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TRASHFUTURE

*Unlocked* Riley's Commie Book Club: Mark Fisher

TRASHFUTURE

TRASHFUTURE

Comedy

4.7935 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2019

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s that time again: Riley sat down with a book, and now you have to hear him talk about it for an hour or so. This month, Riley read K-Punk, out now on Repeater Books. K-Punk collects the previously unpublished writing of British left cultural, political, and social critic Mark Fisher, who explored realism and imagination, future and memory, and the freedom to imagine better worlds. If you like this episode, you can access it and dozens like it by subscribing to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We’ll be performing once again at the Star of Kings in Kings Cross (126 York Way, Kings Cross, London N1 0AX) on Thursday, May 30 at 7:30 pm. Get your tickets here and return to the podcasting basement! https://www.tickettext.co.uk/trashfuture-podcast/trashfuture-live-30052019/ *ADDITIONAL LIVE SHOW ALERT* On June 15, we’ll perform at Wolfson College Bar (Wolfson College, Cambridge CB3 9BB) in Cambridge. The show starts at 8:30 pm, so be there and be ready to hear about Gundams. Tickets are £8 for students and £10 for general admission: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/trashfuture-podcast/trashfuture-live-in-cambridge-15062019/ *COMEDY KLAXON*: If you’re in Cambridge, come to Milo’s show tonight, May 14, at 11pm and hear all about Russia. It’s at the ADC Theatre, Park Street, Cambridge CB5 8AS. https://www.adctheatre.com/whats-on/comedy/pindos-an-adventure-in-modern-russia/ Also: you can commodify your dissent with a t-shirt from http://www.lilcomrade.com/, and what’s more, it’s mandatory if you want to be taken seriously. Do you want a mug to hold your soup? Perhaps you want one with the Trashfuture logo, which is available here: https://teespring.com/what-if-phone-cops#pid=659&cid=102968&sid=front

Transcript

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0:00.0

The last line in Mark Fisher's unfinished manuscript, acid communism reflects in the 1970s socialist movement in Bologna,

0:22.2

when Utopia seemed at hand, but has since been lost.

0:26.0

He goes, we must regain the optimism of that moment, just as we must carefully analyze

0:32.1

all the machinaries the capital deployed to convert confidence into dejection.

0:37.2

Understanding how this process of consciousness deflation worked is the first step to reversing it.

0:43.6

This has been Mark Fisher's entire lifelong mission.

0:48.8

Understanding how the process of consciousness deflation worked and taking the first steps to reverse it.

0:56.3

Fisher was a radical cultural critic, political theorist, academic, whatever you want,

1:01.2

probably one of the most significant in Britain in the last couple of decades.

1:06.7

Among his sort of more famous work was the book Capitalist Realism, which I hope many of you have read.

1:17.2

Interestingly, my mother just read capitalist realism and loves it, but found it extraordinarily depressing, which I guess is kind of the right way to read Mark Fisher

1:31.5

because he's not a writer that really pulls a lot of punches.

1:38.4

His whole skill set lies in making obvious and sort of stating very coldly exactly what is wrong.

1:53.7

Exactly all of these things that feel wrong.

1:56.7

When you hear of some initiative to increase coding skills and disadvantaged populations or whatever,

2:06.8

Mark Fisher is one of many voices telling you why it won't work.

2:14.1

But why at the same time it's so incredibly necessary for capital to continue convincing

2:21.6

you that it will work or that we live in a tolerable scenario.

2:28.8

So among, so that's, all right, sorry, I'm already getting distracted. I'm going to get distracted

2:33.9

frequently because Mark Fisher is probably one of my favorite writers,

2:40.1

was, unfortunately, probably one of my favorite writers.

2:46.1

I find when I read him, it's cathartic because it tells me I'm not crazy for seeing what

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