Tag Archives: Mark Fisher

Stuck Inside the Vampire Castle

When Mark Fisher, the late cultural theorist whose “K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” wrote his (in)famous 2013 essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” he was responding to the path contemporary leftism had been uncritically going down for years.1)Simon Reynolds, “Mark Fisher’s K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” The Guardian, accessed 3/31/19, published 1/18/17; Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” in K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (London: Repeater Books, 2018): 737-745. Academically insulating itself from the world at large and maintaining an air of superiority, contemporary leftism was cultivating what Fisher saw as “an atmosphere of snarky resentment” coupled with “bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism,” traits born by ignoring class consciousness as such in favor of attacking specific individuals’ social status. Indeed, for Fisher, focus within the contemporary left shifted from broad-based class solidarity (with the recognition that individuals make mistakes and need not be excessively villainized for them) to rigid identitarianism where individual purity had to be maintained, and anyone not up to par must be purged.

While brilliant, Fisher’s analysis was instantly controversial as he shined light on a very unpalatable side of contemporary leftism which drained serious movements of their lifeforce: vampirism. Further, while being no less salient six years later, Fisher’s essay leaves some things unsaid with others still only implied. Thus, given the fact that we never really left, it is more important than ever to reexamine the rigid structure the left currently occupies: the Vampires’ Castle.

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References

References
↑1 Simon Reynolds, “Mark Fisher’s K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” The Guardian, accessed 3/31/19, published 1/18/17; Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” in K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (London: Repeater Books, 2018): 737-745.

On Peripheral Philosophy

[I]f there is to be a philosophy at all,
[it must be] withdrawn from all State influence.
– Arthur Schopenhauer1)Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 137-197: 180.

[E]verything interesting happens on the periphery,
outside the standard modes of “developed” existence.
– CCRU2)CCRU, “Communiqué Two: Message to Maxence Grunier (2001),” in CCRU Writings: 1997-2003 (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2017), (:)(:)-::(:), (:)(:).

In philosophy, the only thing that we are taught to
“expose” is a weak argument, a fallacy, or someone’s
“inferior” reasoning power.
– George Yancy3)George Yancy, “Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 4 (2005), 215-241: 215.

Photo of the Academy Assimilating Radical Thought

While the history of anti-academic philosophy has its roots as far back as Ancient Greece and Socrates’ relentless mocking of the Sophists for whom truth was merely a fad destined to change during the next pay-cycle, its spectre has never disappeared.4)Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” 153-154. Academic philosophy, further interlinked with the state in late-capitalism, has been the subject of scorn not only by those who remain unafraid of the monolith of the Academy, but also by those individuals who are always-already on the periphery. Despite becoming enlightened and supposedly shedding old religious dogmas that infected professional philosophy, we’ve managed to become nominally post-religious while replacing a visible system of control – retribution from the Church – with an invisible system of exclusion built around hegemonic attitudes and accepted norms. One must pass the Academy’s Turing test and never slip up.

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References

References
↑1 Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 137-197: 180.
↑2 CCRU, “Communiqué Two: Message to Maxence Grunier (2001),” in CCRU Writings: 1997-2003 (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2017), (:)(:)-::(:), (:)(:).
↑3 George Yancy, “Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 4 (2005), 215-241: 215.
↑4 Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” 153-154.