My recent reflection of Mark Fisher, nine years on from his death, has (already!) been translated into Russian over at Insolarance. It comes with the following translator’s preface:
Today marks the ninth anniversary of the death of philosopher, theorist, critic, and future-seeker Mark Fisher. Mark struggled with depression throughout his life and died tragically in 2017, leaving behind a controversial and extensive body of work, which is gradually being published in Russian (Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life, K-Punk, Postcapitalist Desire). This text by fellow researcher and Mark Fisher scholar (and author of the foreword to the Russian edition of Postcapitalist Desire) Mattie Colquhoun sums up nine years without Fisher, arguing that the only way out of a cultural depression like the current one is to act as if things could have been different.
Colquhoun cites Fisher’s “Abandon Hope,” in which he argues that constructing the future, the courage to strive for it, involves a sober and pragmatic assessment of the resources available to us here and now, alongside a reflection on how we can best utilize and increase these resources. It’s about moving — perhaps slowly, but certainly purposefully — from where we are now to something entirely different. “There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons,” Deleuze writes in ‘Postscript to Societies of Control.’ Hope, passivity, must recede from the political imagination, giving way to confidence, the joy that arises from the idea of a future or past thing, the cause of doubt in which has been removed. Media and cyberangelism scholar Bogna Konior also writes about something similar, about navigating a world of possibility that develops into courage in the face of present circumstances. And although Mark Fisher suffered from severe depression in his final days, whether in his office or at political events, as Colquhoun writes, Mark’s confidence in a world that could be — that would be — free was more palpable than ever.
The text is further relished by Colquhoun’s personal tragedy: her partner, Hana, was arrested by British police on August 26, 2025, for allegedly participating in a pro-Palestinian protest in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. Communicating across the prison system, Colquhoun and Hana establish a new form of life alongside each other.
The translation is provided in an abridged version, safe for publication under existing legal conditions.
Elsewhere, over on the Fotograf Zone, an excerpt from my last book Narcissus in Bloom has been translated into Czech.
My thanks to the translators for their diligence and solidarity <3