Mark Fisher: The Political Aesthetics of Postcapitalism / Methodologies of Valorization, 16/11/2011

Mark Fisher

The Political Aesthetics of Postcapitalism

16.11.2011 19:00, net.culture club mama, Preradovićeva 18, Zagreb

In his book Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher argued that contemporary culture was dominated by a pervasive sense that there is no alternative to capitalism. Even though capitalism is in the midst of what is shaping up to be an unprecedented crisis, capitalist realism has not disappeared. Instead, it has changed form: from the bullishness of neoliberalism in its high pomp, capitalist realism now has a more desperate, even faux-melancholic edge. Increasingly, the strategy of many of capital's agents is not to condemn anticapitalist protest, but precisely to claim that the anticapitalists do not present a coherent alternative. If only they did, we might be able to support them .... While this is in many ways a spurious line of attack, it does point to serious problems with 'anticapitalism'. The emergence of 'anticapitalism' was a symptom of the destruction of the organised left, which was defined by its attempt to articulate an alternative modernity. At least implicitly, the tendency in much anticapitalism, however, is anti-modernist. There is a slide from anti-statism into anti-politics, as the organic and the local are emphasised at the expense of sytstems, bureaucratic planning and transnational co-ordination. This is a question of political aesthetics as much as anything else, in that the image projected by much anticapitalism implies a renunciation of the technological, the mass produced and the branded.

In this presentation, Fisher will argue that the left needs to shift the focus from anticapitalism to postcapitalism, and that concepts originally intended to mock the left - such as 'radical chic' and 'designer socialism' - can assist in this transition. Now that capital has lost its control of moderrnity, it's time to assert that the future belongs to postcapitalism.

Mark Fisher is highly respected both as a music writer and a theorist. He writes regularly for The Wire, frieze, New Statesman, Sight & Sound and The Wire, where he was acting deputy editor for a year. He is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University Of London, and maintains one of the most successful weblogs on cultural theory, k-punk (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org)

The methodologies of valorisation is one of this year's Centre for Drama Art's main programs. It consists of a series of lectures dedicated to theoretical and historical investigation of relations between criteria and methods of valorisation in the artistic field and in the broader political and economic sphere. We will deal with the articulations of differences, coincidences, conditionalities, shortcuts, ideological juxtapositions and historical and geographical specificities.

Supported by: City of Zagreb Office for Culture, Education and Sport; Ministry of Culture, Republic of Croatia; IPA 2009 Programme -- Civil Society Facility.
Grad Zagreb Ministarstvo kulture RH

Thanks to the Multimedia Institute and net.culture club mama