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Mark Fisher: Capitalist Realism (EBook, 2009, Zero Books) 4 stars

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? explores Fisher's concept of "capitalist realism," which he takes …

Review of 'Capitalist Realism' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Like Adam Curtis's Hypernormalisation, this book is a heady attempt at parsing the continuum of what Fisher calls "the Real" and "the big Other." He invokes Marx, Baudrillard, Lacan, "Office Space," Nirvana, and "Children of Men" with equal deference, utilizing pop culture and theory to explain the puzzling, if no less certain, links between neoconservativism and neoliberalism, and posits a leftist anti-capitalist project based on critical analysis of capitalist realism's offerings and shortcomings, as much as its obfuscatory sleight of hand aims at perpetuating a sense that it is, itself, unalterable and unable to be opposed.