/lit/ - Literature

>>11730101
I honestly think yes
I have yet to find someone with such precise critiques of modern society and I honestly don't the blame the guy for checking out when he did, dude saw too much too soon

No, the vampires don't want his work in the castle, that is precisely why he died.

>>11730117
Don't blame him, blame his depression

>>11730101
Literally whom?

>>11730161
Read Capitalist Realism.

>>11730101
He's alright, I probably like him more as a cultural commentator than as a theorist

>>11730161
Ironically this

>>11730101
It wasn't suicide

>"It was in this essay [Tradition and the Individual Talent] that Eliot...described the reciprocal relationship between the canonical and the new. The new defines itself in response to what is already established; at the same time, the established has to reconfigure itself in response to the new. Eliot's claim was that the exhaustion of the future does not even leave us with the past. Tradition counts for nothing when it is no longer contested and modified."
Can someone help a brainlet make sense of this. I think I understand the jist of it, but what does it mean when the past has to "reconfigure itself"? In what ways does the past "reconfigure itself" in response to the new?

>>11730823
It's basically Hegelian or Heideggerian, i.e. immanent. The new can only emerge as a function of the old. If you have a traditional order, a set of conceptualisations and ways of taking the world, novelty has to emerge against that, out of its gaps and by recombinations of it. Usually this is envisioned as a sublation that progressively heightens the content (and not just a reordering of fixed elements).

Today's old hat conceptions, assumptions, and traditions were yesterday's acquisitions and inventions. Today's improvements will be tomorrow's taken for granteds. Except modernity has robbed us both a future and a past, because both were necessary and reciprocally related, so the loss of one entailed the loss of both. If there is no future, there is no reason to draw upon the past in order to build it, and if there is no past to draw upon, there are no gaps to fill, no new sublations or innovations to make. It's just a stagnant present.

Lutz Niethammer has a good book on critical theories of presentism called Posthistoire.

A dead commie is a net gain for society

>>11730101
No and maybe but probably not.

>>11730894
Thank you for this, anon.

Did any anon find the suicide blog post?
Are there any writings where Fisher talks specifically about his depression? I know there's Ghosts of my Life but I'm not sure that's entirely about his own depression. I'd love to know what he was writing right before he killed himself.

Before we get all too political and follow with namecalling, look at this image. This is late stage capitalism at its finest. For those who don't know this is the NFL player who started the take the knee protest in the past few years, being heralded as an activist by a multinational corporation with an inspirating quote (same Corp that utilizes slave labour etc) and neoliberals and #resistance commentators are calling this brave.

We are fucked

>>11731657
fuggin kek mate. I looked at this image before reading your post and assumed it was a meme (didn’t recognize the athlete, don’t pay attention to sports) that I wasn’t getting.

>>11730894
i feel like this didn't explain the quote at all. it just seems like a truism. yeah new stuff comes from old stuff and what is new will be old. you didn't explain how "the established has to reconfigure itself in response to the new" works. i just read the wiki article for the essay in question and your interpretation seems totally wrongheaded.

>>11731857
You are truly a brainlet.
Imagine the emergence of the internet. The old generations had to adapt to it in very difficult ways and that shaped the internet how it is today in major ways.
If you don't understand how past, present and future interact you should read something more easy before going to capitalist 'critique'.
Seems to be way over your head

>>11732036
you're just repeating truisms and not at all what Eliot was getting at. have you even read the essay?

>>11731657
you sure this isn't a shop? did nike actually make that add? wow

>>11732051
I guess you have?

>>11730211
I agree. He draws on cultural phenomenon to make his points which is great to exemplify them but at least in his talks the red string seems to be missing sometimes and overall he doesn't drive the point home that capitalism at it's present stage is opressive and destructive as good as I'd like him to but still great.

>>11732118
i'm not the one answering an earnest question with phony authority and getting things completely wrong. it's really clear from any overview of the essay that eliot is NOT talking about old people having to adapt to new technology and how that affects the tech. it's just so absurdly off base i have to wonder why you answered that guy at all, let alone with such nonchalant confidence.

>>11730136
what do you mean by this?

>>11732209
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/01/16/journey-back-into-the-vampires-castle-mark-fisher-remembered-1968-2017/

>>11730101
yes

>>11730211
"buried with the ancient beefs, bad blood and burning vendettas"

boo bany bucking B's bro. "bad blood and burning vendettas" sounds like the title of a bad English paper.

>>11732305
Shut up boron

>>11732305
it was the the 90s [i assume] give him a break

>>11732149
>it's just so absurdly off base i have to wonder why you answered that guy at all, let alone with such nonchalant confidence
First time on /lit/, anon?

>>11732305
>because I (a retard) can recognize an artistic technique being employed, it is thus bad
ah, the /tv/ school of criticism

>>11731816
>>11732060
It is very much real.

>>11731657
liberals are dumb as pigshit lmao

>>11731657
The tragic thing about capitalism is that it makes you completely unaware of your own servitude.

>>11730101
>he was also the co-founder of Zero Books
Why couldn't he kill himself before doing it?

>>11732871
This is heavily evident of how many people flock to Disneyland, argue over which comic book movie is better and so on and so forth

>>11732924
What a cringey snot you are. Maybe they just want to go to Disneyland you miserable fuck

>>11732931
People have no agency. It's all le capitalism.

>>11732856
lol!

>>11732931
i have 6 new smartphones.
I like that.
Makes me happy.
Thats all that matters.

>>11732986
Imagine if you had to convince the DMV clerk that you needed one instead of buying it. Imagine how much happier you'd be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhOcwhwumP4

I was thinking of reading him but he seems like an absolute retard in this clip

>>11732931
For what purpose. There is no substance there. Go on the rides, feel momentary adrenaline in a safe area (you may feel close to death but far off from it) see your favorite characters, hug them, feel at home in a corporate world that hugs and tucks you into bed at night.

>>11730101
people on this board overestimate the novelty of his work. he's no Jameson

>>11733172
>For what purpose. There is no substance there. Go on the rides, feel momentary adrenaline in a safe area (you may feel close to death but far off from it) see your favorite characters, hug them, feel at home in a corporate world that hugs and tucks you into bed at night.

>>11733179
Anything other than ad hominem?

>>11733190
>Anything other than ad hominem?

>>11733197

Absolutely. The fact that we now won't get his Acid Communism, likely the first serious defense and theorization of the downfall of '68, leaves a tremendous gap unarticulated between '68s' failures and the most recent ones in OWS, and so on. A new theory of how action and history operate are pretty desperately needed by the left, and Fisher was about the only guy prominent and competent enough to deliver it.

>>11733233
Holy.. based and redpilled.

>>11733239
You do realize he killed himself because the work was a failure when he realized the Left is a lost cause
Like holyshit, keep up

>>11731275
Might be included in the K-Punk book being released this November

>>11733239
'68 was just the Berlin Wall of the West, nothing else can be theorised about in marxist terms that would surpass Camatte.
It's confusing how ready marxists are to allow all of their readings to come from capitalist theorists...
https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm

>>11733292
>marxists.org

>>11733307
>has never read Camatte
Who cares? The marxists generally hate him, not sure why they host it. But in any case, that doesn't take away from the importance of his work.

>>11733314
>After collecting and publishing a great amount of historical documents from left communist currents, and analysing the most recently discovered writings of Marx, in the early-1970s Camatte abandoned the Marxist perspective. He decided instead that capitalism had succeeded in shaping humanity to its profit, and that every kind of "revolution" was thus impossible; that the working class was nothing more than an aspect of capital, unable to supersede its situation; that any future revolutionary movement would basically consist of a struggle between humanity and capital itself, rather than between classes; and that capital has become totalitarian in structure, leaving nowhere and no-one outside its domesticating influence. This pessimism about revolutionary perspective is accompanied by the idea that we can "leave the world" and live closer to nature, and stop harming children and distorting their naturally sane spirit.

Holyshit, based and redpilled

>>11731657
Yes, I thought I was the only one to think this.
Virtue signalling advert campaign are the largest scam of the 21st century

>>11733326
Yes, he was a major influence on the primitivists, and his critiques of the left are scathing.

>>11733334
>21st century
Didn't it exist in 20th century but like on patriotism and shit?

>>11733292
>https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm
surprised Land makes no mention of this guy

>camatte
https://libriincogniti.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/programme-communiste-clarification-regarding-some-surpassers-of-marxism/

>>11730101
Did he ever write anything about the fallout or lack of reaction to the Panama Papers?

>>11730161
crypto-marxist pseudointellectual #43523423
>durr economy is bad i want space-gommulism-freeshitism-gimmiedats

>>11733104
maybe... just maybe he is surfing on a popular brand of narrative
-muh populism is bad
-muh managerial society
-muh corporate x
-muh muh
meanwhile only like 5% or less have actually objectively shitty lives in the West

>>11733474
>surprised Land makes no mention of this guy
At first, Nick Land was too high to figure it out.
Later, the schizophrenia and mental illness was so deep he couldn't comprehend any of it.

>>11734011
>objectively shitty lives
who let Sam Harris in again?

>>11734011
>only like 5% or less have actually objectively shitty lives in the West
What a sack of liberal filth you are

lmao checked the archives and there was like one thread about him a few days after his kyssing with a handful of replies. so yeah

>>11733104
>>11734011
No he is right.

In my experience of being a codemonkey at a big IT company, managers are pretty useless, they just push papers around and drag you to endless useless meetings where you do shit like quantifying your productivity in advance for the period of the next 2 weeks, and ask you how well it's going.
Meanwhile the product is still a buggy piece of shit, and if the objectives of those 2 weeks has been cleared before the deadline, you sit on your ass doing nothing, pretending to do something so they can charge the client more. We lack programmers in our team, and we could definitely do well with less layers of bureaucracy. It's a depressing state of affairs.

Also, countless writers could have had a career in writing because they didn't have to slave their life away and spend their time worrying about money thanks to mommy and daddy, Steve Jobs would have been nothing without Wozniak, and a shitload of people is taking pills/alcohol/drugs to get on with their daily lives.
I'm not even a primitivist, but Uncle Ted was right in his diagnoses.

>>11734094
What is your issue with that claim?

>>11733334
>>11733448
You're both wrong.
https://youtu.be/tOVsbxfxFYA?t=2m45s [Embed]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOVsbxfxFYA Embed]

>>11734251
What you mean by "objectively shitty"?

>>11731657
Liberals are disgusting trash and need to be thrown into gulags.

>>11733239
>OWS
lmao
It was a radlib proto-identitarian shitshow that is more in line with anarchokiddies than with Marxist theory and praxis.

>>11733292
>It's confusing how ready marxists are to allow all of their readings to come from capitalist theorists...
Maybe because Marxists use capitalist economic theory to criticize capitalism? Like, I don't know, Marx in Das Kapital?

>>11733334
>>11733448
>>11734409
Read about (((Edward Bernays))) and look up the documentary The Century of the Self.

>>11734454
>Implying conservatives are any better

>>11734466
I'm talking about how all of these theorists are wrapped up in the capitalised academic class. Does anyone really think that having to turn their works into capital does not alter the content therein?
Aufhebengate is the most glaring contradiction when it comes to 'proletarianised' academia. Meanwhile, all of the proletarian writers have been abandoned or ignored. The people left are simply a brand of Marxist Consultants.

>>11734693
Just because someone is shitting on liberals doesn't make them a conservative. Leftists shit on liberals constantly.

>>11734251
There's more to a population's wellbeing than just material comfort and life expectancy rates.

>>11734883
Occams Razor

>>11734891
Gilette

>>11731657
good god leftist being assdevasted about liberals taking the social spotling off them is so fucking hilarious

>>11733239
>'68s' failures
reading pasolini and clouscard you turboretard

This is one of my favorite things written by him:
http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004187.html

>>11733474
Although I do not have concrete proof of this, Land's runaway capital idea is inspired directly from Camatte

>>11733987
>>freeshitism-gimmiedats

>What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

I only read Capitalist Realism (as this guy suggests >>11730206) because Zero Books (which slowly but steadily gets on my nerves) is shilling it every once in a while.

Well yeah that short read was quite convincing - his description of the commodification process that sort of is where it's and if you try to box out of it to a just small extent (faux revolt), then this strengthens the system in a controlled opposition kind of way.
I'm not sure if it was in that book or elsewhere, but someone pointed out how if a person who doesn't know songs from the last decades were beamed to any point between 1993 and 2018, which is 25years, then just from listening to the radio, you wouldn't quite be able to make a clear case which time you landed.

>>11735180
They're also both wrong, Land especially. The horror of AI won't be the inhuman logic of capital. It'll be what happens when we give romantic desires a determination and power beyond what should be human.The corporate AI can be adjusted with a new directive, a desiring AI can never be satiated.

>>11732871
>mfw unemployed

>>11731275
He talks about depression here https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841
though that article is from 2014 so not quite when he killed himself.

>>11735219
I've heard Fisher talk about that last point in a few talks online. I think trap might be an answer to this though. If I were beamed to 2018 from 1993 and heard my local hip hop station I'd definitely know it wasn't 1993 anymore.

>>11735237
Ironic. Our potentially greatest technological achievement (though arguably warp travel is "bigger" than AI) and the achievement itself would be trapped in the same "beingness" that brings us humans so much dismay.

>>11732871
god i really wish this was the case i wouldn't have to read you augustinian retards constantly whine about alienation
>>11732986
>everyone who disagrees with my materialistic milleniarism is an hardcore consumer
>>11733172
he says, on the 4chanz

>>11735219
>how if a person who doesn't know songs from the last decades were beamed to any point between 1993 and 2018, which is 25years, then just from listening to the radio, you wouldn't quite be able to make a clear case which time you landed.
u wot m8

the notion that every decade is supposed to have a specific "flavor" when it comes to the music is in historical terms quite the aberration. why shouldn't music from 1993 to 2018 sound mostly similar? the whole 90s music, 00's music 70's music is a pure marketing gimmick.

>>11734911
You don't have to be a leftist to despise capitalism.

I blame this guy

>>11733239
>Perhaps most notably, the anthology will include writing from what likely would’ve become the author’s next book, Acid Communism.

>>11735426
Based, though Land must be nearing his end, just a few more years.

>"The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group."

Fuck, please come back Fisher. I barely evade complete exile from my circle of leftists friends almost every day. I'm afraid that any day now I'll lose all of my friends, some of them I've been friends with since childhood, over speaking out about identity politics. Ever since my closest friend came out as trans she's completely turned her back on actual theory and meaningful praxis. Every single day I have to hear about how I'll never understand and should "sit down and shut up" when the topic turns towards the trans community. And whenever I bring up political theory I get groans, they just change the topic.
It's become so bad that I've thought about removing all of my trans friends on any social media, since all of them have been pure cancer. Whenever they're made uncomfortable by anything I'm told to stop what I'm doing immediately, but whenever I'm made uncomfortable by their posts (including sending me unsolicited lewds), I'm told to grow up and stop being so sensitive. It's made me incredibly bitter towards the trans community and I hate how bitter I've become. I need more people like Mark Fisher in my life. Rest in peace.

>>11735527
not being aware that you're white isn't white privilege. it just means you're lucky enough not to be in the presence of poc animals. which I suppose can be considered a privilege.

>>11735543
t.

>>11735527
If this is real this is really embarrassing.
Time to man up and recognise how much of a tranny cuck you are.