The political aesthetics of postcapitalism
16.11.2011 7:00 p.m., net.culture club mama, Preradovićeva 18, Zagreb
In his book Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher argued that contemporary culture is dominated by the pervasive feeling that there is no alternative to capitalism. Even though capitalism finds itself in the midst of what promises to be an unprecedented crisis, capitalist realism has not disappeared. Instead, it has changed form: after the optimism of neoliberalism in all its splendor, capitalist realism now has a more desperate, even falsely melancholy, side. Increasingly, the strategy of many agents of capital is not to condemn anti-capitalist protest, but precisely to claim that anti-capitalists do not present a coherent alternative. If they did, perhaps we could support them… While this is a disingenuous line of attack in many ways, it nevertheless reveals serious problems with "anti-capitalism." The emergence of “anti-capitalism” was a symptom of the destruction of the organized left, defined by its attempt to articulate an alternative modernity. However, at least implicitly, the tendency of much anti-capitalism is anti-modernist. There is a shift from anti-statism to anti-politics, with emphasis on the organic and local at the expense of systems, bureaucratic planning and transnational coordination. This is a question of political aesthetics as much as anything else, since the image projected by much anti-capitalism involves a renunciation of technology, mass production and brands.
In this presentation, Fisher will argue that the left needs to shift its focus from anti-capitalism to post-capitalism, and that concepts initially intended to mock the left – such as “radical chic” and “designer socialism” – can contribute to this transition. Now that capital has lost control of modernity, it is time to assert that the future belongs to postcapitalism.
Mark Fisher is highly respected as both a music writer and theorist. He writes regularly for The Wire, Frieze, New Statesman, Sight & Sound and The Wire, where he was interim deputy editor for a year. He is a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and runs one of the most successful blogs on cultural theory, k-punk (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org).
Valorization methodologies constitute one of the main programs of the Drama Center this year. This is a series of conferences dedicated to the theoretical and historical investigation of the relationships between criteria and methods of valorization 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.
With the support of: Office of Culture, Education and Sport of the City of Zagreb; Ministry of Culture, Republic of Croatia; IPA Program 2009 – Mechanism for civil society.
Grad Zagreb Ministarstvo kulture RH
Thanks to the Multimedia Institute and the net.culture club mama
Please take the opportunity to connect and share this video with your friends and family if you find it useful.
