-Having sex
-Literally fetishizing commodities
:volcel-judge: :volcel-police: :gulag:
Capitalist Realist Intercourse A Haiku
Missionary style,
Avoidance of eye contact,
Silent orgasms
Post coitus phone glows
Illuminate Funko Pops
Rent is late once more
I read it a few days ago, and yeeeeeesh it was: A) dense as fuck, so many references to other authors or academics without setting them up at all, just straight name-dropping. Not much attempt to simplify any of the concepts. Granted I started reading it after sleeping like shit and waking up at like 4am, but still.
B) Bleak as all hell. It has a sort of oppressive doomer tone, and rightfully so, but goddamn it weighed on me after a while. Especially when the "solutions" he points to are already failing to manifest in any useful way. Climate change is not being taken seriously. Suggesting mental health is related to Capitalism is still a fringe opinion. The propaganda campaign against communism has been so good and so strong that it's still synonymous with bureaucracy.
I need to read it again because I don't feel like I fully absorbed it, but I feel like it was the first thing I've read that makes me understand people that completely bounce off of theory. There were still definitely a few sections that were excellent and very good shit, but it felt like sifting through a lot to get to those dank nugs.
When State and Rev is a much easier and more fun read in comparison, I have a hard time recommending this one unless you're already fully radicalized anyway.
Yeah I really struggled when I tried to read it, it felt like someone was writing a piece geared towards philosophy knowers but with casual language.
Then again "oh it's easy to read X" and then you start and it's :yes-honey-left: is basically why I stopped trying to be a theory reader in the first place. Would rather just soak up the highlights from pods and stuff.
I highly recommend Parenti - Blackshirts & Reds. Now THAT is a readable piece of theory that I would recommend to anyone and everyone.
I don't know, I had almost the opposite reaction. I had been trying to get myself to read for forever, and when I got this one I crushed it in two days. Thought it was great. I do think the kids are getting more on board with the idea that Capitalism causes the mental health crisis and that being depressed isn't just magic brain chemicals being unbalanced for no reason. I view Graeber's imminently readable Utopia of Rules to be a concerted attempt at greatly elaborating the corporate bureaucratic complex that defines Late Capitalism. Fisher does name drop Zizek a ton, though really it ends up being mostly the good parts of Zizek explained better than by Zizek: the book, anyway. Because it's short, it's exactly the kind of thing I try to get people to read to radicalize them.
I do think the kids are getting more on board with the idea that Capitalism causes the mental health crisis and that being depressed isn’t just magic brain chemicals being unbalanced for no reason.
