The essay ends on a cliffhanger, and this call to understand the process fades away, seemingly without a road map. Following Fisher’s death in January 2017, the assumption has been that the particulars of Acid Communism were lost with Fisher himself. And yet, there remain breadcrumbs out in the world. Along with a collection of essays that reflects many of the themes and subjects he was expected to explore, there is also the structure of Fisher’s postgraduate module, “Postcapitalist Desire”, which he devised for the academic year of 2016/17 at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Reviews, Essays & Endorsements

Resulta sintomático que la quinta clase sea la última que dictó Fisher antes de quitarse la vida. Un diagnóstico que no encuentra respuestas claras a los interrogantes planteados al inicio. Un futuro negro para ese proyecto de una razón psicodélica de izquierda que vería forma en su truncado libro Comunismo ácido. Quizá los tentativos rastreos de respuestas haya que encontrarlos en las pistas que nos deja en las clases siguientes que no pudo dar: el autonomismo, el feminismo y aceleracionismo tal vez le permitirían articular un modelo de izquierda deseante que fugue hacia adelante aprovechando el potencial productivo maquínico y haciendo posible la proliferación de nuevos modos de vida centrados en crear las condiciones de una contracultura para el siglo XXI. Aquí la clave estará en la potencialidad de un pueblo por venir aún no actualizado, pero que Mark Fisher, como todo gran profesor, nos da las herramientas para pensarlo.

— Luis Diego Fernández, “Las pistas astutas del profesor Mark Fisher” in Revista Ñ

En Deseo postcapitalista Fisher retoma por momentos las mismas nociones que en [Los fantasmas de mi vida], pero lo hace desde otra perspectiva y, a su vez, ofrece una caja de herramientas para pensar más allá del realismo capitalista.

— Gabriela Schevach, “‘¿Existe realmente un deseo de algo más allá del capitalismo?’: las clases de Mark Fisher, el teórico que pensó hasta en el resentimiento” in Infobae

Las clases del autor de Realismo capitalista, Los fantasmas de mi vida y la trilogía K-punk no son otro intento académico cínico de fracasar mejor, sino de dar pelea para ganar. “Indagar de qué manera podemos contrarrestar o dar cuenta éticamente de estas críticas, implementando una contralibido frente al deseo capitalista”, es el principio rector del curso, destaca Matt Colquhoun, alumno y discípulo, en la ejemplar Introducción del libro. “¿Existe realmente el deseo de algo más allá del capitalismo?”, la pregunta que formula Fisher en la mañana del lunes 7 de noviembre de 2016 sigue rebotando en nuestras cabezas. ¿Queremos ir más allá?

Deseo postcapitalista permite conocer otra cara de Fisher. Ni ensayista, ni escritor, ni militante, ni bloguero: docente en lucha. El aula como espacio de encuentro con sus estudiantes, de “diálogo profundo” diría una amiga, para reflexionar sobre el pasado, el presente y el futuro imperfecto.

— Nicolás G. Recoaro, “Deseo postcapitalista: Mark Fisher sigue dando cátedra” in Tiempo Argentino

Con reflexiones que aplican a la perfección al momento actual, estas páginas son el testimonio final de su propio deseo de encontrar una alternativa al modelo neoliberal. En diálogo con autores como Marcuse, Freud, Lyotard o Nick Land -también Sartre, Deleuze-Guattari y Nietzsche, aunque no forman parte de las lecturas pautadas- Fisher pinta una época signada por el resentimiento individual, que se dirige no a los ricos y al capital, sino a migrantes, profesionales y políticos. Presta atención al surgimiento de la contracultura de fines de los sesenta y a sus fracasos, y se posiciona en el debate contemporáneo del aceleracionismo de izquierda. Estas son clases y su pensamiento está no tan condensado como en un ensayo, pero el anhelo queda claro: es el de una política colectiva interseccional, la articulación de las luchas del pueblo ahora fragmentadas, en base a la conciencia de clase, raza y género.

— “Mark Fisher sigue incomodando” in Página | 12

Gilles Deleuze decía que nunca había una última clase, que siempre era la anteúltima. Deseo postcapitalista es la anteúltima clase de Mark Fisher, hasta que logremos entender que el individualismo alienado no es la solución, sino el colectivo emancipado. Habría que abandonar de una buena vez la fábula del elegido. Y tal vez consigamos un mundo para que Mark Fisher se quede.

— Fabián Casas, “Deseo postcapitalista” in Contrahegemonia Web

El capitalismo ya no es un sistema únicamente económico, sino que —al menos en su etapa neoliberal— es también un sistema que gobierna la vida y sus formas, el cuerpo y sus deseos. Entender nuestra época supone, entonces, entender cómo el sistema moldea nuestras esperanzas y expectativas, haciéndonos asumir, por ejemplo, que ya no hay otro sistema posible. Supone entender también cómo nuestros deseos han sido captados por el sistema para que deseemos el propio sistema. De estos asuntos se encargó el filósofo británico Mark Fisher.

— Nantu Arroyo, “Mark Fisher: por un deseo poscapitalista” in FILOSOFÍA&CO 

A book that opens new horizons in ideas, sources of knowledge and analysis of culture to understand politics, economy and society.

— Ibrahim Farghali, “The post-capitalist desire of Mark Fisher Is it possible to find a horizon that saves the world from the brutality of capitalism” in Oman Daily Observer

閉塞感に塗れている。

真綿で首を絞められるように、じわじわと状況は悪化していく。まるで、すべては初めから決定されていて、物事を変えることなど不可能であると宿命づけられているかのように。

七〇年代後半から始まったポストフォーディズムと呼ばれる労働再編によって、固定的で永続的な仕事は、ますます流動化していく不安定な非正規雇用に置き換えられた。労働者はフォーディズムの工場の束縛から解放されたが、今では砂漠に置き去りにされている。

なるほど、新自由主義の時代にあって、個人の選択肢は確かに増大したのかもしれない。さあ、あなたたちは自由です、この多様な選択肢の中から好きなものを選びなさい、というわけだ。しかし、どの選択肢も選ばないことを選ぶことはできないし、同様に、新しい選択肢を創り出すという選択肢を選ぶこともできない。こうして、個人は強制された選択肢という牢獄の中に閉じ込められる。

こうした無力感と絶望は時代精神の中にも反映されている。たとえば、「親ガチャ」なるスラングもそのひとつと見なすことができるだろう。子供は親を選べない、すべては家庭環境と遺伝子によって初めから決定されている。この決定論的な宿命観の中には、当然のことながら「社会」は存在しない。人生も階級も家庭環境と遺伝子によって固定されていて、生涯変わる可能性がありえないのなら、社会を変えることに意味などない。親ガチャはありえても、社会ガチャはありえないのだ。親ガチャが自分よりも境遇の良い家族を想定することで成り立つ概念であるとしたら、今よりも優れた社会を思い描くことができない状況の中で社会ガチャという概念が成り立たないとしても一向に不思議ではない。だが、ゆめゆめ忘れないようにしておこう。かつてサッチャーが「社会は存在しない」と宣言したように、不平等を発生させる構造的な問題を家族と個人の問題に不断に還元＝矮小化することこそが、新自由主義のイデオロギーのひとつに他ならない、ということを。その意味では、親ガチャを唱える者たちもまた、新自由主義の規範を深く内面化することを強いられた犠牲者なのかもしれない。

— 評者：木澤佐登志氏、【書評】マーク・フィッシャー最終講義『ポスト資本主義の欲望』、左右

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未完ならば、私（たち）がやってしまうしかない。死なないように、やる。

— 森元斎、＜書評＞『ポスト資本主義の欲望』マーク・フィッシャー 著 for TokyoWeb

Assistiamo tutte e tutti alle dinamicità e vivacità di quelle lezioni che prendono vita tra le pagine che sfogliamo.

— Stefani Lombardi, “Recensione: ‘Desiderio postcapitalista’ – L’eredità di Fisher” for puntoZIP

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All’interno di queste lezioni ci sono momenti di svolta vertiginosa: per esempio la rivalutazione delle idee di Herbert Marcuse, ora considerata una via per una liberazione post-lavoro e da Fisher definita accelerazionista. Sottolineando come alcuni valori di sinistra siano stati assorbiti e sfruttati dalla destra politica, secondo i suggerimenti di Fisher, l’intensificazione radicale dell’automazione può effettivamente condurci a un mondo senza la fatica del lavoro, fornendo una versione alternativa di futuro, in cui il progresso tecnologico crea spazio per la prosperità umana.

Raggiungere una politica della gioia, attraverso il desiderio, sembra essere impossibile partendo dai presupposti politici della sinistra attuale che tengono lontano il desiderio stesso. Questo pone il quesito: come può un’economia postcapitalista avere successo senza la comprensione dei motivi per i quali le persone vogliono, desiderano, qualcosa o qualcuno?

— Chiara Bianchi, “Il sogno ‘fisheriano’ di una politica della gioia e del desiderio” for Crunched

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Desiderio postcapitalista è un libro importante sotto due diversi punti di vista. Innanzitutto, può essere un’occasione di avvicinamento al pensiero di Fisher anche per chi non ne abbia mai sentito parlare, visto che è in realtà un testo-seminario, che dunque guida chi legge proprio come se fosse presente in quell’aula universitaria. In secondo luogo, perché trasmette quella che potremmo definire una fiducia nelle possibilità del reale.

— Bianca Caramelli, “Desiderio postcapitalista” for Filosofemme

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Mark Fisher’s theoretical work has provided an important foothold for social and political critique of current events. Ranging from the study of artistic productions to that of literary and philosophical case studies, Fisher has highlighted the hegemonic role of capitalist realism as an ideological force that flattens all manifestations, cultural and material, on the temporal dimension of the present. At the same time, he highlighted the roles that desire and imagination can play in constituting tools, discursive and practical, to oppose this hegemonic thinking. The latest and last volume, Postcapitalist Desire, analyses in depth the debates and theoretical implications of critical, revolutionary and antagonist discourses, underlining their merits and defects, and thematizing the need for new forms of expression to imagine a different future.

— Vincenzo di Mino, “Review: Postcapitalist Desire” for Frame: Journal of Literary Studies

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‘What I’m hoping will happen in the next decade’, Fisher says in an interview with Rowan Wilson, ‘is that a new kind of theory will develop that emerges from people who have been deep-cooked in post-Fordist capitalism, who take cyberspace for granted and who lack nostalgia for the exhausted paradigms of the old left.’ And so it is in these lecturers, where he is fulfilling that pedagogical role among his students, that we can see him in his element; we see students engaging with Fisher directly in the classroom, along with students engaging with one another.

— Lewis Hodder, “Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures” for Ebb Magazine

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Fisher’s “Postcapitalist Desire” series of lectures, tragically cut short by his death in January 2017, were devised in an attempt to confront the impasses faced by the contemporary Left, and to plot a route beyond them. A new transcription of the five completed lectures, edited and introduced by Matt Colquhoun, expands their reach beyond the academic confines they were born of, making the ideas, questions and strategies they contain available to a Left movement attempting to rebuild itself from electoral ruin.   

— Tom Cozens, “Review – Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures” for Upconversion.org

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When it comes to lecture transcripts as opposed to a book, there is a slight change in receptivity. In a formal book there is the stoic image of the author stooped over the desk detailing over his or her choice of wording and prose. The former captures the spoken voice, the everyday oratory of conversation. To hear a real-time lecture taking place is a fresh experience. It’s like he’s talking with you. There is a sense of intellectual adventure and intensity. In this book’s case, it is in the abstract realm of post-capital existence.

— Anthony Cheng, “Book Review: Postcapitalist Desire” for The Indiependent

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Few are mourned by the post-millennial left like Mark Fisher. If you know anything about us, then it makes perfect sense. We are a weird bunch, displaced on every level, living in a world terrifyingly different from the one we were prepared for. Between climate change and a rising far-right, our future diminishes daily. Fisher’s work speaks to us through this lens, this alien language of existential displacement.

— Alexander Billet, “Giving Up the Ghost: On the Legacy of Mark Fisher” for Los Angeles Review of Books

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Mark Fisher’s work continues to retroactively provide glimmers of the trajectory towards a utopian postcapitalism. It’s a sore temptation to wonder what his take on the events of the last four years would be, with the consolidation of Tory rule in 2019 and doomy ramifications of the pandemic unknown at the time of these lectures, when one could be sanguine about a political rupture heralded by Corbynism. But as more of his back-catalogue of ideas is brought into public discourse, his legacy continues to shape our future in a mischievously non-linear way. It would daresay be unsurprising for some idea of his, unearthed from the past, to spawn more newfangled sociopolitical species sometime in the future.

— James Hendrix Elsey, “Review – Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures” for Red Pepper

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Neoliberalism was able to suppress these emancipatory forms of consciousness and to hijack modernity, Fisher contends, because of a failure of leftist politics: where the hippies were experimenting with communal living and alternative family units, all the left could muster was a fusty statism.

The contemporary left, then, must be relentlessly modern. For Fisher, this means accepting our entanglement in the infrastructures of advanced capitalism. Escaping from the bind expressed in Louise Mensch’s criticism of Occupy protesters means recognising both the luxuries and privations of modern technologies – the convenience and gratifications offered by an iPhone, as well as its encroachments on privacy and time.

This was why, Fisher explained to his students, he was taken with the term “postcapitalism”. It suggests “a victory that will come through capitalism”. “It starts from where we are. It’s not some entirely separate space… we’re not required to imagine a sheer alterity, a pure outside.”

— Lola Seaton, “The ghosts of Mark Fisher” for the New Statesman

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The lectures contained within Postcapitalist Desire bear an irresistible socio-political significance. Yet, it is perhaps Fisher’s doubts and hesitations, his lack of pretension to a complete understanding of the topics at hand, that give the text its main attraction. Towards the end of Fisher’s first seminar, a discussion around the implementation of a Universal Basic Income spurs a student to pose a question regarding inflation. “Oh God…”, Fisher replies, “I don’t know anything about economics, really…” — cue group laughter. We may well wonder: how feasible is it, to request faith in any critical and cultural project in light of such a glaring aporia? Yet, rushing in to fill the gap, Fisher’s relentless optimism, his ambitious commitment to imagining an alternative to capitalism, is what makes him and Postcapitalist Desire so enjoyable.

— Daniel Bakşi, “Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire – The Final Lectures review — imagining the alternative” for TheArtsDesk.com

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In an entry on his blog, k-punk, [Fisher] wrote, “More or less everything I’ve written or participated in has been in some sense an attempt to keep fidelity with the post-punk event.” Post-punk: not the loud, colorful, simple, proudly incompetent, and often nihilistic music known then and now as punk rock, but the strange and often foreboding music that came immediately after it, made by artists who occupied the space of possibility that punk had created by saying “No” to manners, taboos, and musical skill. Such artists … turned punk’s nothing into something, or many somethings. And just as Fisher attempted to keep fidelity with that brief opening in cultural history, that moment when a person could turn on the radio and instantly feel that the world of the possible had expanded, his students and friends, in the days after his death, kept fidelity with the event of Mark Fisher, who had done the same for them.

— Phil Christmas, “Turning Nothings Into Somethings” for Commonweal Magazine

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Postcapitalist Desire is thus very much the course it was originally intended to be: a primer on the topic, with Fisher’s curation and guidance as strident and insightful as ever, but by no means sidelining the exploratory, improvisatory and indeed democratic dimension of the teaching process — as Fisher puts it towards the end of the first lecture, ‘far too much of me talking today’. It was not just his writing that was celebrated after Fisher’s death but his teaching, too, by the lucky few who got to experience it. And with this book, the growing number of readers Fisher has accrued since his death, many of them beyond academia and the theoretical left, have an incisive yet personable (and frequently humourous) introduction to writers as canonical and formidable as Herbert Marcuse, György Lukács, and Jean-François Lyotard as well as lesser known names such as Ellen Willis, Nancy Hartsock and Jefferson Cowie, and key but complex concepts such as the death drive, ressentiment, standpoint epistemology, reification, and even capital and capitalism themselves.

— Adam Harper, “The Classroom of Postcapitalist Desire: Mark Fisher’s Final Lectures” for ArtReview

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[T]he recent publication of Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire, his final lectures at Goldsmiths College, edited and curated by Matt Colquhoun for Repeater Books, is immensely precious. Fisher’s last lessons are so vital because they feel familiarly alien and complex within Fisher’s own body of work, extending the ever-present rupture within his posterity.

— Enrico Monacelli, “The Last Monday on Earth: Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire” for The Quietus

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How can the libidinal infrastructure of capitalism be confronted and reconfigured for communism? These lectures, intimate and exploratory, don’t have all the answers — more vital than that, they show the necessity of this wrenching question in our catastrophic times.

— Nicholas Thoburn, author of Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing

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Mark’s unparalleled ability to infuse ideas with life comes across beautifully in these lectures. Throughout his work, he never stopped believing in and working towards an escape from capitalism — and this series of talks finds Mark weaving his way through working-class history, countercultural libidinal movements, and high theory in an unwavering effort to find just such an escape.”

— Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism

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Mark Fisher was a brilliant public speaker. He found new connections between music, psychoanalysis, and politics. His lectures opened the world, making it available not just for critique but for comradeship.

Jodi Dean, author of Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging

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Mark Fisher has proven to be one of the most influential thinkers of our time. This influence has been exerted not only via his books, his blog, his talks, but also — crucially — his teaching. This volume offers an invaluable insight into Mark’s understanding of postcapitalist desire by giving the reader a glimpse of how he approached it with his students. The lectures are a fantastic resource for those of us interested in consciousness, counterculture, and communism. To read them is to remember, once again, Mark’s relentless appetite for the emancipation of desire from capital.

Helen Hester, author of Xenofeminism