Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging aliask-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political andcultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures atGoldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for hisblogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing onradical politics,music, andpopular culture.

Mark Fisher
Fisher in 2011
Born	(1968-07-11)11 July 1968 Leicester, England
Died	13 January 2017(2017-01-13) (aged 48) Felixstowe, England
Other names	k-punk
Alma mater	University of Hull University of Warwick
Notable work	Capitalist Realism (2009) k-punk blog (2003–2015) "Exiting the Vampire Castle"
Spouse	Zoe Fisher
Children	1
School	Continental philosophy
Institutions	Goldsmiths' College, London
Thesis	Flatline Constructs (1999)
Main interests	Critical theory philosophy music criticism political theory
Notable ideas	Capitalist realism,business ontology
Website	k-punk.abstractdynamics.org

Fisher published several books, including the unexpected successCapitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009), and contributed to publications such asThe Wire,Fact,New Statesman andSight & Sound. He was also the co-founder ofZero Books, and laterRepeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with depression, Fisher died by suicide in January 2017, shortly before the publication ofThe Weird and the Eerie (2017).

Fisher was born inLeicester and grew up inLoughborough toworking-class,conservative parents. Fisher's father was an engineering technician and his mother a cleaner. Fisher attended a localcomprehensive school. He was formatively influenced in his youth by thepost-punk music press of the late 1970s, particularly papers like theNME which crossed music with politics, film, and fiction.^[1] He was also influenced by the relationship between working class culture and football, being present at theHillsborough disaster.^[2]

Fisher earned a B.A. in English and Philosophy atHull University in 1989. He completed a PhD at theUniversity of Warwick in 1999; his thesis titledFlatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction.^[3] During that time, he was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective known as theCybernetic Culture Research Unit, which was associated withaccelerationist political thought and included philosophers such asSadie Plant andNick Land.^[1][4] There, he befriended and influenced producerKode9 who later began theHyperdub record label.^[5] In the early 1990s, Fisher also made music as part of thebreakbeat hardcore group D-Generation, releasing the EPsEntropy in the UK andConcrete Island, and laterIsle Of The Dead as The Lower Depths.^[5][6] In the 1990s he wrote "White Magic" for CritCrim.org.^[7]

After teaching philosophy at afurther education college,^[8] Fisher began his blog on cultural theory,k-punk, in 2003.^[9] Music criticSimon Reynolds described it as "a one-man magazine superior to most magazines in Britain"^[1] and as the central hub of a "constellation of blogs" in which popular culture, music, film, politics, andcritical theory were discussed in tandem by journalists, academics, and colleagues.^[10]Vice magazine later said Fisher's writing onk-punk was "lucid and revelatory, taking literature, music and cinema we're familiar with and effortlessly disclosing its inner secrets".^[11]The Guardian contrasted it with his CCRU work, stating "The blog retained some Warwick traits, such as quoting reverently fromDeleuze andGuattari, but it gradually shed the CCRU’s aggressive rhetoric and pro-capitalist politics for a more forgiving, more left-leaning take on modernity."^[12] He used the blog as a more flexible, generative venue for writing, a respite from the frameworks and expectations of academic writing.^[13] He also co-founded the message board Dissensus with Matt Ingram, a writer.^[1]

In turn, Fisher was a visiting fellow and a lecturer on Aural and Visual Cultures atGoldsmiths College, a commissioning editor at Zero Books, an editorial board member ofInterference: A Journal of Audio Culture andEdinburgh University Press'sSpeculative Realism series, and an acting deputy editor atThe Wire.^[14] In 2009, he editedThe Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of critical essays on the career and death ofMichael Jackson, and publishedCapitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, an analysis of the ideological effects ofneoliberalism on contemporary culture.

Fisher was an early critic ofcall-out culture and in 2013 published a controversial essay titled "Exiting the Vampire Castle".^[15][16] He felt that call-out culture created a space "where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent". He went on to say that call-out culture reduces every political issue to criticizing the behaviour of individuals, instead of dealing with such political issues through collective action.^[17][18] In 2014, Fisher publishedGhosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, a collection of essays on similar themes viewed through the prisms of music, film, andhauntology. He contributed intermittently to a number of publications including the music magazinesFact andThe Wire.^[19] In 2016, he co-edited a critical anthology on the post-punk era withKodwo Eshun andGavin Butt titledPost-Punk Then and Now, published byRepeater Books.^[20]

In the late 2000s, Fisher re-purposed the term "capitalist realism" to describe "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it".^[21]: 2He argued that the term best describes the ideological situation since the fall of theSoviet Union, in which the logics of capitalism have come to delineate the limits of political and social life, with significant effects on education, mental illness, pop culture, and methods of resistance. The result is a situation in which it is "easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism."^[21]: 2 He wrote:^[21]: 16

Capitalist realism as I understand it... is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.

As a philosophical concept, capitalist realism is influenced by theAlthusserian conception of ideology, as well as the work ofFredric Jameson andSlavoj Žižek.^{[21]: 2 [22]} Fisher also credited working in the public sector inBlairite Britain, as well as being a teacher and trade union activist, with making him see that "neoliberal capitalism didn't fit with the accelerationist model" but was instead creating the bureaucracy he describes inCapitalist Realism.^[22] The concept of capitalist realism likely stems from the concept ofcultural hegemony proposed by Italian theoristAntonio Gramsci, which can generally be described as the notion that the "status quo" is all there is, and that anything else violatescommon sense itself.^{[citation needed]}

According to capitalist realism, capitalists maintain their power not only through violence and force, but also by creating a pervasive sense that thecapitalist system is all there is. They seek to maintain these conditions by dominating most social and cultural institutions. Fisher proposed that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives.^[21]: 8 He said that the2008 financial crisis compounded this position. Rather than catalyzing a desire to seek alternatives for the existing model, the response to the crisis reinforced the notion that modifications must be made within the existing system. Fisher states that capitalist realism has propagated a "businessontology" which concludes that everything should be run as a business including education and healthcare.^[21]: 15Fisher has also stated that after the financial crisis, even the capitalist status quo seemed impossible, which he considered an improvement.^[22] After the publication of his work, the term was picked up by other literary critics.^[23]

Fisher popularised the use ofJacques Derrida's concept ofhauntology to describe a pervasive sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by the "lost futures" ofmodernity, which failed to occur or were cancelled bypostmodernity andneoliberalism.^[24] Fisher and others drew attention to the shift intopost-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which he argued has "gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new".^[24] In contrast to thenostalgia and ironicpastiche of postmodern culture, he defined hauntological art as exploring these impasses and representing a "refusal to give up on the desire for the future" and a "pining for a future that never arrived".^{[25][26][page needed]} Discussing the political relevance of the concept, he wrote:^[24]

At a time ofpolitical reaction and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards, when "power... operates predictively as much as retrospectively" (Eshun 2003: 289), one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity's terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.

Fisher and critic Simon Reynolds adapted Derrida's concept to describe amusical trend in the mid-2000s.^[27] Fisher's 2014 bookGhosts of My Life examined the idea through cultural sources including the music ofBurial,Joy Division, and theGhost Box label; TV series such asSapphire & Steel, the films ofStanley Kubrick andChristopher Nolan, and the novels ofDavid Peace andJohn le Carré.

Fisher's posthumous bookThe Weird and the Eerie^[28] explores the titular concepts of "the weird" and "the eerie" through various works of art, defining the concepts as radical narrative modes or moments of "transcendental shock" which work to de-centre thehuman subject^[29] and de-naturalisesocial reality, exposing the arbitrary forces which shape it.^[30] Summarizing Fisher's characterizations, Yohann Koshy said that "weirdness abounds at the edge between worlds; eeriness radiates from the ruins of lost ones".^[11] The book includes discussion ofscience-fiction andhorror sources like the writing ofH. P. Lovecraft,Joan Lindsay's 1967Picnic at Hanging Rock, andPhilip K. Dick, films such asDavid Lynch'sInland Empire (2006) andJonathan Glazer'sUnder the Skin (2013), and the music of UK post-punk bandThe Fall andambient musicianBrian Eno.^[31]

At the time of his death, Fisher was said to be planning a new book titledAcid Communism,^[1] excerpts of which were published as part of a Mark Fisher anthology,k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), by Repeater Books in November 2018.^[32][33]Acid Communism would have attempted to reclaim elements of the1960s counterculture andpsychedelia in the interest of imagining new political possibilities forthe Left.^[1]

After Fisher's death, the Hyperdub record label began a sub label called Flatlines which published an audio-essay by Justin Barton and Fisher in July 2019. Fisher and Barton edited together music from various musicians which was made to accompany the text and Barton, working in part with suggestions from Fisher, wrote the text for the audio-essay which "evokes a walk along the Suffolk coastline in 2006, from Felixstowe container port ('a nerve ganglion of capitalism') to the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo". Both Barton and Fisher narrate the essay.^[34] Adam Harper wrote about the elements ofhauntology inOn Vanishing Land including its relation to the environmentalist movement.^[35] In a review forThe Quietus, Johny Lamb referred toOn Vanishing Land as a "shocking revelation of the proximity of dystopia."^[36]

Fishercritiqued economics, claiming that it was a bourgeois "science" which moulds reality after its presuppositions, rather than critically examining reality. As he put it himself:

From the start, "economy" was the object-cause of a bourgeois "science", which hyperstitionally bootstrapped itself into existence, and then bent and melted the matter of this and every other world to fit its presuppositions–the greatest theocratic achievement in a history that was never human, an immense conjuring trick which works all the better because it came shrouded in that damp grey English and Scottishempiricism which claimed to have seen off all gods.^[37]

In an article posted to thek-punk blog on 29 September 2004, Fisher wrote about having experienced sexual abuse in his early twenties.^[38]

Fisher died by suicide at his home on King Street,Felixstowe inSuffolk, England on 13 January 2017 at the age of 48, shortly before the publication of his latest bookThe Weird and the Eerie (2017). He had sought psychiatric treatment in the weeks leading up to his death, but hisgeneral practitioner had only been able to offer over-the-phone meetings to discuss a referral. Fisher's mental health had deteriorated since May 2016, leading to a suspected overdose in December 2016 when he was admitted toIpswich Hospital inIpswich.^[39]

He discussed his struggles withdepression in articles^[40] and in his bookGhosts of My Life. According to Simon Reynolds inThe Guardian, Fisher said that "the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals."^[1]

Fisher has been posthumously acclaimed as a highly influential thinker and theorist.^[41][42] Commenting on Fisher's influence inTribune, Alex Niven recalled that Fisher's "lucidity, but more than that, his ability to get to the heart of what was wrong with late-capitalist culture and right about the putative alternative...seemed to have cracked some ineffable code".^[43] InThe Irish Times Rob Doyle wrote that "a more interesting British writer has not appeared in this century".^[44]The Guardian described Fisher's k-punk blog posts as "required reading for a generation".^[1]

In theLos Angeles Review of Books, Roger Luckhurst called Fisher "one of Britain's most trenchant, clear-sighted, and sparky cultural commentators...it is a catastrophe that we no longer have Mark Fisher".^[45] He still has a large influence on contemporary Zer0 Books writers, with him being cited extensively inGuy Mankowski'sAlbion's Secret History: Snapshots of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders.^[46] After Fisher's suicide, English musicianthe Caretaker, who had a symbiotic relationship with the writer,^[47] releasedTake Care. It's a Desert Out There... in memory of him, with its proceeds being donated to the mental health charityMind.^[48]

Since 2018, "For k-punk" has been a yearly series of tribute events celebrating Fisher's life and works.^[49] In 2021, theICA commissioned a series of films from different artists for the occasion to respond to themes in the volumePostcapitalist Desire (2020), which transcribes Fisher’s final lecture series for his Master of Arts contemporary art theory course atGoldsmiths which is part of theUniversity of London. The films have unifying visuals and captions by Sweatmother who was influenced through Fisher's work to use "early internet aesthetics and 1990s cyberpunk, merged with reworked empty promises of advertisements.”^[50]

• The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson (editor). Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.ISBN 978-1-84694-348-5
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.ISBN 978-1-84694-317-1
• Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014.ISBN 978-1-78099-226-6
• Post-Punk Then and Now (editor, withGavin Butt andKodwo Eshun). London:Repeater Books, 2016.ISBN 978-1-910924-26-6
• The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2017.ISBN 978-1-910924-38-9
• Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (foreword by exmilitary). New York: Exmilitary Press, 2018.ISBN 978-0-692-06605-8
• k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016) (edited by Darren Ambrose, foreword bySimon Reynolds). London: Repeater Books, 2018.ISBN 978-1-912248-29-2
• Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures (edited and with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun). London: Repeater Books, 2020.ISBN 978-1-913462-48-2

• "An Extract From Mark Fisher's Ghosts Of My Life". thequietus.com. Retrieved1 August 2015.
• 2012 podcast discussion with Mark Fisher – discussing issues relative to the recession, insurrection, and Really Existing Capitalism
• K-Punk Blog Archive – Mark Fishers "K-Punk" Blog
• Mark Fisher Tribute Site & Video Archive
• Dissensus forum