"The Contemporary Left, Then, Must Be Relentlessly Modern"

"The questions with which Fisher began his last lectures–about what we are capable of wanting and envisioning–are questions of consciousness. Their roots can be traced to the concept for which Fisher is most famous: 'capitalist realism', the title of his first, bestselling pamphlet, published in 2009. The original definition–'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'–is not, Fisher would later say, 'quite accurate'. Capitalist realism is less a conviction than 'a set of behaviours and affects that arise from [it]'. It entails a 'deep embedding in a world–or set of worlds–in which capitalism is massively naturalised'. 'The best way to think about capitalist realism,' Fisher told an audience in 2016, 'is as a form of what I'd call consciousness-deflation.'"

Lola Seaton at New Statesman reviews Mark Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures.