Fisher, who struggled with depression and took his own life aged 48 in January 2017, lived long enough to see the neoliberal consensus start to crumble, both in ways he advocated (the rapid rise of a British socialist opposition in the form of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour) and in ways he didn’t (Trump, and the other reactionary nationalist movements that have taken root throughout the Western world).īut as a new anthology of his writings k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher 2004-2016 illustrates vividly, Fisher leaves a deep literary legacy on politics, culture and everything in between. The book’s call to find a way to pull up the shutters on this oppressive and blinkered worldview – which Fisher argued pervades not just economic thinking, but the way we experience culture, the parameters of our imagination, and even our own mental health – remains a key reference point for progressive thinkers and activists. At the centre of cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s best known publication, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? is a terrifyingly simple proposition: that as the 21st century dawned, it was easier to imagine the end of the world than it was to imagine the end of capitalism.Ĭapitalist Realism, published just after the banking meltdown of 2008, articulated the fear that the global consensus around market-led, lightly regulated economics and international trade (aka neoliberalism) was here to stay, despite its glaring failure to deliver prosperity for (most) people or the planet.

Capitalist realism review