so this fellow, Mark Fisher, died a couple of days ago. he was

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>>8987442
>he was pals with [redacted] Nick Land.
>is he worth reading

You just answered your own question

>>8988083
so that's an emphatic yes?

Mark was so close and yet so far for me.

In many ways I can really relate to him and his intense engagement and sense of mission, and there was a point, after discovering him, where I voraciously read everything he wrote. My ultimate judgment of him though - and he would personally have disliked this - is similar to my take on Adam Curtis.... where I get a real rush from all the connections made and aesthetic / quasi-fictionalising/narrativising of things, but find the political conclusions and ideological thrust arbitrary and regrettable.

Like I too really dislike Neoliberalism and yet I really disagree with how he seemed to measure and judge everything in relation to its emancipatory status vis a vis capitalism, whereas I find that a non-issue... considering rave and even psychedelia were grass-roots capitalistic as far as exchange and yet I wouldn't reduce them to that... and I think that's the key issue... that things are exchanged within a capitalistic system doesn't mean I reduce these things necessarily to capitalism, and conversely, I don't regard moments of creativity or vitality as happening along some 'revolutionary' metric but rather just being a part of the dimension of a much richer life that Mark, as a Marxist, seems to be unwilling to acknowledge, that can happen amidst everything else regardless of whatever economic or political structure.

I spent a little time in discourse with some of the community Mark was a part of, and this was where the rift emerged, in that I was thinking and operating ontologically from a place where political or economic status was irrelevant, and the degree of intensity or vitality came from something else, revolution be damned. I spoke and acted from this place... and was validated in developments in music and aesthetics that confirmed this dynamic, and necessarily had to have a falling out with said people over it. Meanwhile, Mark continually maintained the doom and gloom narrative based on his leftist, "End of History" assessment, while interesting aesthetics and ideas flourished, and the few attempted probings of his acolytes into trying to write on such developments were completely off-base politicizations, demonstrating my take that this political narrative had no bearing on things and only muddied up the waters (the subsequent misunderstands based on such writings have done readers no service, and I find that whole legacy regrettable and just totally wrong-headed).

cont

>>8988479
cont

The thing is... Mark's writing did so much that I do like... the way he libidinized / charged his theory in this quasi-occultic way, inherited from his time with the Ccru, which had experimented in such techniques... but here's another crucial point... the Ccru and Nick Land had already demonstrated that the political-left position was completely irrelevant to operating at such intensities and innovation. This is why I think it's such a mistake that Mark reverted back to that hardcore Marxian agenda... he should have known damned well, certainly had the experience, to know that subcultural / creative / theoretical / aesthetic vitality is actually not contingent on leftist politics or relative degree of "revolution". I think he made the mistake that so many intellectuals make (where many artists don't) in that he didn't have the courage to undertake flight into a post-political aesthetic because he had so much personally wrapped up in this sense of dealing with his own demons through supposedly solving the problem of capitalism. This left him unable to see the things flourishing right in front of him.

I don't know... I still would say he made an important contribution in my own ongoing journey... I think what I learned from him was a standard of theoretical rigorousness at least when engaging with theoretical forces... being flawlessly equipped... but I feel somewhat sorry to say that I don't think his political writing is going to do anyone any good, especially if they're an artist. If they could regard his work more as aesthetic and admire it more as a brilliant example of theory and the aesthetic merging into a brilliant, self-contained 'hyperstitional' bubble, there is a lot to admire.

>>8988516
Where are you quoting this from?

>>8988971
Those are my own thoughts / experiences on the matter.

>>8988516
I like you

>>8988516
>I think he made the mistake that so many intellectuals make (where many artists don't) in that he didn't have the courage to undertake flight into a post-political aesthetic because he had so much personally wrapped up in this sense of dealing with his own demons through supposedly solving the problem of capitalism. This left him unable to see the things flourishing right in front of him.

This is pretty fucking good, anon. I never thought of it this way, but I really agree with this.

Isn't this sort of par for the course in the 21C? Whether it's Zizek talking about object a, or Land talking about hyperstition...getting your own demons wrapped up in capitalism is indeed the thing. Because you get to a point where all you see is money, and yet everything you do you do for money, and you hate it, and you dig ever deeper into yourself, and all this does is make you feel more fragile and impotent and alone.

Stuff like hyperstition bothers me. I was just re-reading some of Land's work (Meltdown) and I go back and forth with it. It's brilliant, amazing stuff, and I don't want it to be true...but I can't disagree with any of it. And I got into philosophy because I just wanted to be a boring genre fiction writer.

Now I want to get out of all of that stuff through writing, but it all feels...I don't know, poisoned somehow by excessive self-awareness. But it's hard to turn off your brain. Or you have to naively go back and try and rediscover what life was like before, maybe...I don't know.

Anyways, thanks for the thoughts.