An essay in which Fisher utilises some Nietzschean tools to criticise the modern, moralising left. In short, it's basically a polemic against what we can call identity politics. Now, identity politics is not necessarily a new phenomenon, in fact the grouping of individuals by common signification - whether affirmatively as an act of solidarity and … Continue reading Book Review: Mark Fisher – Exiting the Vampire Castle
Tag: deleuze
Thought: Before the Personal There is Politics
The personal is political; "before Being there is politics". This of course does not refer to a deferment of collective action, much less the idea that politics consists in our intimate little narcissistic struggles: "schizophrenics do at least have real problems". In fact, it refers precisely to a process of de-individualisation: a process of opening oneself … Continue reading Thought: Before the Personal There is Politics
Book Review: Gilles Deleuze – Postscript on the Societies of Control
Taking the baton from Foucault, Deleuze in this brief essay articulates some simple yet profound notions apropos of our transition from a society of discipline to a society of control. Early capitalism sought to manage with great detail various environments of enclosure, whereas our modern (written in the 90s but equally relevant today) societies are more concerned with … Continue reading Book Review: Gilles Deleuze – Postscript on the Societies of Control
Thought: Machines & Flows
Everything is a machine, insofar as everything is at once an interceptor and a producer of flows. What we mean by this, more precisely, is that everything is involved in a generalized transference of flows, according to the principles of conservation of energy. Machines must be described by the connections that they involve and invoke. Each … Continue reading Thought: Machines & Flows
Thought: Creativity & Becoming Lovers
The noble person knows that the only way to comment upon or critique a creation is with love; but love necessitates the harshest of depersonalisations, the opening up to multiplicities; thus we have no interest in belittling or degrading creativity, but only in latching onto flows, engulfing ourselves in streams; in short: becoming lovers.
Essay: The Art & the Artist
All creativity is a state of flowing. The problem with the attachment of the art to the artist is that it at all times seeks to pin down and segregate a global, totalising person or identity, and thus always attempts to subjugate and subordinate the real function of multiplicities, lines and flows. We are all, … Continue reading Essay: The Art & the Artist
Thought: Being Revolutionary & Being Free
One cannot try to be revolutionary; one can only try to be free, and in so doing become revolutionary. And truly, this is the pitfall of so many 'left-wing' movements: too much effort is put into being revolutionary, and not enough into being free. Being free always has to do with the unconscious, whereas being … Continue reading Thought: Being Revolutionary & Being Free
Ditty #20
Desire does not have revolution as its object, rather, desire is itself revolutionary.
Thought: Fake Lips & the Lost Signified
It is clear that people no longer get fake lips in order to look like they have nice natural lips, but rather, in order to precisely look like they have fake lips, and, what is more, fake lips become desirable or attractive precisely as such; the illusion is not desired because of its referent, but … Continue reading Thought: Fake Lips & the Lost Signified
Thought: Exploitation & Internalisation
What's interesting is not necessarily the role of the state, with its bureaucracy, police force and law enforcement agents, but rather, the roles that we assign ourselves within these oppressive apparatuses; our desire not only to be the cop or the law-giver for others, but for ourselves; how people with zero capital to their name … Continue reading Thought: Exploitation & Internalisation
Doing the Multiple 