Capitalist Realism

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“This era is inherently repressive.”
“I think I was depressed – at a low point in my life in my mid-twenties, I couldn’t understand why even basic work, social and personal life seemed so difficult in the 21st century…”
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◎Won the 2024 "Sanlian Life Weekly" 3rd Xingdu Book Award in the Thought Category (Foreign Language Translation) of the Year.
◎ Fisher, a thinker who fascinated the younger generation in the West, devoted his entire life to writing this book.
◎ A short book of the times with literary temperament, an important work that diagnoses the "era of emotion and capital".
◎ Written for contemporary people: Directly addressing social symptoms × Recording you and me living in the vicious circle of work-life.
"An explosive text of the 21st century." Recommended by Dai Jinhua, Wang Min'an, and Dan Hansong! Over 100,000 copies sold worldwide! Highly recommended by nearly 30,000 people on Goodreads.
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【Editor's Recommendation】
Mark Fisher, an intellectual from a working-class family, has been hailed by British media as a "modern-day Benjamin." His videos have garnered twice as many views on TikTok as Han Bingzhe's (who offers a counter-narrative to his own interpretation of current popular philosophy); young people online have been sharing his memes and emoticons.
“The son of a cleaner and an engineer from Leicester… has been most associated with the discontent of the younger generation following the 2008 recession” – The National
A short, literary book about the times, documenting "the times we live in." Fisher describes a generation trapped in a work-life cycle, driven by a sense of futurelessness and an endless pursuit of depressing happiness.
Puncturing current "reality" and poking at the mood of the times. Private experiences of contemporary life: the financial crisis, mental illnesses like depression, the mental state of young people (TikTok addiction, attention deficit disorder), the paradox of systemic rules, punitive self-criticism, and media flattery.
"No other contemporary writer has so vividly captured the scarcity of social and political options in the age of global capital." The book has since become "the unofficial manifesto of the left-wing resurgence of 2011."
※ Penetrating emotional power that resonates beyond the circle! The 21st century's depression and mental illness epidemic should not be "privatized" but understood as a structural problem. __ "His struggle with depression has given him such a deep sense of emotional politics that he can transform his insights into a kind of poetry. It is this poetry, this insight... that is Mark's unique talent" - Jeremy Gilbert, Los Angeles Review of Books
His writing style is incredibly impactful: both lucid and turbulent, speculative and artistic. A dynamic thinker on the internet, he chronicled a constantly changing world in near real time. His writing possesses both a solid academic foundation and a richly literary tone. He evokes a different kind of discourse—intellectual rather than academic, popular rather than sentimental. He blogged under the pseudonym K-Punk and was hailed as the "center of the blogosphere" at the time. He was a remarkable figure in British cultural life. Through his blog, he actively engaged in writing and grasped the pulse of the social and political moment.
※ A speculative game that uses thinking to intervene in reality__Kafka, Foucault, Badiou, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Le Guin all pop up... He is sensitive and combines reality to digest the thoughts of famous philosophers in a simple and easy-to-understand way.
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【Content Introduction】
◎A short book of the times with a literary quality, recording a generation living in the work-life cycle.
Why is psychology a political issue? Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?
“The 21st century is oppressed by a suffocating sense of limitations and exhaustion.”
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Fisher, a contemporary thinker, was introduced into China for the first time.
A masterpiece by Mark Fisher, a master of Internet thinking and the "center of social media" in the UK in the first five years of the 21st century.
Around 2008, Fisher left London and returned to Suffolk, a place brimming with childhood holiday memories. He told his wife, "If it sells 500 copies, I'll be happy." At this point, he no longer needed to constantly guard against depression, and everything seemed to be progressing well: sales of the short book exploded, touching the hearts of countless individuals and "inspiring the first large-scale repoliticization of young people in nearly two decades." But in 2017, Fisher resolutely left us.
This is a disturbing little book. A reflective work, grounded in the present and oriented towards the present. From the "weary and bored faces" of students, Fisher discovers a younger generation, a digital slice of life, addicted to the entertainment matrix; in films like Heat and The Godfather, he discovers post-Fordism—organizations linked solely by profit, having lost the Godfather era's attachment to place and community... In television variety shows, he discovers that media, guided by the hedonistic principle, like the nanny feeding us, only conveys "feelings and emotions," and the media landscape is rife with self-centered individuals...
Upon publication, the book, despite its lukewarm reception in the media, sparked a heated discussion among students, becoming a pocket book for the younger generation. Renowned media outlets such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The Irish Times published reviews in the following years, and Goodreads, a popular online book and video site, has garnered a 4.23-point rating (out of 5) from 30,000 readers.
This small book, a non-constructive text, is incompatible with grand theoretical narratives, yet it delivers a piercing blow to the "current socioeconomic order." Composed of a series of observational descriptions of society and culture, personal reflections, and recollections, it blends social observations with popular culture to diagnose social sentiment and contemporary issues.
This small book slides between various genres and jumps out of the recognizable "ecological niche"; it is a brilliant work centered around real problems and real experiences, sharply analyzing the pain and confusion of individuals in late capitalist culture.
【Recommended by media and scholars】
In many ways, he reminds me of Walter Benjamin. — Los Angeles Review of Books
Fisher's book is the perfect solution to our current dilemma...
It is a good medicine for today's sick theoretical and political systems; it allows us to breathe a breath of fresh air in a fetid environment. - Zizek (contemporary radical thinker)
A genuine and sincere insight into the present, the here and now, and the global realities of the 21st century. It's been so long since I've read a book that directly addresses the real issues of the 21st century. —Dai Jinhua (Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University)
This is a book that grapples with reality. People will be moved by the sharpness and passion within its pages, as well as by the description of our generation. —Wang Min'an (Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University)
Fisher punctures the illusion of a certain kind of realism and warns us, who are consumed by the eternal order of time, to wake up and not lose our imagination of a radical future! —Dan Hansong (Professor of English at Nanjing University)
On Saturday, January 14, 2017, at the library of Goldsmiths, University of London, students' phones were ringing. Everyone was sharing a tweet that @Repeaterbooks had just posted: "In memory of Mark Fisher. An inspiration and a friend. Our thoughts are with his family." ... We sat in silence, trying to keep working between bursts of incredible frustration. After a few minutes, we stopped and someone said, "What are we doing? What's the point now?" - El País (a major Spanish media outlet)
Fisher, with unparalleled rigor and eloquence, builds a bridge between aesthetics and politics, criticism and activism. He is a typical engaged intellectual, a bit like John Berger in the post-carnival era. - The Guardian
It is a manifesto for a lasting alternative to global capitalism, inspired by the art he loves. — The Nation Magazine (a trusted and influential political publication in Washington)
What if we temporarily set aside our obsession with the self and re-emphasize sociality? This is the question this book raises. This is why, for so many people, reading this book is such an emotional and transformative experience. - Tribune (British left-wing core magazine, George Orwell was once the literary editor)

2024-03-03

南京大学出版社

Nanjing University Press·Watchman

268

9787305266270