6 ms·
After reading a little bit of his work, I couldn't really make my mind up about Fisher. Some passages feel pretty clear headed a satisfying to read. “There are
by witherk 4y ago
After reading a little bit of his work, I couldn't really make my mind up about Fisher. Some passages feel pretty clear headed a satisfying to read.
“There are certainly conspiracies in capitalism, but the problem is that they are themselves only possible because of deeper level structures that allow them to function. Does anyone really think, for instance, that things would improve if we replaced the whole managerial and banking class with a whole new set of ('better') people? Surely, on the contrary, it is evident that the vices are engendered by the structure, and that while the structure remains, the vices will reproduce themselves.”
But then at other times, he seems fall into the same traps that makes me hate a lot of postmodern(or whatever this is) writing.
-Constant references to other writers, only to use their polysyllabic neologisms 2-3 times without any explanation. I wouldn't mind this so much but this book usually sold as a good starting point.
-Defining things with grandiose, nearly contradictory analogies.
-A deep pessimism, sometimes I feel I'm reading some kind of anti-Pangloss.
"This makes
capitalism very much like the Thing in John Carpenter's film of
the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of
metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into
contact. Capital, Deleuze and Guattari says, is a 'motley painting
of everything that ever was'; a strange hybrid of the ultra-modern
and the archaic. In the years since Deleuze and Guattari wrote the
two volumes of their Capitalism And Schizophrenia, it has seemed
as if the deterritorializing impulses of capitalism have been
confined to finance, leaving culture presided over by the forces of
reterritorialization."
It makes me frustrated, because I feel like Fisher really does have a lot of interesting things to say. But the only time I can bring myself to hate the state of world this much is if I spend too much time on twitter or in mandatory HR trainings.