notes
Editor’s Introduction
1. Tim Burrows, “‘We Have To Invent The Future’: An Unseen Interview With Mark Fisher”, Quietus, (22 January 2017), http://thequietus.com/articles/21616-mark-fisher-interview-capitalist-realism-sam-berkson (Also in this volume, pp. 675-682)
2. From the 2010 interview “‘They Can Be Different in the Future Too’: Interviewed by Rowan Wilson for Ready Steady Book (2010)” (Also in this volume, pp. 627-636)
3. k-punk, “One Year Later”, (17 May 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/002926.html (Also in this volume, p. 693)
4. k-punk, “Why K?”, (16 April 2005), http://k-punk.org/why-k/ (Also in this volume, pp. 31-32)
5. k-punk, “Book Meme”, (28 June 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005771.html (Also in this volume, pp. 37-41)
6. Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, North Star, (22 November 2013), http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11299, (Also in this volume, pp.737-745)
7. k-punk, “New Comments Policy”, (5 September 2004), http://k-punk.org/new-comments-policy/ (Also in this volume, pp. 701-702)
8. k-punk, “We Dogmatists”, (17 February 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005025.html (Also in this volume, pp. 709-710)
9. k-punk, “Noise as Anti-Capital”, (21 November 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004441.html (Also in this volume, pp. 285-289)
10. See the Zer0 Books manifesto in this volume, p. 103
11. David Stubbs, “Remembering Mark Fisher”, Quietus, (16 January 2017), http://thequietus.com/articles/21572-mark-fisher-rip-obituary-interview
12. Mark Fisher (ed.), The Resistable Demise of Michael Jackson, (Zer0, 2009); Mark Fisher, Kodwo Eshun and Gavin Butt (eds.), Post-Punk Then and Now, (Repeater Books, 2016)
13. k-punk, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan”, (13 June 2004), (Also in this volume, pp. 47-51)
14. Mark Fisher, “What is Hauntology?”, Film Quarterly, 66:1, 2012
15. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Verso, 1992), p. 48
16. Ibid., pp. 48-49
17. Ibid., p. 159
Why K?
1. k-punk, (16 April 2005), http://k-punk.org/why-k/
“Well, I’m still enough of a neophyte to be thrilled by a mention in Village Voice. I suppose it is ironic that Geeta describes k-punk as ‘cultural studies’, given my notorious antipathy to cult studs. On the other hand, though, k-punk is cultural studies as I’d always thought it should be practised (much of my hostility to cult studs stems from a disappointment when faced with the depressing, guilt-mongering reality of cultural studies in the academy). Anyway, this is the full text that I sent to Geeta”. See Geeta Dayal, “PH.Dotcom”, Village Voice, (5 April 2005), https://www.villagevoice.com/2005/04/05/ph-dotcom/
PART ONE
METHODS OF DREAMING: BOOKS
Book Meme
1. k-punk, (28 June 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005771.html
Space, Time, Light, All the Essentials — Reflections on J.G. Ballard Season (BBC Four)
1. k-punk, (8 October 2003), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/000590.html
2. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, (Michigan, 1994)
3. “The Enormous Space” was published in Ballard’s 1990 anthology, War Fever, (Collins, 1990)
4. Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents, (1930)
5. The American illusionist David Blaine undertook Above the Below in 2003, an endurance stunt in which he was sealed inside a transparent Plexiglas case suspended mid-air in London, and where he fasted for forty-four days.
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
1. k-punk, (13 June 2004), http://k-punk.org/why-i-want-to-fuck-ronald-reagan/
2. Published as Chapter 14 of J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (Jonathan Cape, 1970)
3. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, p. 170
4. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, (Sage, 2007), p. 92
5. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, p. 165
6. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Verso, 1991), p. 17
7. See Ibid., pp. 155-180 and Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fiction, (Verso, 2005)
8. It appears in a section of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch titled “Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry”, where Doctor “Fingers” Schafer presents his “Master Work: The Complete All American Deanxietized Man…”
9. J.G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973); Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 111-120
A Fairground’s Painted Swings
1. k-punk, (24 February 2005), http://k-punk.org/a-fairgrounds-painted-swings/
2. Infinite Thought, aka Nina Power. The blog is no longer available online.
3. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L’Eve Future, translated as Tomorrow’s Eve (University of Illinois Press, 1982), p. 68
4. Gregory Bateson, “The Cybernetics of ‘Self’: A Theory of Alocoholism”, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology, (University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 309-337. Also available online: http://ift-malta.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Thecybernetics-of-self-A-theory-of-alcoholism.pdf
What Are the Politics of Boredom? (Ballard 2003 Remix)
1. k-punk, (8 March 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005135.html
2. J.G. Ballard, Millenium People, (Fourth Estate, 2003)
3. Ibid., p. 61
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 63
6. Ibid., p. 140
7. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (Penguin, 1993), p. 305
8. Ballard, Millenium People, p. 175
9. Ibid., p. 176
10. Ibid., p. 149
11. Ibid., p. 166
12. Ibid., p. 249
13. Ibid., p. 85
14. Ibid., p. 104
15. Ibid., p. 109
Let Me Be Your Fantasy
1. k-punk, (27 August 2006) http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008304.html
2. Renata Select, (Per)Versions of Love and Hate, (Verso, 2000)
3. Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, (St Martins Press, 1991)
4. Ibid., pp. 31-32
5. Indeed, in a 1999 interview Ballard says,
He has created this extremely imaginative world in a way that I don’t think any other figurative artist on this planet could match. I think that Newton is the greatest figurative artist working today. I don’t think there’s anybody anywhere who remotely approaches him in his creative achievement.
6. From Ballard’s piece “The Lucid Dreamer” in Bookforum, 1999
7. See Rodley (ed.), Cronenberg on Cronenberg, (Faber and Faber, 1997), p. 194
8. Iain Sinclair, Crash, (BFI Film Classics, 1999)
Fantasy Kits: Steven Meisel’s “State of Emergency”
1. Guest post on Ballardian, (25 September 2006), http://www.ballardian.com/fantasy-kits-steven-meisels-state-of-emergency
2. “State Of Emergency” editorial, Vogue Italia September 2006. Photographer: Steven Meisel. Model: Hilary Rhoda & Iselin Steiro, https://trendland.com/state-of-emergency-by-steven-meisel/
3. k-punk, “Let Me Be Your Fantasy”, (27 August 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008304.html (Also in this volume, pp. 63-67)
4. See k-punk, “My Card: My Life: Comments on the AMEX Red Campaign”, (4 September 2006), http://www.any-body.org/anybody_vent/2006/9/4/my-cardmy-life-your-comments.html (Also in this volume, pp. 455-456)
5. Joanna Bourke, “A Taste for Torture?”, Guardian, (13 September 2006), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/sep/13/photography.pressandpublishing
6. Simon Sellars,“JGB’s Sinister Marriage”, Ballardian, (14 September 2006), http://www.ballardian.com/jgbs-sinister-arriage
7. J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, (Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 12
8. See MOMA profile of Martha Rosler, https://www.moma.org/artists/6832?=undefined&page=1&direction=
9. See review of Weiss’ film on Ballardian, http://www.ballardian.com/weiss-atrocity-exhibition-review
The Assassination of J.G. Ballard
1. Ballardian, (28 April 2009), http://www.ballardian.com/rip-jgb-tributes-from-theballardosphere-part-4
2. J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition: Annotated Edition, (Flamingo, 1993), p. 17
3. J.G. Ballard, “Myth-Maker of the 20th Century” in New Worlds 142 (1964)
A World of Dread and Fear
1. k-punk, (13 September 2005), http://k-punk.org/a-world-of-dread-and-fear/
2. David Peace, GB84, (Faber & Faber, 2004)
3. See Andy Beckett’s review of Peace’s GB84 in London Review of Books, Vol. 26, No. 18, (23 September 2004), https://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n18/andy-beckett/political-gothic
4. Frederic Jameson, “Culture and Finance Capital”, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on Postmodernism, 1983-1998, (Verso, 2009), p. 154
5. See Joseph Brooker, “Orgreave Revisited: David Peace’s GB84 and the return to the 1980s”, Radical Philosophy, Volume 133, https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/orgreave-revisited
6. Peace, GB84, p. 7
7. Ibid., p. 176
8. Ibid., p. 320
Ripley’s Glam
1. k-punk, (1 July 2006), http://k-punk.org/ripleys-glam/
2. Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley, (Vintage, 1999), p. 164
3. Slavoj Žižek, “When Straight Means Weird and Psychosis is Normal”, http://www.lacan.com/ripley.html
4. Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley, p. 78
5. Thornstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, (Dover, 1994), p 13
6. Ibid., p. 10
Methods of Dreaming
1. k-punk, (10 October 2008), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010739.html
Atwood’s Anti-Capitalism
1. k-punk, (26 September 2009), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011314.html
2. Fredric Jameson, “Then You Are Them (review of Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood)”, London Review of Books, Vol. 31, No.17, (10 September 2009)
3. Guy Sorman,“Economics Does Not Lie”, City Journal, Summer 2008, https://www.city-journal.org/html/economics-does-not-lie-13099.html
4. Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, (Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 165
5. Ibid., p. 305
6. Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood, (Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 316
7. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, (Hackett, 1987), p. 342
8. Guy Sorman, cited in Žižek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, (Verso, 2009), p. 24
Toy Stories: Puppets, Dolls and Horror Stories
1. Frieze, (1 September 2010), https://frieze.com/article/toy-stories
2. Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror, (Hippocampus, 2011)
3. Ian Penman, “Notes Towards a Ritual Exorcism of the Dead King” in Mark Fisher (ed.), The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, (Zer0, 2009)
4. Giovanni Tiso, “The Unmaking of Pinocchio”, Bat, Bean, Beam, (3 August 2010), https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/unmaking-of-pinocchio.html
5. Richard Seymour, “Chattel Story”, Lenin’s Tomb, (8 August 2010), http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/08/chattel-story.html
6. Giovanni Tiso, “Useful Life”, Bat, Bean, Beam, (19 July 2010), https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/useful-life.html
Zer0 Books Statement
1. This is the mission statement written by Mark Fisher at the inception of the radical publisher Zer0 Books which he co-founded with his friend Tariq Goddard in 2009. It was reprinted in each of the books published by Zer0, through their leaving to form Repeater in 2014, until January 2018 when a modified version was adopted by the new management. In addition to all of his writing, it is important to remember the vital role Mark played in helping to revolutionise the existing British publishing industry, and theoretical writing in particular, that was in the absolute doldrums leading up to the formation of Zer0.
PART TWO
SCREENS, DREAMS AND SPECTRES: FILM AND TELEVISION
A Spoonful of Sugar
1. k-punk, (5 April 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/002354.html
She’s Not My Mother
1. k-punk, (10 June 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003227.html
2. Andrew O’Hehir, “The Baron of Blood does Bergman”, Salon, (28 February 2003), https://www.salon.com/2003/02/28/cronenberg_3/
3. Joy Division, “Decades”, Closer, (Factory Records, 1980)
4. O’Hehir, “The Baron of Blood does Bergman”
Stand Up, Nigel Barton
1. k-punk, (13 June 2004), http://k-punk.org/stand-up-nigel-barton/
2. Dennis Potter, The Nigel Barton Plays, (Penguin, 1967), p. 31
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, (Penguin, 2009)
4. Potter, The Nigel Barton Plays, p. 21
Portmeirion: An Ideal for Living
1. k-punk, (31 August 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004048.html
2. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, “The Fair, the Pig, Authorship”, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 30
3. The complete text of which is available here: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm
4. Taken from https://www.portmeirion-village.com/visit/clough-williams-ellis/
5. See https://www.portmeirion-village.com/visit/clough-williams-ellis/
Golgothic Materialism
1. Hyperstition, (15 October 2004), http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004275.html
2. Slavoj Žižek,“Passion in the Era of Decaffeinated Belief”, The Symptom: Online Journal for lacan.com, Issue 5, Winter 2004, http://www.lacan.com/passionf.htm
This Movie Doesn’t Move Me
1. k-punk, (13 March 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005171.html
2. Rachel Cooke,“What’s Up Doc”, Observer, (6 March 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2005/mar/06/features.review17
3. Justin Barton, http://scanshifts.blogspot.co.uk/
Fear and Misery in the Third Reich ‘n’ Roll
1. k-punk, (9 June 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005664.html
2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, (Continuum, 1987), p. 230
3. See Christoph Cox, “On Evil: An Interview with Alenka Zupančič”, Cabinet Magazine, Issue 5, Winter 2001/2, http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/5/alenkazupancic.php
We Want It All
1. k-punk, (12 February 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007348.html
2. “Celebrity Big Brother — Autopsy or Prologue?”, The Church of Me, (1 February 2006), http://cookham.blogspot.co.uk/2006_02_01_archive.html
Gothic Oedipus: Subjectivity and Capitalism in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins
1. ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comic Studies, 2:2, 2006
2. For a summary of the ethical assumptions of this world, look no further than K.W. Jeter’s Noir (Orion, 1998) (a novel that is heavily indebted to both Gibson and Blade Runner). Jeter has his hardboiled novelist, Turbiner, define the essence of noir as follows:
The looks, the darkness, the shadows, all those trite rain-slick streets — that was the least of it. That had nothing to do with it. […] It’s betrayal […] That’s what it’s always been. That’s what makes it so realistic, even when it is at its most dreamlike and shabby, when it feels like it’s happening on another planet. The one we lost and can’t remember, but we can see it when we close our eyes… (p. 192)
For an (unfavourable) comparison of Miller’s Sin City with Forties noir, see Patterson, 2005.
3. Alan Moore is an interesting parallel case to Miller. Moore, too, made his name with comics that put superheroes in a more “realistic” context. He seemed similarly ambivalent about the superhero genre, drawn to work within it but also driven by a desire to reform and to some extent demythologise it. However, Moore’s more recent work — on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea — has explicitly dealt with the concept of mythologisation (although, naturally, this is quite different from actually producing a character that attains a mythological status). Moore also retains a place for a kind of egalitarian critique of State power which is lacking in Miller: see for instance his depiction of aristocratic corruption and conspiracy in From Hell.
4. Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, (Verso, 2002), p. 7
5. Christoph Cox and Molly Whalen, “On Evil: An Interview with Alain Badiou”, Cabinet, Issue 5, Winter 2001/2, http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/5/alainbadiou.php
6. Ibid.
7. Otherwise, Badiou would be contradicting himself, claiming on the one hand that capitalism is “ideal” and that it destroys any reference to the ideal.
8. Kim Newman,“Cape Fear”, Sight & Sound, July 2005. As Newman’s piece establishes, with a detailed scholarly survey of the origin of the film’s characters and set pieces.
9. For an explanation of the concept of hyperstition, see http://hypersti…tractdynamics.org, especially “How Do Fictions Become Hyperstitions”, http://hypersti…chives/003345.html
10. This modification is in fact prompted by Miller’s Dark Knight Returns.
11. It is significant that perhaps the three greatest American superheroes — Batman, Superman, and Spiderman — are orphans, but the Oedipal torment is most intense in Batman. (It is displaced in Spiderman onto his Aunt, the mother-substitute for and to whom he is eternally responsible, and Uncle, for whose death he feels guilty.)
12. Newman,“Cape Fear”. As Newman’s piece establishes, with a detailed scholarly survey of the origin of the film’s characters and set pieces.
13. Alena Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan, (Verso, 2000), p. 245. She goes on to say:
That which brings the story of Oedipus close to the noir universe is, of course, the fact that the hero — the detective — is without knowing it, implicated in the crimes he is investigating. One could even say that the story of Oedipus lies at the heart of the” “new wave” of film noir — films such as Angel Heart and Blade Runner (the director’s cut), where it emerges at the end that the hero is himself the criminal he is looking for. (pp. 245-6)
14. Ibid., p. 193
15. In this respect, as in so many others, it compares favourably with Tim Burton’s Batman. Burton pioneered a kind of psycho-biographically-inclined” “Dark-Lite”, and his account of the Joker’s origin — man falls into bath of acid and goes psychotic — traded in the cheapest and shallowest psycho-biographical cliché.
16. Slavoj Žižek, “Revenge of Global Finance”, In These Times, (21 May 2005), http://inthesetimes.com/article/2122/revenge_of_global_finance
17. He was also, according to Newman, “perhaps the first upper middle-class black character in comics” (Newman, “Cape Fear”).
18. Which suggests, perhaps, a looping of cyberpunk (to which Batman in many ways now belongs) back to (one of) its origins in German Expressionism.
19. China Miéville, comment on a post at Lenin’s Tomb. Newman also spotted a 9/11 parallel:
Batman Begins finally feeds back into the world of 2005, even as it picks up threads from 1939 and 1986. Fear (phobos), the limited realm of the bat-phobic Bruce and phobia-expert Crane, has been subsumed by terror (deimos). This America is riven by injustice, and is haunted by a fanatic eastern sect with a charismatic but impossible-to-catch figurehead bent on crashing a mode of transport into a skyscraper to trigger an explosion of panic that will destroy society. (Newman, “Cape Fear”, p. 21)
20. For an analysis of which, see Fisher and Mackay, Pomophobia (1996)
When We Dream, Do We Dream We’re Joey?
1. k-punk, (1 October 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/006484.html
2. David Cronenberg (dir.), A History of Violence, (2005)
3. Jacques Lacan, “The Split Between the Eye and the Gaze”, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, (Norton, 1973)
4. Peter Bradshaw, “Review of A History of Violence”, Guardian, (30 September 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2005/sep/30/2
5. Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, (October, 1992), pp. 89-90
6. Graham Fuller, “Good Guy Bad Guy”, Sight and Sound, 15, October 2005
7. J.G. Ballard, “The Killer Inside”, Guardian, (23 September 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/23/jgballard
8. Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, (Verso, 2002), p. 12
9. Graham Fuller, “Good Guy Bad Guy”
10. Slavoj Žižek, The Universal Exception, (Bloomsbury, 2006), pp. 308-9
Notes on Cronenberg’s eXistenZ
1. Unpublished k-punk notes on David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ which formed the later essay “Work and Play in eXistenZ” in Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2012), pp. 70-73
2. Nick Land, “Meltdown”, Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987– 2007, (Falmouth: Urbanomic), p. 456
I Filmed It So I Didn’t Have to Remember It Myself
1. k-punk, (21 October 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/006647.html
2. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan, 1994)
Spectres of Marker and the Reality of the Third Way
1. k-punk, (18 February 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007392.html
2. Seamus Milne, “Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough”, Guardian, (16 September 2006), https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html
Dis-identity Politics
1. k-punk, (25 April 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007709.html
2. Steven Shaviro, “V for Vendetta”, http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=488#comments
3. See Jenni Russell, “Tony Blair’s authoritarian populism is indefensible and dangerous”, Guardian, (24 April 2006), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/24/comment.labour
4. Fredric Jameson, “Marx’s Purloined Letter”, in Sprinker (ed.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (Verso, 1999)
5. Giovanni Tiso, https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.uk/
“You Have Always Been the Caretaker”: The Spectral Spaces of the Overlook Hotel
1. Perforations, 29, (2007), http://noel.pd.org/Perforations/perf29/perf29_index.html
2. Frederic Jameson, “Historicism in The Shining”, Signatures of the Visible, (Psychology Press, 1992), p. 90
3. Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheism”, James Strachley (ed.), The Origins of Religion: Totem and Taboo, Moses and Monotheism and Other Works, (Penguin, 1990)
4. Stephen King, The Shining, (Penguin, 1997), p. 356
5. David A. Cook, “America Horror: The Shining”, Literature/Film Quarterly, 12.1, 1984
6. King, The Shining, p. 356
7. Walter Metz, “Toward a Post-Structural Influence in Film Genre Study: Intertextuality and The Shining”, Film Criticism, Vol. XXII, 1, Fall 1997
8. Metz in fact argues that the situation is more complex, arguing that Horror, as well as melodrama, has taken the family as its subject.
9. See, for instance, Lisa Gye’s hypertext project “Half Lives” (http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30305/20020815-0000/halflives.adc.rmit.edu.au/index.html), which explores the concept of hauntology through her own family history.
10. See Žižek, Slavoj, “The Big Other Doesn’t Exist”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, Spring - Fall 1997, online at
11. King, The Shining, p. 437
12. Ibid., p. 362
13. Ibid., p. 319
14. Freud, “Moses and Monotheism”, p. 374
15. Metz, “Toward a Post-Structural Influence in Film Genre Study: Intertextuality and The Shining”, p. 57
16. King, The Shining, p. 437
17. Metz, “Toward a Post-Structural Influence in Film Genre Study: Intertextuality and The Shining”, p. 57
Coffee Bars and Internment Camps
1. k-punk, (26 January 2007), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008956.html (A truncated and reworked version of this piece provides the opening pages of Capitalist Realism (Zer0, 2009))
2. Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, (Paladin, 1968). A book about the London counter-culture which reflected the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation.
3. David Edelstein, “Review of Children of Men”, New York Magazine, 2006, http://nymag.com/movies/listings/rv_51038.htm
4. Latin for “the sacred man” or“ “the accursed man” — a figure of Roman law, a person who is banned and may be killed by anybody. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, (Stanford, 1998)
5. T.S Eliot, “Tradition and Individual Talent”, The Sacred Wood (1920)
Rebel Without a Cause
1. k-punk, (6 August 2008), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010555.html
2. Andrew Klavern, “What Bush and Batman Have in Common”, Wall Street Journal, (25 July 2008), https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121694247343482821
3. Slavoj Žižek and Geert Lovink, “Japan Through a Slovenian Looking Glass: Reflections of Media and Politic and Cinema”, InterCommunication, 14, 1995
4. Inspersal’s blog is no longer online.
5. Matthew Yglesias, “Dark Knight Politics”, Atlantic, (24 July 2008), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/07/-em-dark-knight-em-politics/49451/
Robot Historian in the Ruins
1. k-punk, (27 August 2008), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010636.html
2. Voyou, “Ideology critics are a superstitious, cowardly lot”, Dangerous and Lazy, (4 August 2008), https://blog.voyou.org/2008/08/04/ideology-critics-are-a-superstitious-cowardly-lot/
3. See Wayne Wedge’s comments on k-punk post, “Bat Mailbag”, (11 August 2008), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010572.html (Wedge writes of The Dark Knight: “A lucrative kiddie icon self-consciously invoking the nightmares of history. TimeWarnerAolHalliburtonBlackwaterWayneenterprises demanding that we gather in our millions to watch, re-watch, discuss and argue about this corporate meta-product arguing with itself.”
4. Kyle Smith, “WALL-E: A Gloom-E Satire”, Free Republic, (27 June 2008), http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2037224/posts
5. Paul Edwards, “WALL-E’s Indictment of Liberalism”, Townhall, (2 July 2008), https://townhall.com/Columnists/pauledwards/2008/07/02/wall-es-indictment-ofliberalism-n1062814
Review of Tyson
1. Sight and Sound, April 2009
2. Joyce Carol Oates, “Kid Dynamite: Mike Tyson is the most exciting heavyweight fighter since Muhammad Ali”, Life, March 1987
“They Killed Their Mother”: Avatar as Ideological Symptom
1. k-punk, (6 January 2010), http://k-punk.org/they-killed-their-mother-avatar-as-ideological-symptom/
2. Greg Egan, “Avatar Review”, (20 December 2012), http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/AVATAR/Avatar.html
3. Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, (Verso, 2009), p. 97
Precarity and Paternalism
1. k-punk, (11 February 2010), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011486.html
2. Taylor Parkes, “Review: Life on Earth Soundtrack”, Quietus, (17 December 2009), http://thequietus.com/articles/03440-life-on-earth-trunk-records-compilation-review
3. J.J. Charlesworth, “Crisis at the ICA: Ekow Eshun’s Experiment in Deinstitutionalisation”, Mute, (10 February 2010), http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/crisis-ica-ekow-eshuns-experiment-deinstitutionalisation
4. Alex Williams, “On Negative Solidarity and Post-Fordist Plasticity”, Splintering Bone Ashes, (31 January 2010), http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/negative-solidarity-and-post-fordist.html
5. Tobias van Even, “Business Ontology (or why Xmas gets you fired)”, Fugitive Philosophy, (29 December 2009), http://fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/2009/12/business-ontology/
Return of the Gift: Richard Kelly’s The Box
1. k-punk, (14April 2010), http://k-punk.org/return-the-gift-richard-kellys-the-box/
2. See Graham Harman, “Duel”, Object-Oriented Philosophy, (8 January 2010), https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/duel/
3. See interview with Richard Kelly: “Richard Kelly Cracks Open THE BOX For Mr. Beaks!”, Aint It Cool News, (18/06/09), http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41449
4. Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, (MIT, 1963)
5. Nina Power’s Infinite Thought blog is no longer online. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Book III, (Routledge, 2000), p. 320
Contributing to Society
1. k-punk, (4 August 2010), http://k-punk.org/contributing-to-society/
2. “PeoplePlus”, a trading name for “A4e”, formerly known as Action for Employment, is a for-profit welfare-to-work company based in the UK.
3. Thornbridge Hall, http://www.thornbridgehall.co.uk/
4. See http://watchinga4e.blogspot.co.uk/
5. http://watchinga4e.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/who-knows-best.html
6. Digital Ben, “Fairy Jobmother Deconstructed”, Third Class on a One Class Train, (24 July 2010), http://ridingthirdclass.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/fairy-jobmotherdeconstructed.html
7. See http://theviewfromcullingworth.blogspot.co.uk/
8. Ivor Southwood, Non-Stop Inertia, (Zer0, 2010)
“Just Relax and Enjoy It”: Geworfenheit on the BBC
1. k-punk, (4 August 2010), http://k-punk.org/just-relax-and-enjoy-itgeworfenheit-on-the-bbc/
2. Neil Young, “Down At The World’s End: David Rudkin’s Artemis 81”, Neil Young’s Film Lounge, (20 October 2007), https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/down-at-the-world-s-end-david-rudkin-s-artemis-81-tv-1981-8-10/
3. Phillip Challinor, “Artemis 81”, The Curmudgeon, http://thecurmudgeonly.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/artemis-81.html
Star Wars Was a Sell-Out from the Start
1. Guardian, (1 November 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/01/star-wars-disney-sell-out
Gillian Wearing: Self Made
1. Sight and Sound, June 2012
Batman’s Political Right Turn
1. Guardian, (22 July 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/batman-political-right-turn
2. On 20 July 2012 a mass shooting occurred in a cinema in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. The shooter, James Egan Holmes, killed twelve people and injured seventy others.
3. John Nolte, “Occupy Wall Street in Damage Control Mode Over Dark Knight Rises”, Breitbart, (19 July 2012), http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2012/07/19/occupy-damage-control-dark-kinght/
Remember Who The Enemy Is
1. k-punk, (25 November 2013), http://k-punk.org/remember-who-the-enemy-is/
2. Unemployed Negativity, “Primer for the Post-Apocalypse: The Hunger Games Trilogy”, (5 September 2011), http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2011/09/primer-for-post-apocalypse-hunger-game.html?spref=fb
3. See Mark Fisher, “Precarious Dystopias: The Hunger Games, In Time, and Never Let Me Go”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 4, Summer 2012, pp. 27-33
4. Franco Bifo Berardi, Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the Pathologies of the Post-alpha Generation. (Minor Compositions, 2009), p. 55
Beyond Good and Evil: Breaking Bad
1. New Humanist, (18 December 2012)
Classless Broadcasting: Benefits Street
1. New Humanist, (17 February 2014)
2. Tracey Jensen, “A Summer of Television Poverty Porn”, Sociological Imagination, (9 September 2013), http://sciologicalimagination.org/archives/14013
3. See John Corner, “Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions”, Television & New Media, (1 August 2002), http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/152747640200300302
4. Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood, Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value, (Routledge, 2012)
Rooting for the Enemy: The Americans
1. New Humanist, (1 October 2014)
How to Let Go: The Leftovers, Broadchurch and The Missing
1. New Humanist, (2 March 2015)
The Strange Death of British Satire
1. New Humanist, (24 August 2015)
2. Author of Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion, (Lone Arrow Press, 2014)
3. Nick Duffell, “Why Boarding Schools Produce Bad Leaders”, Guardian, (9 June 2014), https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/boarding-schoolsbad-leaders-politicians-bullies-bumblers
4. Jonathan Coe, “Sinking Giggling into the Sea”, London Review of Books, Vol. 35, No. 14, July 2013, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-gigglinginto-the-sea
5. Franco Berardi, After the Future, (AK Press, 2011)
Review: Terminator Genisys
1. Sight and Sound, (September 2015)
The House that Fame Built: Celebrity Big Brother
1. New Humanist, (16 December 2015)
2. Andreas Hillen, 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America, (Bloomsbury, 2008)
Sympathy for the Androids: The Twisted Morality of Westworld
1. New Humanist, (30 November 2016)
PART THREE
CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS: WRITING ON MUSIC
The By Now Traditional Glasto Rant
1. k-punk, (28 June 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003459.html
2. Simon Frith, “Afterthoughts” (1985), Taking Popular Music Seriously: Selected Essays, (Routledge, 2017)
3. Ian Penman (The Pill Box), “Include Me Out” (10 July 2003), http://apawboy.blogspot.co.uk/2003_07_06_apawboy_archive.html#105783432477159439
4. Ian Penman (The Pill Box), comments (28 June 2003), http://apawboy.blogspot.co.uk/2003_06_22_apawboy_archive.html#105679442481295648
Art Pop, No, Really
1. k-punk, (5 July 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003519.html
k-punk, or the Glampunk Art Pop Discontinuum
1. k-punk, (11 November 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004115.html
2. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, (CreateSpace, 2010)
3. Simon Reynolds, Blissblog, (20 June 2003), http://blissout.blogspot.co.uk/2003_06_15_blissout_archive.html#95865180
4. Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, (Paladin, 1968), p. 33
5. Ian Penman,“The Shattered Glass: Notes on Bryan Ferry”, Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, ed. McRobbie, (Macmillan, 1989), pp. 103-17
6. Nuttall, Bomb Culture, p. 34
7. Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, (Quartet, 1998), p. 95
8. k-punk, “Art Pop, No, Really”, (5 July 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003519.html (Also in this volume, pp. 269-272)
Noise as Anti-Capital: As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade
1. k-punk, (21 November 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004441.html
This was k-punk’s contribution to the NOISETHEORYNOISE#2 event on 20 November 2004 at Middlesex University, organised by Andy McGettigan and Ray Brassier.
2. Slavoj Žižek, “The Matrix: Or, The Two Sides of Perversion”, The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, ed. William Irwin, (Open Court,2002), p. 246
3. William S Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded, (John Calder, 1968), p. 44
4. Jean-François Lyotard, LIbid.inal Economy, (Continuum, 2004), p 113
Lions After Slumber, or What is Sublimation Today?
1. k-punk, (25 March 2005), http://k-punk.org/lions-after-slumber-or-what-issublimation-today/
2. Slavoj Žižek, “The Deadlock of Repressive Desublimation”, The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Women and Causality, (Verso, 2005), p. 16
3. Green Gartside, Welsh singer/songwriter and frontman of Scritti Politti
4. Marcello Carlin, “Scritti Politti: Early”, (12 January 2005), http://hemingwoid.blogspot.co.uk/2005/01/scritti-politti-early.html
5. Alena Zupančič, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two, (MIT, 2003), p. 77
6. Zupančič, The Shortest Shadow, p. 77
7. Ian Penman, The Pill Box, (13 May 2003), http://apawboy.blogspot.co.uk/2003_05_11_apawboy_archive.html#94280226
The Outside of Everything Now
1. k-punk, (01 May 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005449.html
2. Simon Reynolds, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, (Faber and Faber, 2006)
For Your Unpleasure: The Hauter-Couture of Goth
1. k-punk, (01 June 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005622.html
2. k-punk, “Continuous Contact”, (23 January 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004826.html
3. I.T. – fellow blogger and friend Infinite Thought (Nina Power)
4. Tim de Lisle, “Roxy is the Drug”, Guardian, (20 May 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/may/20/roxymusic.popandrock
5. Alena Zupančič, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two, (MIT, 2003), p. 179
6. Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, (Harvard UP, 1996), p. 344
7. Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, (St Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 94
8. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity”, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, (Continuum, 2002), pp. 229-255
9. Baudrillard, Seduction, p. 96
10. Reynolds and Press, The Sex Revolts, p. 344
11. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 114-115
It Doesn’t Matter If We All Die: The Cure’s Unholy Trinity
1. k-punk, (3 August 2005) — http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/006087.html
2. Michael Bracewell, England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie, (Flamingo, 1998), pp. 119-120
3. Ibid., p. 115
4. Ibid., p. 117
5. James Oldham, “Bad Medicine”, Uncut, (2 January 2000)
6. Bracewell, England is Mine, pp. 115-116
Look at the Light
1. k-punk, (16 November 2005), http://k-punk.org/look-at-the-light/
Is Pop Undead?
1. k-punk, (31 January 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007289.html
2. Hannah Pool, “Whiteout”, Guardian, (28 January 2006), https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/jan/28/popandrock
3. Simon Reynolds, “Music 2005”, Frieze, Issue 96, Jan-Feb 2006, https://frieze.com/article/music-2005?language=en
Memorex for the Kraken: The Fall’s Pulp Modernism
Part I
1. k-punk, (8 May 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007759.html A version of this piece was previously published in Michael Goddard and Benjamin Halligan, Mark E. Smith and The Fall, (Ashgate, 2010)
2. The Fall, Dragnet, (Step-Forward, 1979)
3. The Fall, “Spector Vs. Rector”, Dragnet, (Step-Forward, 1979)
4. Mark Sinker, “Look Back In Anguish”, NME, (2 January 1988)
5. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, “The Fair, the Pig, Authorship”, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, (Cornell University Press, 1986)
6. A passage in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” which, on his own admission, was influenced by Stoker’s novel:
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.
7. Ian Penman, “All Fall Down”, NME, (5 January 1980), http://thefall.org/gigography/80jan05.html
8. Jean Baudrillard, “The Ecstasy of Communication”, The Anti-Aesthetic, (The New Press, 2002), p. 153
Part II
1. k-punk, (04 February 2007), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008993.html
2. The Fall, “City Hobgoblins”, Grotesque (After the Gramme), (Rough Trade, 1980)
3. Mark Sinker, “Watching the City Hobgoblins”, Wire, August 1986
4. H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx
5. S.T. Joshi, “Introduction” to M.R. James, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories: The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James, Vol. 1 (Penguin, 2004)
6. Mark Sinker, “England: Look Back In Anguish”, NME, (02 January 1988)
7. Ibid.
8. Patrick Parrinder, James Joyce, (Cambridge University Press, 1984)
9. Mark E Smith, The Fall: Lyrics, (The Lough Press, 1985)
10. Philip Thompson, The Grotesque, (Routledge, 1972), p. 2
11. The Fall, “The N.W.R.A”, Grotesque (After the Gramme), (Rough Trade, 1980)
Part III
1. k-punk, (16 February 2007), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009039.html
2. Gerard Genette, Paratexts, (Cambridge UP, 1997)
3. Michael Moorcock, The Final Programme, (HarperCollins, 1971)
Scritti’s Sweet Sickness
1. k-punk, (5 July 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008010.html
2. John Lewis, “Scritti Politti: Interview”, Time Out, (30 May 2006), https://www.timeout.com/london/music/scritti-politti-interview
3. Paul Oldfield, “After Subversion: Pop Culture and Power”, in Angela McRobbie (ed.), Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, (Macmillan, 1987)
4. Interview with Green Gartside by Simon Reynolds, http://bibbly-o-tek.com/2006/06/16/green/
5. Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, (MIT Press, 2006), p. 16
6. Ibid., p. 161
Postmodernism as Pathology, Part 2
1. k-punk, (17 February 2007), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009043.html
Choose Your Weapons
1. k-punk, (12 August 207), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009633.html
2. Frank Kogan, “Rules of the Game Follow Up #2: Paris Is Our Vietnam”, Las Vegas Weely, (29 June 2007), https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/jun/29/rules-of-the-game-followup-2-paris-is-our-vietnam/
3. Frank Kogan, “What’s Wrong with Pretty Girls?”, Las Vegas Weekly, (04 July 2007), https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/jul/04/whats-wrong-with-pretty-girls/
4. Lawrence Miles’ blog, http://beasthouse-lm.blogspot.co.uk/
Variations on a Theme
1. Frieze, (19 March 2008), https://frieze.com/article/variations-theme-0
2. Alan Kirby, “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond”, Philosophy Now, Issue 58, 2006, https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond
Running on Empty
1. New Statesman, (30 April 2008)
You Remind Me of Gold: Dialogue with Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds
1. Kaleidoscope Magazine, 2010, http://markfisherreblog.tumblr.com/post/32185314385/you-remind-me-of-gold-dialogue-with-simon
Militant Tendencies Feed Music
1. New Statesman, (29 March 2010)
Autonomy in the UK
1. Mark Fisher’s reflections on music and politics at the end of 2011, first appeared in the Wire, Issue 335, January 2012
2. Franco Berardi, After the Future (AK Press, 2011), p. 12
The Secret Sadness of the Twenty-First Century: James Blake’s Overgrown
1. Electronic Beats, (18 April 2013)
2. Angus Finlayson, “Review of Overgrown”, FACT, (4 April 2013), http://www.factmag.com/2013/04/04/james-blake-overgrown-fact-review/
3. Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds, “You Remind Me of Gold”, Kaleidoscope Magazine, http://markfisherreblog.tumblr.com/post/32185314385/you-remind-me-of-gold-dialogue-with-simon (Also in this volume, pp. 675-682)
4. See http://www.futurebombe.com/james-drake.html
Review: David Bowie’s The Next Day
1. The Wire, Issue 351, May 2013
The Man Who Has Everything: Drake’s Nothing Was the Same
1. Electronic Beats, (24 September 2013)
2. Drake, “All Me”, Nothing Was the Same, (OVO Sound/Young Money Entertainment/Cash Money Records/Republic Records, 2013)
Break it Down: DJ Rashad’s Double Cup
1. Electronic Beats, (22 October 2013)
2. Tristram Vivian Adams, “Analemmic V01CES (Distracted from the Darkness)”, Notes from the Vomitorium, (September 2013), http://notesfromthevomitorium.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/analemmic-v01ces-distracted-from.html
3. William S. Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded, (Calder, 1968)
Start Your Nonsense! On eMMplekz and Dolly Dolly
1. Electronic Beats, (28 November 2013)
Review: Sleaford Mods’ Divide and Exit and Chubbed Up: The Singles Collection
1. The Wire, Issue 362, April 2014
Test Dept: Where Leftist Idealism and Popular Modernism Collide
1. Frieze, (25 September 2015), https://frieze.com/article/music-41
2. Cynthia Rose, Design After Dark: The Story of Dancefloor Style, (Thames and Hudson, 1991)
No Romance Without Finance
1. Bamn: An Unofficial Magazine of Plan C, (9 November 2015)
2. Jennifer M. Silva, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, (Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 19
3. Ibid., p. 142
4. Nancy C.M. Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited, and Other Essays, (Basic Books, 1999)
5. Nona Willis Aronowitz (ed.), The Essential Ellen Willis, (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)
6. Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light, (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
7. Cynthia Rose, Design After Dark: The Story of Dancefloor Style, (Thames and Hudson, 1991)
PART FOUR
FOR NOW, OUR DESIRE IS NAMELESS: POLITICAL WRITINGS
Don’t Vote, Don’t Encourage Them
1. k-punk, (4 May 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005462.html
October 6, 1979: Capitalism and Bipolar Disorder
1. k-punk, (9 June 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005660.html This piece was reworked and incorporated into chapter 5 of Capitalist Realism (Zer0, 2009)
2. Johan Hari, “Don’t be fooled: advanced and rational societies can commit environmental suicide”, Independent, (7 June 2005), http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-dont-be-fooled-advancedand-rational-societies-can-commit-environmental-suicide-493371.html
3. Christian Marazzi, author of Capital and Language (Semiotext(e), 2008) and Capital and Affects (Semiotext(e), 2011)
What If They Had A Protest and Everyone Came
1. k-punk, (4 July 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005806.html
A reworked and truncated version of this piece forms Chapter 2 of Capitalist Realism (Zer0, 2009)
2. Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts, founded and co-organised by Bob Geldof, that took place on 2 July 2005. It was run in support of the aims of the UK’s Make Poverty History campaign and the Global Call for Action Against Poverty.
Defeating the Hydra
1. k-punk, (11 July 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005847.html This is one of two pieces written by k-punk in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London suicide bombings, where a series of coordinated terrorist attacks targeted the city’s public transport system during the morning rush hour.
2. UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Home Office, Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism, (April, 2004), quoted in Robert Winnet and David Leppard, “Leaked No 10 dossier reveals Al Qaeda’s British recruits”, Sunday Times, (10 July 2005), https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/leaked-no-10-dossier-reveals-al-qaedas-british-recruits-9lpg68xw93r
3. Editorial, “London Under Attack”, Economist, (7 July 2005), https://www.economist.com/node/4166694
4. Nick Cohen, “Face up to the truth”, the Guardian, (10 July 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/10/july7.guardiancolumnists
5. Richard Seymour, “Nick Cohen’s brains have turned to slush”, Lenin’s Tomb, (10 July 2005), http://www.leninology.co.uk/2005/07/nick-cohens-brains-haveturned-to.html
The Face of Terrorism Without a Face
1. k-punk (13 July 2005), http://k-punk.org/the-face-of-terrorism-without-a-face/
Conspicuous Force and Verminisation
1. k-punk, (2 August 2006), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008166.html
My Card: My Life: Comments on the AMEX Red Campaign
1. k-punk, comments on any-body.org (4 September 2006), http://www.any-body.org/anybody_vent/2006/9/4/my-card-my-life-your-comments.html An image of the AMEX RED advertising campaign can be viewed on this webpage.
2. Product Red is a licensed brand owned by (RED) that seeks to involve the private sector in raising awareness and money to help in eliminating HIV/AIDS in eight African countries. In 2006 American Express launched the AMEX RED card, where 1% of spending would be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
3. Slavoj Žižek, “Nobody has to be vile”, London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 7, 6 April 2006, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/ziseise01_.html
4. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4650024.stm
The Great Bullingdon Club Swindle
1. k-punk, (22 October 2010), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011707.html
2. John Gray, “Progressive, like the 1980s”, London Review of Books, Vol. 32 No. 20, 21 October 2010, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n20/john-gray/progressive-like-the-1980s
3. China Mieville, “Letter to a progressive Liberal Democrat”, 21 October 2010, http://chinamieville.net/post/1361955242/letter-to-a-progressive-liberal-democrat
4. Seumas Milne, “The Bullingdon boys want to finish what Thatcher began”, Guardian, (20 October 2010), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/20/bullingdon-boys-want-to-finish-what-thatcher-began
5. Laurie Penny, “Labour let us down yesterday”, New Statesman, (21 October 2010), https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/10/labour-partyanswers-today
The Privatisation of Stress
1. This essay first appeared in Soundings, No. 48: The Neoliberal Revolution, Summer 2011, and was reproduced on the New Left Project website, (7 September 2011), http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/the_privatisation_of_stress
2. Ivor Southwood, Non-Stop Inertia, (Zer0, 2010), p. 72
3. Ibid., p. 15
4. Atilio Boron, “The Truth About Capitalist Democracy”, Socialist Register, 2006, pp. 28-59, p. 32
5. As argued by Jeremy Gilbert in, “Elitism, Philistinism and Populism: the Sorry State of British Higher Education Policy”, openDemocracy, 2010
6. See Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds), New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s, (Lawrence and Wishart, 1989)
7. Antonio Negri, Art and Multitude, (Polity, 2010), p. 10
8. Savonarola, “Curriculum Mortis”, Institute for Conjectural Research, (4 August 2008), conjunctural.blogspot.com/2008/08/curriculum-mortis.html
9. Phillip Blond, The Ownership State: Restoring Excellence, Innovation and Ethos to Public Service, (ResPublica/Nesta, 2009), p. 10
10. Tobias van Veen, “Business Ontology (or why Xmas Gets You Fired)”,Fugitive Philosophy, (29 Deceember 2009), fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/2009/12/business-ontology/
11. Franco Berardi, Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the Pathologies of the Post-Alpha Generation, (Minor Compositions, 2009), p. 32
12. Ibid., p. 40
13. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other, (Basic, 2011), p. 264
14. Jodi Dean, Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive, (Polity, 2010)
15. Dan Hind, The Return of the Public, (Verso, 2010), p. 146
16. David Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress, (PCCS, 2009), p. 11
17. Ibid., p. 7
18. Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, (Polity, 2007)
Kettle Logic
1. k-punk, (29 November 2010), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011728.html
2. Richard Seymour, “Students lead, NUS follows”, Lenin’s Tomb, (28 November 2010), http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/11/students-lead-nus-follows.html
3. Polly Toynbee, “Sorry, students, but you’re low in the pain pecking order”, Guardian, (5 November 2010), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/05/students-low-pain-pecking-order; and “Thatcher’s children can lead the class of 68 back into action”, Guardian, (26 November 2010),
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/26/student-protest-publicsector-cuts
4. Richard Seymour, “Spontaneous, massive and militant”, Lenin’s Tomb, (25 November 2010), http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/11/spontaneous-massive-and-militant.html
5. See https://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/
6. Jan Moir, “Not so jolly hockey sticks at the St Trinian’s riots”, Daily Mail, (26 November 2010), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-1333175/JANMOIR-Not-jolly-hockey-sticks-St-Trinians-riots.html
7. Digital Ben, “Solidarity”, Third Class on a One-Class Train, (27 November 2010), http://ridingthirdclass.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/solidarity.html
8. Ibid.
Winter of Discontent 2.0: Notes on a Month of Militancy
1. k-punk, (13 December 2010), http://k-punk.org/winter-of-discontent-2-0-notes-on-a-month-of-militancy/
2. Deborah Orr, “Protesting against the cuts is pointless”, Guardian (2 December 2010), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/02/protestingcuts-pointless-deborah-orr
3. Paul Mason, “Dubstep rebellion — the British banlieue comes to Millbank”, BBC, (9 December 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/12/9122010_dubstep_rebellion_-_br.html
4. Dan Hancox, “This is our riot: POW!”, A Miasma Of Lunatic Alibis, (10 December 2010), http://dan-hancox.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/this-is-our-riot-pow.html
5. Jeremy Gilbert, “A Report on the ‘The Hardcore Continuum?’ symposium held at the University of East London, April 29th 2009”, Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 1:1, 2009, https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/274/238
6. Simon Reynolds, “Slipping into Darkness”, Wire, No. 48, June 1996, https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/the-wire-300_simon-reynolds-on-thehardcore-continuum_4_hardstep_jump-up_techstep_1996_
7. Ibid.
8. Dominic Fox, “Nova Criminals”, Poetix (Old Content), (12 December 2010), http://codepoetics.com/octoblog/blog/2010/12/12/nova-criminals/
9. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin, 1991)
10. Alex Williams,“On Negative Solidarity and Post-Fordist Plasticity”, Splintering Bone Ashes, (31 January 2010), http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/negative-solidarity-and-post-fordist.html
11. Dave Osler, “Thrashing Royal Rollers: Some Public Relations Tips”, Liberal Conspiracy, (10 December 2010), http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/12/10/thrashing-royal-rollers-some-public-relations-tips/
Football/Capitalist Realism/Utopia
1. k-punk, (6 July 2010), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011626.html
2. Chris Petit, “Review: The Damned United”, Guardian, (19 August 2006), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/sportandleisure.shopping
The Game Has Changed
1. The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, January/February 2011
Creative Capitalism
1. The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, March-April 2011
2. Antonio Negri, Art and Multitude, (Polity, 2007), p. 9
Reality Management
1. k-punk, (5 July 2011), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011851.html
2. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCem9EZb-YA
3. Deterritorial Support Group, “Hari Kari/Hackery”, (17 June 2011), https://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/hari-karihackery/
4. Peter Preston, “Johan Hari’s anonymous attackers have spun foolishness into dishonesty”, Guardian, (3 July 2011), https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/03/johann-hari-quotes-honesty-foolish
5. Dan Hind, “The Limits of Acceptable Controversy”, The Return of the Public (25 October 2010), https://thereturnofthepublic.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-limits-of-acceptable-controversy/
UK Tabloid
1. k-punk, (8 July 2011), http://k-punk.org/uk-tabloid/
2. See the transcript of Cameron’s press conference on phone hacking here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-press-conference
3. Unemployed Negativity, “Clerks and Cynicism”, (29 July 2006), http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2006_07_01_archive.html
4. Adam Curtis, “Rupert Murdoch — A Portrait of Satan”, BBC, (30 January 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/01/rupert_murdoch_-_a_portrait_of.html
The Future is Still Ours: Autonomy and Post-Capitalism
1. We Have Our Own Concept of Time and Motion, (Auto Italia South East, 2011), pp. 5-7, https://monoskop.org/images/d/dd/Auto_Italia_eds_We_Have_Our_Own_Concept_of_Time_and_Motion.pdf
2. Philip Blond, “The Ownership State”, ResPublica, October 2009, http://www.respublica.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Ownership-state.pdf
3. Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, October, Vol. 59, Winter 1992, pp. 3-7
4. Antonio Negri, Art and Multitude, (Polity, 2007), p. 9
Aesthetic Poverty
1. The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, September 2011
2. Adrian Shaughnessy, “The Politics of Desire and Looting”, Design Observer, (15 August 2011), https://designobserver.com/feature/the-politics-of-desire-andlooting/29508
The Only Certainties are Death and Capital
1. The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, May/June 2012
2. Hari Kunzru, “Damien Hirst and the great art market heist”, Guardian, (16 March 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/mar/16/damien-hirst-art-market
Why Mental Health is a Political Issue
1. Guardian, (16 July 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental-health-political-issue
3. Isabel Hardman, “Welfare suicides are awful, but they’re still a red herring”, Spectator, (5 July 2012), https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2012/07/welfare-suicides-are-awful-but-theyre-still-a-red-herring/
4. Brendan O’Neill, “This exploitation of suicidal people is a new low for campaigners against welfare reform”, Telegraph, (3 July 2012), http://journalisted.com/article/3xla7
5. Helen Nugent, “Suicide on the rise among older men”, Guardian, (15 July 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/15/suicide-rise-older-men
The London Hunger Games
1. k-punk, (8 August 2012), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011918.html
2. Oliver Burkeman, “The Power of Negative Thinking”, New York Times, (4 August 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/the-positive-powerof-negative-thinking.html
3. Charlie Brooker, “The Olympics: better than they looked on the tin”, Guardian, (5 August 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/olympics-better-than-looked-on-tin
4. Mike Marqusee, “London 2012: spare us the jingoistic Olympic hype”, Guardian, (7 August 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/07/london-2012-olympic-hype
5. Douglas Murphy, “Towers of Babble”, Frieze, (1 May 2012), https://frieze.com/article/towers-babble/
6. Juliet Jacques, “The ArcelorMittal Orbit: London’s Eiffel Tower?”, New Statesman, (11 July 2012), https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/art-and-design/2012/07/arcelormittal-orbit-londons-eiffel-tower
Time-Wars: Towards an Alternative for the Neo-Capitalist Era
1. Gonzo Circus, Issue 110, 2012, http://www.gonzocircus.com/exclusive-essay-time-wars-towards-an-alternative-for-the-neo-capitalist-era/
2. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (Norton, 1998), p. 30
3. Ibid., p. 31
4. Federico Campagna, “Radical Atheism”, Through Europe, http://th-rough.eu/writers/campagna-eng/radical-atheism.
5. Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming, Dead Man Working, (Zer0, 2012), p. 2
6. Franco Berardi, Precarious Rhapsody, (Minor Compositions, 2009), p. 41
Not Failing Better, but Fighting To Win
1. Weekly Worker, (1 November 2012), http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/936/mark-fisher-not-failing-better-but-fighting-to-win/
2. Mark Bolton, “Work isn’t working”, New Left Project, (31 August 2012), www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/work_isnt_working
3. Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
The Happiness of Margaret Thatcher
1. Verso blog, (8 April 2013), https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1272-the-happiness-of-margaret-thatcher
2. Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey, “Labour plans radical shift over welfare state payouts”, Guardian, (6 April 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/06/labour-plans-shift-welfare-payouts
3. John Harris, “We have to talk about why some people agree with benefit cuts”, Guardian, (31 March 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/31/we-have-to-talk-why-some-want-benefit-cuts
4. Alex Williams, “On Negative Solidarity and Post-Fordist Plasticity”, Splintering Bone Ashes, (31 January 2005), http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/negative-solidarity-and-post-fordist.html
5. Peter Walker, “Government using increasingly loaded language in welfare debate”, Guardian, (5 April 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/05/goverment-loaded-language-welfare
6. Ramona, “‘The Revolution starts in the ATOS smoking area’ — On Welfare, Addiction, and Dependency”, libcom.org, (2 April 2013), https://libcom.org/blog/%E2%80%9C-revolution-starts-atos-smoking-area%E2%80%9D-welfare-addiction-dependency-02042013
7. Wendy Brown, “Moralism as Anti-politics”, Politics Out of History, (Princeton, 2001), p. 36
8. Adam Kotsko, “Weaponised debate”, An und fur sich, (12 August 2012), https://itself.blog/2012/08/12/weaponiseised-debate-2/
Suffering With a Smile
1. Occupied Times, (22 June 2013), http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=11586
2. Tim Dowling, Laura Barnett and Patrick Kingsley, “What Time Do CEOs Wake Up?”, Guardian, (1 April 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/01/what-time-ceos-start-day
3. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, (Continuum, 2004), p. 254
How to Kill a Zombie: Strategising the End of Neoliberalism
1. openDemocracy, (18 July 2013), https://www.opendemocracy.net/mark-fisher/how-to-kill-zombie-strategising-end-of-neoliberalism
2. Mark Fisher and Franco “Bifo” Berardi, “Give Me Shelter”, Frieze, (1 January 2013), https://frieze.com/article/give-me-shelter-mark-fisher
Getting Away With Murder
1. k-punk, (9 January 2014), http://k-punk.org/getting-away-with-murder/
2. Stafford Scott, “This perverse Mark Duggan verdict will ruin our relations with the police”, Guardian, (9 January 2014), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/09/mark-duggan-verdict-relations-police
3. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10315329/London-Riots-Police-marksman-shot-Mark-Duggan-in-self-defence.html
4. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8687804/Tottenham-riot-bullet-lodged-in-officers-radio-at-time-of-Mark-Duggan-death-was-police-issue.html
No One is Bored, Everything is Boring
1. The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, (21 July 2014)
2. Plan C, “We are all very anxious”, (4 April 2014), https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/we-are-all-very-anxious/
A Time for Shadows
1. Visual Artists’ News Sheet, January/February 2015
2. Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication, (Semiotext(e), 1998)
3. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, (Basic Books, 2011), p. 2. The full manifesto can be read and downloaded from: networkcultures.org
4. Geert Lovink, Sebastian Olma and Ned Rossiter, “On the Creative Question — Nine Theses”, Institute of Network Cultures, (20 November 2014), http://networkcultures.org/geert/2014/11/20/the-creative-question-nine-theses/
Limbo is Over
1. k-punk, (26 April 2015), http://k-punk.org/limbo-is-over/
2. Jonathan Jones, “Something new is happening in British politics. This image captures it”, Guardian, (17 April 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/tv-election-debate-new-british-politics-image
3. Plan C, https://www.weareplanc.org/about/#.VTkXhqbKbFI
4. Craig McVegas, “Last Night’s Leaders’ Debate Was a Vision of the Clusterfuck That British Politics Is About to Become”, Vice, (17 April 2015), https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vd8pva/craig-election-leaders-debate-number-3-733
5. See the image here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/tv-election-debate-new-british-politics-image
6. The Free Association, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution”, (2015), http://www.freelyassociating.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/talkin%27%20%27bout%20a%20revolution.pdf
7. Aditya Chakrabortty, “The three big election questions that all the parties are simply ignoring”, Guardian, (20 April 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/20/three-big-election-questions-politicians-ignoring-real-challenges
8. The Sun ran a story that as a child Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is said to have “devilishly hacked the hair from her sister’s beloved doll”. For the Sun this was “an early sign of the ruthlessness which propelled her to the top of Scottish — and potentially British — politics.”
9. Eduardo Maura of Podemos interviewed by Andrew Dolan, Red Pepper, (22 February 2015), http://www.redpepper.org.uk/podemos-politics-by-the-people/
10. Plan C, “On Social Strikes and Directional Demands”, (7 May 2015), https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/on-social-strikes-and-directional-demands/#.VTvv3qbKbFK
11. Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, Reclaim Modernity: Beyond Markets Beyond Machines, (Compass, 2015), http://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Compass-Reclaiming-Modernity-Beyond-markets_-2.pdf
Communist Realism
1. k-punk, (5 May 2015), http://k-punk.org/communist-realism/
2. Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, (St Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 66
3. See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/01/david-cameron-election-career-defining-moment
4. Paul Krugman, “The Austerity Delusion”, Guardian, (29 April 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion
5. Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, (Verso, 2013), p. 35
6. The Jam, “Funeral Pyre”, (Polydor, 1981)
7. Ibid., pp. 35-6
Pain Now
1. k-punk, (7 May 2015), http://k-punk.org/pain-now/
2. See https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/22/budget-2010-vat-austerity-plan
3. Mark Fisher, “Good for Nothing”, Occupied Times, (19 March 2014), https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841 (Also in this volume, pp. 747-750)
Abandon Hope (Summer is Coming)
1. k-punk, (11 May 2015), http://k-punk.org/abandon-hope-summer-is-coming/
2. Jeremy Gilbert, “3:00am thoughts on another General Election Defeat”, (8 May 2015), https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/300-am-thoughts-on-another-general-election-defeat/?fb_action_ids=10155759772135314&fb_action_types=news.publishes&fb_ref=pub-standard
3. Laura Oldfield Ford, “Seroxat, Smirnoff, THC”, Savage Messaish, (9 October-29 November 2014), http://lauraoldfieldford.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/seroxatsmirnoff-thc-9-october-29.html?q=seroxat
4. Shaun Lawson, “The polls and (moots) the forecasts are wrong. Ed Miliband will not be the next Prime Minister”, Open Democracy, (5 May 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/shaun-lawson/polls-and-most-of-forecasts-are-wrong-ed-miliband-will-not-be-next-prime-min
5. Paul Mason, “Labour haven’t just failed to win — it’s worse than that”, Channel 4, (8 May 2015), https://www.channel4.com/news/by/paul-mason/blogs/labour-failed-win-worse
6. Tim Burrows, “Meme Politics and Apathy in UKIP-on-Sea”, Vice, (5 May 2015), https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbx4qm/meme-politics-and-apathy-in-ukipon-sea
7. William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads, (Penguin, 2015)
8. Jodi Dean, “The Lingering of the Party”, Open!, (6 March 2014), http://www.onlineopen.org/the-lingering-of-the-party
9. Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, October, Vol. 59, Winter 1992, p. 5
10. Benedict Spinoza, Ethics, (Moonrise Press, 2015), p. 144
11. Ibid., p. 145
12. David Smail, The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress, (Routledge, 2015), p. 45
13. Jason Read, “The Order and Connection of Ideology is the Same as the Order and Connection of Exploitation: Or, Towards a Bestiary of the Capitalist Imagination”, Philosophy Today, 59:2, Spring 2015, pp. 175–89 (Also available online at: http://www.academia.edu/11159929/The_Order_and_Connection_of_Ideology_Is_the_Same_as_the_Order_and_Connection_of_Exploitation_Or_Towards_a_Bestiary_of_the_Capitalist_Imagination)
14. Mark Fisher, Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, (Zer0, 2014)
15. Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, (Faber and Faber, 2010)
16. Ewa Jasiewicz, “Our Commons are Being Privatised — it’s Time for More Time”, Novara Media, (10 May 2015), http://novaramedia.com/2015/05/10/election-reactions-our-commons-are-being-privatised-its-time-for-more-time/
17. k-punk, “Communist Realism”, (5 May 2015), http://k-punk.org/communist-realism/(Also in this volume, pp. 559-566)
For Now, Our Desire is Nameless
1. European, (20 May 2015), http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/mark-fisher--2/8480-is-there-an-alternative-to-capitalism
2. Francis Spufford, Red Plenty, (Faber and Faber, 2011), p. 4
3. Michael Hardt, “The Common in Communism”, Rethinking Marxism, 22:3, 2010, pp. 346-356
Anti-Therapy
1. This is a previously unpublished English transcript of a 2015 talk, which was translated and published in German as “Anti-therapie” in Felix Klopotek and Peter Scheiffele ed., Zonen der Selbstoptimierung: Berichte aus der Leistungesellschaft (Matthes & Seitz, 2016)
2. Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, (Routledge, 2008)
3. Jennifer M. Silva, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, (Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 19
4. Ibid., pp. 16-17
5. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia:Anti-Oedipus, (Continuum, 2004), p. 53
6. Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments”, Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 3, (August 1993), pp. 290-410
7. Laura Kipnis, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe”, Chronicle of Higher Education, (27 February 2015), http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes-Academe.pdf
8. David Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress, (PCCS Books, 2005), p. 39
9. Ibid., pp. 39-40
10. Ibid., p. 46
11. Silva, Coming Up Short, p. 142
Democracy is Joy
1. k-punk, (13 July 2015), http://k-punk.org/democracy-is-joy/
2. Plan C, “The Meaning of Oxi”, (8 July 2015), https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/the-meaning-of-oxi/
3. Plan C, “On Social Strikes and Directional Demands”, (7 May 2015), https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/on-social-strikes-and-directional-demands/
4. Media Mole, “What’s this? Is Iain Duncan Smith visibly excited by prospect of hurting the poor?”, New Statesman, (8 July 2015), https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/whats-iain-duncan-smith-visibly-excited-prospect-hurting-poor
5. John Lanchester, “The Robots are Coming”, London Review of Books, Vol. 37 No. 5, March 2015), https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming
6. Stewart Lee, “It’s too late to save our world, so enjoy the spectacle of doom”, Guardian, (5 July 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/05/too-late-to-save-world-heathrow-runway-stewart-lee
7. Anna Kornbluh, “On Marx’s Victorian Novel”, Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group, Vol. 25, No. 1, Fall 2010, http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/on-marx-s-victorian-novel
8. David Graeber, “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit”, Baffler, No. 19. March 2012, https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
9. See Barton, Hidden Valleys: Haunted by the Future, (Zer0, 2015)
10. Nick Land, Suspended Animation, (Urbantomy Electronic, 2013)
11. Graeber, “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit”
12. @dpjhodges, 5 July 2015, https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/617775404049399808
13. @simon_schama, 6 July 2015, https://twitter.com/simon_schama/status/617956623718449152
14. From Ursula Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards, 2014, where she was accepting the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Watch the whole speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk
15. Lanchester, “The Robots are Coming”
Cybergothic vs. Steampunk
1. Urbanomic, (2016), https://www.urbanomic.com/document/cybergothic-vssteampunk-response-to-badiou/
2. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-34991402/hilary-benn-is-hold-our-democracy-in-contempt
3. Alain Badiou, Our Wound is Not So Recent: Thinking the Paris Killings of 13 November, (Polity, 2016)
4. Scott Atran, “Mindless terrorists? The truth about Isis is much worse”, Guardian, (15 November 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/15/terrorists-isis
5. Ibid.
6. Karen Armstrong, “Wahhabism to ISIS”, New Statesman, (27 November 2014), https://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-isis-how-saudi-arabia-exported-main-source-global-terrorism
7. Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, Reclaim Modernity: Beyond Markets Beyond Machines, (Compass, 2015), http://www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/reclaiming-modernity-beyond-markets-beyond-machines/
Mannequin Challenge
1. k-punk’s final, unfinished and unpublished post, (15 November 2016). There are some incomplete and fragmentary sections in the piece.
2. Gary Young, “How Trump Took Middle America”, Guardian, (16 November 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/nov/16/how-trump-took-middletown-muncie-election
3. Simon Reynolds, “Is Politics the New Glam?”, Guardian, (14 October 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/14/politics-new-glam-rock-power-brand-simon-reynolds
4. Ibid.
5. Francis Fukuyama, “American Political Decay or Renewal: The Meaning of the 2016 Election”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 4, July/August 2016, https://ceulau. files.wordpress.com/2016/08/fa-politcal-decay-or-renewal-aug-2016.pdf
6. Martin Jacques, “The Death of Neoliberalism and the Crisis in Western Politics”, Guardian, (21 August 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
7. Christian Parenti, “Listening to Trump”, Jacobin, (22 November 2016), https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/trump-speeches-populism-war-economics-election
8. Francis Fukuyama, “American Political Decay or Renewal? The Meaning of the 2016 Election”, Foreign Affairs Journal, July/August 2016, p. 68
9. Joan C. Williams, “What So Many People Don’t Get About the US Working Class”, Harvard Business Review, (10 November 2016), https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class
PART FIVE
WE HAVE TO INVENT THE FUTURE: INTERVIEWS
They Can Be Different in the Future Too: Interviewed by Rowan Wilson for Ready Steady Book (2010)
1. In 2010, Rowan Wilson interviewed Mark for Ready Steady Book
2. Roy Mayall, “Not Nostalgia”, London Review of Books blog, (3 December 2009), https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/12/03/roy-mayall/not-nostalgia/
Capitalist Realism: Interviewed by Richard Capes (2011)
1. Mark Fisher interviewed by Richard Capes for www.moretht.blogspot.com, (14 October 2011)
2. Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, Reclaim Modernity: Beyond Markets Beyond Machines (Compass, 2015), http://www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/reclaiming-modernity-beyond-markets-beyond-machines/
Preoccupying: Interviewed by the Occupied Times (2012)
1. Mark Fisher interviewed by Occupied Times, (3 May 2012), https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=3454
We Need a Post-Capitalist Vision: Interviewed by AntiCapitalist Initiative (2012)
1. Mark Fisher interviewed by AntiCapitalist Initiative, (11 May 2012), http://anticapitalists.org/2012/05/11/mark-fisher-we-need-a-post-capitalist-vision/
2. Paul Mason, “These revolts have ended the period of capitalist realism”, Guardian, (23 January 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2012/jan/23/paul-mason-revolts-capitalist-realism-video
3. Chris Harman, “Zombie Capitalism”, Socialist Worker, (23 June 2009), https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/17914/Zombie%20capitalism
4. Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism, (Zer0, 2009)
“We Have to Invent the Future”: An Unseen Interview with Mark Fisher (2012)
1. Mark Fisher interviewed by Tim Burrows and Sam Berkson, posthumously published in Quietus, (22 January 2017), http://thequietus.com/articles/21616-mark-fisher-interview-capitalist-realism-sam-berkson
Hauntology, Nostalgia and Lost Futures: Interviewed by Valerio Mannucci and Valerio Mattioli for Nero (2014)
1. Mark Fisher interviewed by Valerio Mannucci and Valerio Mattioli for Nero Magazine, Summer 2014, http://www.neromagazine.it/n/?p=20620
PART SIX
WE ARE NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOU: REFLECTIONS
One Year Later…
1. k-punk, (17 May 2004), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/002926.html
Spinoza, k-punk, Neuropunk
1. k-punk, (13 August 2004), http://k-punk.org/spinoza-k-punk-neuropunk/
2. Radar_Anomalous, “A Fragment of Badiou”, (5 August 2004), http://radar_anomalous.blogspot.co.uk/2004/08/fragment-of-badiou.html
3. See http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003698.html
4. Rita Carter, Mapping the Mind, (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1998)
5. See http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003824.html
Why Dissensus?
1. Mark Fisher writing on why the name “Dissensus” was chosen for the forum he co-founded with Matt Ingram (Woebot), (24 October 2004), http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=64
New Comments Policy
1. k-punk, (5 September 2004), http://k-punk.org/new-comments-policy/
Comments Policy (Latest)
1. k-punk, (10 September 2004), http://k-punk.org/comments-policy-latest/
Chronic Demotivation
1. k-punk, (3 December 2004), http://k-punk.org/chronic-demotivation/
How to Keep Oedipus Alive in Cyberspace
1. k-punk, (9 December 2004), http://k-punk.org/how-to-keep-oedipus-alive-in-cyberspace/
We Dogmatists
1. k-punk, (17 February 2005), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005025.html
2. Kant, who begins as a Leibnizian rationalist, is famously “awoken from his dogmatic slumber” by Hume. The Kantian turn is away from dogma and into critique. Reason is not so much surpassed as arrested. Kant seeks to establish the limits of the thinkable, curbing Reason’s alleged hubris, and laying the groundwork for the aporetic pathos-poetics piously peddled by the tragedians of deconstruction and postmodernism. Yet, Kant has himself been surpassed, by mathematics. Whilst it might appear that the mathematical paradoxes discovered by Cantor and Godel comfortably fit into Kantianism — the idea that “the Real itself is fundamentally unrepresentable; we can only become aware of “this outer limit of the symbolic” — Badiou allows us to see that the reverse is the case. For Badiou, that is to say, the mathematical paradoxes
demonstrate not that what we thought was coherent is actually not, but that what we thought was incoherent is actually rigorously understandable. Unconstructible sets, unique unnameable objects and unprovable statements all seem like they are impossible, but maths shows us that they’re actually perfectly acceptable objects we can talk about without incoherence.
London Litened
1. k-punk, (11 April 2008), http://k-punk.org/london-litened/
No Future 2012
1. k-punk, (13 May 2008), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010368.html “My presentation from yesterday’s astonishingly successful Hauntology event at the Museum of Garden History. Thanks to everyone who attended…”
2. Robert Macfarlane, “London Fields”, Guardian, (8 December 2007), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/08/photography
Ridicule Is Nothing to Be Scared Of (Slight Return)
1. Wire Blog, (15 July 2008), https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/themire/20640/ridicule-is-nothing-to-be-scared-of_slight-return_
Break Through in Grey Lair
1. k-punk, (16 August 2009), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011269.html
2. Graham Harman, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, (re:press, 2009), p. 120
3. Graham Harman, “Why Socrates Was Not a Grey Vampire”, Object-Oriented Philosophy, (15 August 2009), https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/why-socrates-was-not-a-grey-vampire/
4. Graham Harman, “Another Quick Point on Trolls/Grey Vampires”, Object-Oriented Philosophy, (3 August 2009), https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/another-quick-point-on-trollsgrey-vampires/
Real Abstractions: The Application of Theory to the Modern World
1. Frieze, Issue 125, (September 2009)
2. Louis Althusser, “Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract”, Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, (Monthly Review Press, 2001)
3. Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 168
4. Nick Cohen, “Why the Tate’s posing curator is so passe”, Observer, (1 March 2009), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/tate-britain-bourriaud-art-market
No I’ve Never Had a Job…
1. k-punk, (6 August 2010), http://k-punk.org/no-ive-never-had-a-job/
2. Ivor Southward, “As if By Magic”, Screened Out, (4 August 2010), http://screened-out.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/as-if-by-magic.html
3. Digital Ben, “Writing Fiction”, Riding Third Class on a One-Class Train, (6 August 2010), http://ridingthirdclass.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/writing-fiction.html
4. k-punk, (18 November 2010), http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011723.html
Exiting the Vampire Castle
1. North Star, (22 November 2013), http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11299 This piece has proven to be one of the most controversial pieces written during Mark’s lifetime. At the time of publication it attracted a large number of vociferous detractors, and it continues to do so to this day. The issues he was trying to address in the piece remain largely and sadly unresolved. However, it is worth bearing in mind the extent to which this piece remains entirely in keeping with Mark’s preferred rhetorical style and directions of thought, which is clearly evident when looked at within the context of the earlier k-punk posts reproduced here.
Good for Nothing
1. Occupied Times, (19 March 2014), https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841
2. David Smail, The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress, (Routledge, 2015), p. 46
PART SEVEN
ACID COMMUNISM
Acid Communism (Unfinished Introduction)
1. This is the previously unpublished introduction to a proposed new book project, written in 2016. It is all that remains of this proposed work.
2. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilisation, (Routledge, 1987), p. 93
3. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, (Routledge, 2002), p. 66
4. Ibid., p. 63
5. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Beacon Press, 1979), p. 36
6. Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, p. 62
7. Ibid.
8. Margaret Atwood, The Heart Goes Last, (Virago, 2016), p. 189
9. Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, (Faber and Faber, 2010), p. 209
10. Ellen Willis, Beginning To See The Light: Sex, Hope and Rock-and-Roll, (Wesleyan University Press, 1992), p. 158
11. Danny Baker, Going to Sea in a Sieve, (Phoenix, 2012), pp. 49-50
12. John Foxx, “The Golden Section: John Foxx’s Favourite Albums”, Quietus, (3 October 2013), http://thequietus.com/articles/13499-john-foxx-favourite-albums?page=5
13. Willis, Beginning To See The Light, p. xvi
14. Ibid.
15. Jonathan Miller, cited in Life, (25 November 1968), p. 100
16. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, (Routledge, 2001), p. xvi
17. Michel Foucault, Remarks On Marx, (Semiotext(e), 1991), p. 121
18. Michael Hardt, “The Common in Communism”, in Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek (eds), The Idea of Communism, (Verso, 2010), p. 141
19. Greil Marcus, “The Myth of Staggerlee”, in Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, (Penguin, 1997), p. 82
20. Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, (The New Press, 2012), p. 46
21. Ibid., p. 48
22. Ibid.
23. Franco Berardi, After the Future, (AK Press, 2011), p. 48
24. Ibid., p. 23