Mark Fisher (cultural scientist)

Mark Fisher at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2011)

Mark Fisher , pen name k-punk ( July 11, 1968 - January 13, 2017 ) was a British writer and theorist.

Life

Fisher studied English and Philosophy at Hull University and then received his PhD from the University of Warwick with his dissertation, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction . During his time in Warwick, he co-founded the interdisciplinary Cybernetic Culture Research Unit , a collective primarily concerned with accelerationism .

Fisher became known as a blogger under the name k-punk in the first years of the 21st century and through his preoccupation with radical-critical politics, music and popular culture. He has contributed to newspapers such as The Wire , The Guardian , Fact, New Statesman, and Sight & Sound . He has also published several books including Capitalist Realism (2009) and Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014). He also taught at Goldsmith College in London and was a co-founder of Zero Books.

Since his youth he suffered from depression, which he addressed politically and socially in his own articles and books. In his work Capitalist Realism (de: capitalist realism without alternative? ) He argued that the "privatization of stress" under capitalism leads to a "depoliticization of [mental] health" that replaces social solidarity with individual responsibility. In early 2017, shortly before the publication of his new work The Weird and the Eerie (de: The Strange and the Spooky ), Mark Fisher committed suicide.

plant

Capitalist realism

In his 2009 pamphlet, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Fisher reinterpreted the term capitalist realism to describe a widespread feeling that "capitalism is not only the only valid political and economic system, but that it has become almost impossible to even imagine a coherent alternative to it." In Fisher's view, the term describes the ideological zeitgeist since the collapse of the Soviet Union , where the logic (s) of capitalism set the boundaries of social and political life, affecting education , general mental health , popular culture and methods of resistance. As a result, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The atmosphere of capitalist realism acts as an invisible barrier that restricts both thought and action.

Fisher postulates a capitalist framework of thought that does not allow the mere existence of alternative structures and social orders. In his view, this restriction was intensified as a result of the global financial crisis in 2008 ; instead of the crisis intensifying the urge to find better societies, the global response increased the feeling that solutions had to be sought within the existing system.

Hauntology

Fisher used the term Hauntology, coined by Jacques Derrida , to describe an ontology of the past, of the "lost futures" of modernity that haunt the present, although (or because) they could never come about through postmodernism and neoliberalism . According to Fisher, the post- Fordist economy is characterized by the fact that the future disappears from pop culture. In such an economic state, artists no longer have the necessary means to produce the new. Hauntological art, as Fisher describes it, explores the resulting dead ends, and represents both a refusal to give up the desire for a future and a longing for a future that never came about. In his published 2014 book Ghosts of My Life (de: Ghosts of my life ) examined Fisher the Hauntologie with various examples from popular culture: among others, the music of Burial , Joy Division and David Bowie , as well as films of Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan and novels David Peace and John le Carré .

Fonts

• The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson . Ed. Mark Fisher. Zero Books, Winchester 2009, ISBN 978-1-84694-348-5
• Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? . Zero, Winchester 2009, ISBN 978-1-84694-317-1
  • Übers. Johannes Springer, Christian Werthschulte, Peter Scheiffele: capitalist realism without alternative? A pamphlet . VSA-Verlag , Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89965-421-9
• Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures . Zero, Winchester 2014, ISBN 978-1-78099-226-6 .
  • Übers. Thomas Atzert: Ghosts of my life. Depression, Hauntology, and the Lost Future . Edition Tiamat , Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89320-195-2
• The Weird and the Eerie . Repeater Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1-910924-38-9
  • Translated by Robert Zwarg: The strange and the ghostly, Tiamat, Berlin 2017 ISBN 978-3-89320-222-5
• K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher . Repeater, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-910924-38-9 .
  • K-punk. Selected writings 2004–2016 , from the English by Robert Zwarg, Tiamat, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-89320-247-8

literature

• Morten Paul: "The left is not an island". About "acid communism". Conversation with Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle (Group Plan C), in Dschungel , 50, December 13, 2018, pp. 8–11

Web links

• k-punk website
• Final essays by Mark Fisher . The ghosts and ghosts of society. Robert Zwarg talking to Sigrid Fischer on the Corso. Deutschlandfunk .
• The ghost explorer . Thomas Groß in conversation with Mark Fisher. The time .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mark Fisher: Flatline constructs: Gothic materialism and cybernetic theory-fiction . 1999 ( warwick.ac.uk [accessed March 17, 2020] University of Warwick).
2. ↑ Simon Reynolds: Mark Fisher's K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation | Simon Reynolds . In: The Guardian . January 18, 2017, ISSN  0261-3077 (English, theguardian.com [accessed March 17, 2020]).
3. ↑ Thomas Gross: Mark Fisher: The ghost researcher . In: The time . February 12, 2015, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 5, 2020]).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Mark Fisher. In: Zero Books. Retrieved March 5, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Hauntology - Off to ghost hunting. Retrieved March 5, 2020 . 
6. ↑ On the death of the cultural theorist Mark Fisher - "Not just a personal, but a political scandal". Accessed March 5, 2020 (German). 
7. ↑ Obituary on deutschlandradiokultur.de, accessed on January 27, 2017.
8. ↑ Philipp Rhensius, DER SPIEGEL: Mark Fisher: "Capitalist Realism without Alternative?" - DER SPIEGEL - Culture. Retrieved March 17, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Obituary on taz.de, accessed on January 27, 2017.
10. ^ Fischer, Mark: Capitalist Realism without Alternative? : Symptoms of our cultural malaise . VSA, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-421-9 , pp. 8 .
11. ^ ^{A b} Fischer, Mark: Capitalist Realism without Alternative? : Symptoms of our cultural malaise . VSA, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-421-9 .
12. ↑ By Benjamin Moldenhauer: The Disappearance of the Future from Pop Culture - About Mark Fisher's collection of essays “Ghosts of my Life. Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures “: literaturkritik.de. Retrieved on March 26, 2020 (German). 
13. ^ Fisher, Mark .: Ghosts of My Life: Depression, Hauntology, and the Lost Future . Ed. Tiamat, 2015, ISBN 978-3-89320-195-2 .
14. ↑ Diedrich Diederichsen : Essays from the estate of Mark Fisher: “Follow the disturbing”. “In his last essays, the British cultural theorist Mark Fisher seeks political access to the inaccessible.” The daily newspaper , December 17, 2017, accessed on December 18, 2017 .