
| Critical use of the term "woke" originated within the Left
| before the critique was superficially adopted by the Right
| and then the term was stripped of all meaning and used as a
| generic term for everything non-Right by the Right; much the
| same as happened with "political correctness", which it
| became a drop-in replacement for on the Right, before it.
| dusted wrote:
| 30761722 wrote:
| >Why should we be interested in an anti-woke perspective from
| the left, when it's just repeating what the right has been
| pointing out for a long time now?
|
| Because two groups can agree on the problem but disagree on
| the solution. For the left, the solution to the "woke"
| problem is de-centering identity in order to further the
| cause of anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, etc; for
| the right, the solution to the "woke" problem is to deny that
| any of the problems raised by the "woke" are problems at all
| -- and in fact to center identity.
| specialist wrote:
| I, for one, am interested.
|
| My understanding is that "woke" started as shorthand for
| criticism from POCs towards their nominal white allies
| (progressives, Democrats, etc). "I know you're trying to
| help. Please stop."
|
| One recurring affront, of allies doing more harm than good,
| that I've observed many times is "white knighting" (correct
| term?).
|
| A white person will argue in defense of a black position (or
| cause). While there's black people present, trying to be
| heard.
|
| The correct action would be for a white person to concede
| their time to a black person. So that we can hear first-hand
| their input about policies and decisions impacting them. "I
| don't know. Let's ask a black person what they think."
|
| My criticism of wokeness, as a middle class white blue hair,
| is that maybe haranguing people is not the most effective
| strategy. Just like how fat shaming back fires.
|
| Personal example. I have a friend whose compulsion is to
| correct my misgendering of others, while I'm talking. Each
| and every time. Are they really listening to me? Or are they
| just waiting for me to fuck up and pounce, demonstrating
| their greater virtue? It's exhausting.
|
| Sure, I want to get the genders correct, and certainly don't
| want to inadvertently offend any one, especially not punch
| down. But decades of habit don't change over night. And how
| the fuck am I supposed to know when someone's picked a new
| pronoun for themselves? Is there a gender registry some where
| I can reference in real-time?
|
| I can't comment specifically on the reactionaries' criticism
| of wokeness. I assume whatever they're fluffed up about is
| just part of another grift.
| antiterra wrote:
| Because calling something 'woke' is often a lazy cudgel used
| to dismiss any progressive idea one disagrees with. If
| someone agrees with the fundamentals but has an issue with
| the socialization of those fundamentals then it's less likely
| to be tainted by bias.
|
| One example would be people who are elevating Zelenskyy to
| superhero status. It's quite likely that Zelenskyy is a
| flawed person, like the overwhelming majority of us, and
| making weird lionizing memes of him echoes the same shirtless
| horse-riding personality cult stuff that preceded Putin's
| actions.
|
| Yet, however overblown the worship or however ineffective
| 'thoughts & prayers' may be for Ukraine, there's an actual
| population of people being invaded by another country for
| reasons most people find entirely objectionable. This stands
| regardless of whether or not someone is suggesting we boycott
| the YMCA for not putting a Ukranian flag emote in their
| twitter profile.
| makeworld wrote:
| Great article, thanks for sharing. Spot on, even today.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I like Fisher's theoretical stuff a lot but I never was a fan
| of that piece, because it reeks of personal animosity towards
| newer generations on the left. It's very typical with old left
| Brits who couldn't get over the fact that class struggle isn't
| going to bring anyone into the streets any more, it's the kind
| of piece that is ten times more likely to be quoted on a
| conservative site than anywhere else.
|
| And when one looks at British Labour politics in the years
| after this piece was written Fisher kind of got his wish, and
| it was an absolute electoral dead end.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| These days, anti-COVID protest is what brings people to the
| streets. A few years back, it was all about wearing yellow
| vests and protesting gas tax hikes that harm small business.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I like Fisher's theoretical stuff a lot but I never was a
| fan of that piece, because it reeks of personal animosity
| towards newer generations on the left.
|
| That may be so, but it doesn't mean there's nothing to it.
| Those "newer generations on the left" tend to think and
| behave in ways that can be pretty alienating to the rest of
| society, and so doom their prospects.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| This is always said, but it is never true. The olds die,
| and the youngs become the old.
|
| As Abe Simpsons famously said, "I used to be with 'it', but
| then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't
| 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It'll
| happen to you!"
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> That may be so, but it doesn't mean there's nothing to
| it. Those "newer generations on the left" tend to think
| and behave in ways that can be pretty alienating to the
| rest of society, and so doom their prospects.
|
| > This is always said, but it is never true. The olds
| die, and the youngs become the old.
|
| > As Abe Simpsons famously said, "I used to be with 'it',
| but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with
| isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary.
| It'll happen to you!"
|
| Yeah, but just because some "it" is current doesn't mean
| it's better. It's quite possible the hip new thing is
| just the youngs wondering off on a detour and getting
| lost.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Substantive criticism would be interesting, but you're not
| really saying anything about what he's saying. You're
| dismissing it based on who you think is likely to quote it
| today.
| morelisp wrote:
| "Class struggle isn't going to bring anyone into the
| streets any more" and pointing out the absolute moribund
| labor party under Corbyn seems to me to be substantive
| criticism.
|
| I also strain to find really substantive criticism in
| Fisher's original piece. "Russell Brand as popular left
| vanguard" has not really aged well, he's done the standard
| turn from proto-dirtbag-left to exactly the kind of media-
| talking-head-dumbass the leftists Fisher decries predicted
| he would.
|
| I am broadly (but weakly) class-first in my leftism, but
| the kind of purity Fisher is demanding is bad tactics, but
| also _counter-materialist_. Race exists orthogonally to
| class but still has material implications - which is simply
| to say, black people still get profiled by cops even if
| they own a factory. For a good analysis of this, see
| _Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life_ by
| Barbara and Karen Fields. Conversely, "the means of
| production" is not what it used to be - capital operates
| correlated but not identical to control over information
| vectors, and owners of those vectors exercise great power
| over people who can control their own production but not
| the distribution of it; see McKenzie Wark's _Capital is
| Dead: Is This Something Worse?_
|
| The left is traditionally focused on class because Marxism,
| via materialism, made strong arguments this was the
| lynchpin of inequity. But if you run that same materialist
| analysis today, the evidence for class's primary, let alone
| a sui generis status, is the weakest it has ever been.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > which is simply to say, black people still get profiled
| by cops even if they own a factory.
|
| You'd be surprised. While basic prejudice of course
| exists, much commonplace "profiling" is simply driven by
| statistical signals that happen to _correlate_ with
| various sorts of bad behavior. Socially aware minorities
| who wish to actively mitigate this part of the problem
| (which is otherwise the hardest to address, for fairly
| obvious reasons) might want to start dressing up with
| suit and tie when out in public, and driving cars that
| are nicely-maintained but not too "blingy".
|
| Of course, this goes to show the extent to which police
| profiling _is_ in fact about broader notions of class and
| subculture, and not limited to race.
| HillRat wrote:
| Let's just say "signals that _people believe_ correlate
| with various sorts of bad behavior," which consistently
| happen to be identified with out-groups.
|
| Having said that, the counter-examples to even that are
| legion: the professor who's detained opening the door to
| his own house, the birdwatcher who gets the cops called
| on him, the college student shot while lost in the
| suburbs, the executive who's pulled over all the time
| when turning into his neighborhood. (I'll add to that a
| friend who was an NFL player whose frequent and
| threatening run-ins with the cops while playing in
| Georgia weren't caused by sartorial or automotive lapses,
| but his white fiance.)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| These counterexamples are popular precisely _because_
| they show instances of unambiguous race-based prejudice,
| as opposed to lazy generalization from easily observable
| signals. If this really was a major part of _profiling as
| a whole_ , we wouldn't even need to _point_ to these
| anecdata because it would be obvious. Black people who
| might actively identify as middle- or upper-class and be
| informed by these social norms are regrettably uncommon,
| but surely not _that_ uncommon!
| morelisp wrote:
| What kind of large-scale evidence would convince you? The
| numbers seem quite clear to me. Cops arrest rich black
| boys as much as they do working-class white boys;
| punishments are harsher; the disparity increases as
| income drops.
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-
| deba...
|
| In aggregate, the accumulative benefits of capital are
| denied them; black wealth crosses generations at a
| fraction of the rate white wealth does. In this sense it
| is hard to make a case for any black American being a
| member of the true capitalist class.
| morelisp wrote:
| > While basic prejudice of course exists
|
| You can stop writing after this, you've already agreed
| with me that class is not the sole driver of material
| inequality.
|
| "Subculture" is also rooted in an ideology not centering
| class, and as you've used it (and as you ridiculously
| asserted elsewhere in the comments "the right has always
| been working to address prejudiced attitudes"), I suspect
| here it's a dogwhistle.
| DarylZero wrote:
| > You can stop writing after this, you've already agreed
| with me that class is not the sole driver of material
| inequality.
|
| It seems like a category mistake to talk about class as
| "driver" of inequality.
|
| Class is a _type_ of material inequality. So it can't
| "drive" material inequality. Right? What could that even
| mean?
|
| Maybe this is taking "class" to mean something like birth
| class, like inheritance, or parental status... which then
| it actually does make sense... but that's not what the
| word means at all in Marxist terminology. It's not what
| leftists are saying at all.
| morelisp wrote:
| When Fisher etc. say we must return a focus on class on
| the left, he means not the Marxist abstract idea of class
| as groups with aligned economic interests, but the
| _specific classes_ Marx outlined as relevant under
| capitalist productive forces. Otherwise he owes us an
| argument as to why e.g. "black" is _not_ a class despite
| its massive and identifiable role in America 's economic
| and labor history!
|
| Personally I am more agnostic about Marx's specific
| conclusions today; but if Fisher wants to call certain
| classes "class" but others "identitarian" I'll take his
| terms. But then I get to say "class is a driver of
| inequality" because it absolutely makes sense to say
| "Labor's subservience to capital is a driver of material
| inequality" even as it is also one type of material
| inequality. (Unless you think it stands so far apart from
| other kinds of inequality it cannot influence them at all
| - absolute bullshit.)
|
| As I mentioned above, please also read Wark, where she
| covers in detail why she thinks Marx's analysis of extant
| classes is insufficient for today even as it purely
| pertains to labor relations.
| DarylZero wrote:
| >When Fisher etc. say we must return a focus on class on
| the left, he means not the Marxist abstract idea of class
| as groups with aligned economic interests, but the
| specific classes Marx outlined as relevant under
| capitalist productive forces.
|
| Right. And to be concrete, it means people who control
| the distribution of wages, vs. people who are dependent
| on wages. A focus on class is a focus on the relationship
| between wage-workers and shareholders.
|
| > it absolutely makes sense to say "Labor's subservience
| to capital is a driver of material inequality"
|
| Well, I don't get it. Labor/capital is one form that
| subservience takes. It is a form of material inequality.
| I don't see how you can say that the subservience can
| "drive" the inequality.
|
| "Subservience" is not a very specific term here btw, it's
| basically metaphorical... an individual laborer is
| literally subservient to their specific employer, but
| "labor" is not literally subservient to "capital." More
| specific concrete language would be much appreciated.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Class in Marxist terminology is defined by the prevailing
| relations of production, either social or technical. So,
| saying that inequality is driven by "class" is but
| another way of saying that economic fundamentals (such
| as, according to Marxists, the ongoing concentration and
| centralisation of capital, or the tendency of the rate of
| profit to fall; non-Marxists may of course point to other
| dynamics as more relevant!) are driving inequality. It's
| not clear what would be inconsistent about this,
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > you've already agreed with me that class is not the
| sole driver of material inequality.
|
| Of course, I could not agree more about that. My point is
| simply that a class-aware analysis might have plenty to
| say even about things that are often reduced to matters
| of "race".
|
| > "Subculture" is also rooted in an ideology not
| centering class
|
| Subculture in practice is highly correlated with class.
| In fact you might even call it a dogwhistle for class
| itself; though this discounts the extent to which "low-
| class subculture" may in fact be a _fixable_ problem, in
| a way that would _not_ increase alienation or
| marginalization for low-class folks and may well mitigate
| these things, while driving a renewed "working class
| cohesion" and perhaps "class conciousness" that should be
| compelling from even an orthodox Marxist point of view.
| morelisp wrote:
| > My point is simply that a class-aware analysis might
| have plenty to say even about things that are often
| reduced to matters of "race".
|
| I mean, there was a thread of leftist thought actually
| dealing with this, until the aging remnants of the New
| Left largely stamped it out under the brand of
| "identitarianism" and it got taken up by liberals
| instead. For the New Left it was impossible that anything
| existed other than Orthodox Marxism. The Fisher article
| is bizarre (and crass) to me for being such an
| unnecessary victory lap in this fight.
|
| I don't know how I can recommend _Racecraft_ and _you_
| tell _me_ that "a class aware analysis might have plenty
| to say even about... race." Yeah, no shit. That's why I
| mentioned it.
| DarylZero wrote:
| > which is simply to say, black people still get profiled
| by cops even if they own a factory
|
| Certainly a meme I've heard a million times. I think
| Obama even said it while he was still president.
|
| But so what? I don't see what it's supposed to imply.
|
| You've got a black guy living in poverty working two part
| time jobs no benefits, obeying one abusive authoritarian
| after another over his whole life.
|
| Maybe that guy really does feel more solidarity with a
| black factory owner whose life does not resemble his in
| any way. But why is this?
|
| It's not because that any black people are actually more
| affected by "profiling" than by their class situation.
| It's because they're economically conservative in the
| "embarrassed millionaire" sense -- more likely to view
| the robber baron as a figure of aspirational emulation
| than an exploiter. These types of people (they're the
| majority of every race of course) aren't leftists turned
| off by class politics, they're just on the opposite side:
| they're the economic right-wing. They're quite simply on
| the side of the owning class, even though they're not
| owners.
|
| > if you run that same materialist analysis today, the
| evidence for class's primary, let alone a sui generis
| status, is the weakest it has ever been.
|
| Huh?? People's day to day lives are still regulated by
| wages. Children's upbringings are defined by the
| competition to conform to requirements of the wage-paying
| institutions. How can class not be primary? Black or
| white, the odds have to be 90%+ that the last "or else"
| order you obeyed was delivered under a wage-based threat.
| morelisp wrote:
| > It's not because that any black people are actually
| more affected by "profiling" than by their class
| situation.
|
| It's impossible to look at racial disparities in
| sentencing, qualitatively or quantitatively, and think
| this. The research is clear: The absolute richest black
| people get accused and sentenced like working-class white
| people. Working-class black people get treated like sub-
| humans.
|
| > They're quite simply on the side of the owning class,
| even though they're not owners.
|
| The most successful revolutionary leftist movements in
| the modern west are those taking up racial issues, from
| SNCC and the Black Panthers onwards.
|
| > Black or white, the odds have to be 90%+ that the last
| "or else" order you obeyed was delivered under a wage-
| based threat.
|
| The intensity of "else" in an "or else" order matters.
| Worrying about "the most recent one" is pure sampling
| bias. That's exactly the problem; the median worst case
| for working-class white leftists is losing their job. For
| others, regularly, it's their life.
|
| I beg you, read some books by black, female, and queer
| leftists. They have good ideas.
| thatcat wrote:
| For an even less woke perspective, I would recommend the
| memeing of mark fisher, a review of mark fisher memes from 2020
| http://thememeingofmarkfisher.com/
| [deleted]
| MrPatan wrote:
| I guess now that it's wrapped in academese it will get some
| traction.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You're criticizing aesthetics. Find a less superficial angle
| please
| Psyladine wrote:
| How something is said is at least as important as the
| intention. Isn't that tone policing core to the hn ethos?
|
| Dressing up thoughts in symbols may seem like a
| marketability approach, or maybe an attack vector in the
| best traditions of fiction (the best sci-fi is, after all,
| merely a glass darkly by which to critique contemporary
| social ills), yet as Blair reminds us:
|
| >"In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is
| surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you
| think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the
| thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about
| until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When
| you think of something abstract you are more inclined to
| use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious
| effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come
| rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of
| blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is
| better to put off using words as long as possible and get
| one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and
| sensations."
|
| So, jumping on pop-culture loaded symbols & jargon is a
| quick way to hijack sentiment or thought along well-dug rut
| of loaded connotation. Entirely valid critique.
| ruined wrote:
| when the right speaks on this, they use their own jargon, but
| just pretend it isn't jargon.
|
| one of the things the left is good at is being willing to
| admit to ideology. it is okay to have reasons, intentions,
| and motivations. pretending one does not, pretending
| ideological choices are innate and universal, and pretending
| one can avoid specificity when speaking are failures.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| jargon?
|
| i just see them parrot 'narrative' over and over
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Except that the left does not admit to ideology all that
| much. The more ideological leftists all like to think that
| they're "based and redpilled" and telling it like it is,
| even though nothing could be farther from the truth. By
| contrast, people on the "right" tend to be more aware that
| their latest "redpill" is just another meme and it's all
| for the lulz anyway.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The left may present itself more seriously, but why
| shouldn't the humor be considered a mere veil for the
| underlying belief? It's one thing to meme about the
| vulnerability of the impoverished, and another to state
| clearly that one holds the ideological position that they
| deserve their poverty.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the
| energy of these movements
|
| Sounds like a deflection, and inaccurate. The issues don't
| arise "outside" of the movement, they spring inevitably when
| there is enough traction and zeal because the mob doesn't
| understand nuance. Mobs are dogmatic and orthodox, and
| everything is a nail. The Fabians (a bougie socialist club
| intent on popularizing Socialism) had this fear about laymen
| should Socialism be in vogue, the Catholic Church about the
| Bible being interpreted by the public, etc. - they were all
| correct. Media of course is in it for the money, they just do
| what they've always done which is exploit salience.
| pea wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for sharing your perspective. Do you
| think both could be true?
| slothtrop wrote:
| To the extent that media exploits things, you could easily
| frame that as a perversion, but I guess this isn't about
| that. The fact that platforms like Twitter are optimized to
| maximize controversy exacerbates things, which is kind of
| perverse. Ultimately people do the legwork. I think
| ascribing bad behavior like witch hunts to "the
| bourgeoisie" is a weaselly, weak argument.
| majormajor wrote:
| This fails to explain a very easy-to-observe conundrum in the
| US:
|
| Religious and other highly-conservative groups on the right
| practice _exactly the same_ sort of shame, shunning,
| reactivity, and condemnation behaviors. They 've practiced them
| _longer_ than "woke" has been a thing[0].
|
| Yet they get to rail about these things in the press without
| being told to take the log out of their own eye by either their
| own members or the supposedly-hostile press. The public lets
| the right set the agenda on "PC" or "woke" discussions instead
| of simply rolling their eyes and being like "how can the group
| that is trying to cancel people for not being obsequious enough
| to Trump say shit like this?"
|
| It clearly isn't a communication style thing alone that results
| in people disliking it, or results in it being ineffective with
| some people. People who identify any complaint about any white
| person's behavior w.r.t. race as a personal attack on _them_
| don 't care about the framing, they care about the message. "We
| fixed racism in the 60s, stop trying to be reverse racist" and
| stuff like that.
|
| [0] See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0924S9N7W/ref=dp-kindle-
| redirect?... from almost 30 years ago, talking about a long
| history even then, for instance.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Indeed. I have been assumed to be attacking those struggles
| when criticizing the zeitgeist on this very forum within the
| past 2 weeks.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Fascinating. There is excitement in revolution, even if by
| objective measures it's worse than what came before, and people
| will get caught up in it, and even in some cases kill for it. And
| perhaps for a few people the lack of that excitement is equally
| fatal.
| erzapp wrote:
| I don't know if it's a mirror, but you can find all the original
| k-punk blog posts here: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/
| grafelic wrote:
| I had never heard of Mark Fisher, so thanks for sharing.
|
| The fact that he admired Burial has certainly piqued my interest
| and Mark Fishers focus on futures never-to-be really aligns
| perfectly with my tendency to wallow in SehnSucht often brought
| on by Boards of Canada or paintings by Simon Stalenhag:
| https://www.simonstalenhag.se/
| futureproofd wrote:
| Interesting examples of related art. M.F. also mentions the
| paintings of Nigel Cooke in one of his writings >
| https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/paintings-by-nigel-cooke/
|
| One music artist that I've been enjoying listening to lately is
| Biosphere. Specifically the Substrata album; To me it feels
| like a foreboding journey of the present with longings of some
| past.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I might be wrong, but I am pretty sure that he is the _only_
| person to ever interview Burial [1]. Another person he was very
| interested in, and was certainly right about in terms of their
| artistic merit is Leyland Kirby aka The Caretaker, who in a
| very different way manifests Fisher 's ideas about hauntology
| [2].
|
| 1. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-
| writing/interviews/burial_unedi...
|
| 2. https://archive.org/details/wire-304-caretaker
| futureproofd wrote:
| There's also this common obsession around Burial with music
| geeks that he (Burial) was so mysterious that no one ever
| knew who he was, or that he never gave interviews (except to
| M.F.), which is obviously wrong. There's lots of info on him,
| similarly to Aphex Twin. I think the lack of media presence
| is more about intentionally avoiding crap that comes with it.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I agree. I mean in that interview he talks about being a
| kind nervous/asocial guy. I think Richard has said similar
| things. Do not blame them at all. And when you can music
| like they can, you can get away with letting the songs
| speak for themselves.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Several interviews exist
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Weren't they both in the CCRU?
| grp wrote:
| Yes, I believe or they met at the Warwick university.
|
| edit: with Kode9 too,
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/steve-goodman
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this.
|
| Now I want to read the book, although I still don't understand
| what's it's perspective is.
| awild wrote:
| I would recommend you to read capitalist realism first. It's
| about 120 pages and not the most complicated essay.
|
| The main idea of fisher is how we seem to have lost the ability
| to envision futures that are not basically less evil versions
| of capitalism. Which manifests in depression and odd melancholy
| of futures of the past.
| kobebeef wrote:
| Fisher really clarified for me what I've always sensed in the
| back of my mind. That time has in a sense stopped. I was always
| into futuristic things as a kid, and I still am. But today I'm
| left with a feeling that "the future", or how we imagined the
| future, was more futuristic back then than it is now.
|
| As someone working in the tech industry, I'm eager to work on
| something exciting and futuristic. But what I find is that any
| project is constrained by the logic of neoliberal capitalism.
| Social media sites have to be designed to be addictive and pull
| people's attentions away from real family and friends, otherwise
| you can't earn profit and compete. The future doesn't excite us
| anymore because all technology has given us is a boring, robotic,
| and atomized life.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > Fisher really clarified for me what I've always sensed in the
| back of my mind. That time has in a sense stopped. I was always
| into futuristic things as a kid, and I still am. But today I'm
| left with a feeling that "the future", or how we imagined the
| future, was more futuristic back then than it is now
|
| Yeah, that's the general take of End Of History, that the
| zeitgeist of what's to come has collapsed onto mere different
| hues of Liberalism in all its expressions, but we will see,
| specially with Trumpism might be showing its head again
| globally soon enough, but ofc it ought be noted that Trumpism,
| is itself yet another branch of liberalism
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| It was easy to be optimistic about the future when it felt like
| each decade things were becoming better than the decade before.
| Animats wrote:
| _In 2009, Fisher published "Capitalist Realism," a slim, powerful
| book about "the widespread acceptance that there is no
| alternative to capitalism."_
|
| That was useful, although 2009 was a bit late to notice.
|
| I've made the point for years that a big problem with capitalism
| is that it has become a monopoly ideology. When communism was
| taken seriously, capitalism had to deliver better results. That
| period ended some time in the 1980s, when even communists stopped
| taking communism seriously. A decade later, running on empty
| ideology, the Soviet Union collapsed, not with a bang, but with a
| whimper.
|
| Back when communism looked like a serious alternative, there was
| more self-restraint by capitalists, out of fear that voters would
| vote in more controls over business. Once communism ran down, we
| got a system where "greed is good, greed works" was taken
| seriously as an organizing principle. Now, that's barely
| questioned. It is no longer seen as an obligation of society to
| provide a good standard of living. That's just viewed as a
| trickle-down side effect of markets. This is a big problem.
|
| Useful propaganda films for capitalism vs. communism, to show how
| far back this goes:
|
| - "Meet King Joe" (1949) [1] "Joe is the king because he can buy
| more with his wages than any other worker on the globe"
|
| - Challenge of Ideas (1961) [2] Capitalism vs communism, a
| propaganda film with all the big names - John Wayne, Edward R.
| Murrow, and others. "Man is a responsible being" - John Wayne.
|
| There's far more in that genre.
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/4050_Meet_King_Joe_01_19_26_08
|
| [2] https://archive.org/details/Challeng1961
| theobeers wrote:
| Fisher is the best. See also his classic essay on the toxicity of
| (what passes for) left-wing social media culture, "Exiting the
| Vampire Castle." I host a mirror:
|
| https://www.theobeers.com/favorites/vampire-castle/
|
| I'm increasingly amazed at Fisher's perceptiveness--he published
| this in 2013. He was always ahead of the curve.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but 2013 is not 'ahead of the curve' - the problems
| with what was later called "woke" ideology were obvious to
| those who were paying attention, already in the late 2000s when
| that ideological memeplex first spread online via the likes of
| Tumblr. Still, better late than never I guess.
| theobeers wrote:
| The seriousness of the problem didn't hit me until more like
| 2014-15. I've had a lot of conversations about this with
| like-minded friends, wondering what went wrong, and when it
| got really bad.
|
| One of the factors that I've come to focus on, in retrospect,
| is smartphone penetration--which crossed 50% in the US in
| 2012.[0] The wide currency of social media apps did a lot to
| allow the metastasis of the "libidinal-discursive
| configurations" that Fisher identifies.
|
| Tumblr culture was an earlier harbinger, but I don't see how
| we can compare it to what subsequently developed on
| progressive-left Twitter.
|
| [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/07/nielsen-smartphones-
| used-b...
| psyc wrote:
| Fancying myself somewhat of an archivist of such matters, I
| believe the timeline of the Culture War must include
| 'mansplaining' (LiveJournal, 2008), Dickwolves (Penny
| Arcade, 2010), and Gamergate (originally WordPress, 2014).
| Each of these events brought feminist writers / bloggers
| into explosive contact with the meme-engines of the web,
| giving terms and concepts such as 'mansplaining', 'rape
| culture', and 'toxic masculinity' wide and rapid
| dissemination.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Tumblr culture was an earlier harbinger, but I don't see
| how we can compare it to what subsequently developed on
| progressive-left Twitter.
|
| We can compare it because it's the same memeplex, just on a
| different medium. Just as we can compare Qanon nuts writing
| on 4chan vs. Facebook.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm sorry, but 2013 is not 'ahead of the curve' - the
| problems with what was later called "woke" ideology were
| obvious to those who were paying attention, already in the
| late 2000s when that ideological memeplex first spread online
| via the likes of Tumblr. Still, better late than never I
| guess.
|
| Talking about it when it was still "very online" _is_ being
| ahead of the curve. You don 't have to be one of the first to
| be ahead.
| ant_li0n wrote:
| I remember reading that, back in the day. I wonder what Fisher
| would think of Russell Brand these days. That dude has really
| gone off the deep end, it's sad.
|
| Also in all these critiques of wokeness, the conversation
| always seems to involve Twitter. Maybe Twitter, the realm of
| hot-takes and snappy one-liners, just isn't a place where
| people should spend their time?
| psyc wrote:
| There was Tumblr before it (and LiveJournal before that), and
| TikTok after it. Twitter, however, seems to be better suited
| in its fundamental design for _war_ ala call-outs and
| brigading.
| theobeers wrote:
| The struggle to maintain a grounded perspective, through the
| Trump era, through the pandemic, has been too much for most
| people. I still think Brand's heart is in the right place...
| probably. Fisher stayed true to the end, but I have to wonder
| if that's only because he took his life in January 2017. It's
| hard to think of social/political commentators who haven't
| succumbed, to some extent, to the brain-melting effects of
| the last several years. (Maybe Zizek? He's no more or less
| heterodox today than he was a decade ago.)
| esnowrackley wrote:
| I sincerely never thought I'd see Fisher on HN. His work is
| fantastic, tying together politics, pop culture, and philosophy
| into a cogent reading of our times. I would recommend reading
| _Capitalist Realism_ over _Ghosts of My Life_ if you 're looking
| to get a sense of his ideas, or, at least I found the latter to
| be a harder read to get into. Both are good.
|
| Younger folks have more and more trouble imagining a better
| world. It's crippling.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Graeber pairs nicely
| teraku wrote:
| Hard agree (albeit me being "younger folks")
| NoGravitas wrote:
| My favorite of his works is _The Weird and the Eerie_.
| _Capitalist Realism_ is good /important for making some of
| Gramsci's ideas more accessible to a contemporary and non-
| academic audience, but it's not as original.
| sosull wrote:
| Same sentiment here. Seeing the words 'Mark Fisher' at the top
| of HN is an utter shock. How is this possible? What else might
| be possible?
| pizza wrote:
| I dunno, I have repeatedly seen the Adam Curtis/Mark
| Fisher/Walter Benjamin/Theodor Adorno contingent on HN come
| out of the woodwork when necessary :)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| Same. I was like "surely this isn't the mark fisher?"
| randomsilence wrote:
| >>What else might be possible?
|
| This comes very close to:
|
| >Fisher feared that we were losing our ability to
| conceptualize a tomorrow that was radically different from
| our present.
|
| On the other hand, HN's 'What to Submit' [1]:
|
| >anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
|
| Has hn become too much a thing that it has become its own
| information bubble?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > Younger folks have more and more trouble imagining a better
| world. It's crippling.
|
| Not the young folks I know. My 16 year old has a very strong
| vision of a better world, as do many of her friends
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| They almost certainly envision a world similar to now but
| with the glaring problems fixed. Mark Fisher is writing about
| the inability to imagine and begin to create entirely new
| futures (for examples look to the utopianism of early 20th
| century futurism).
| 30367286 wrote:
| Do you believe they have the tools to create that vision of a
| better world?
| awild wrote:
| What fisher and I suppose GP is saying that a future
| radically different from our own. Especially one that is not
| inherently just window dressed capitalism. In zizeks words
| "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of
| capitalism"
|
| Without context these sound like hollow leftie catchphrases
| but especially Mark Fisher managed to show in many ways how
| this manifests in capitalist realism
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