Sublime

Mark Fisher was possibly the last of a disappearing breed: the music critic as prophet.

the affects that predominate in late capitalism are fear and cynicism. These emotions do not inspire bold thinking or entrepreneurial leaps, they breed conformity and the cult of the minimal variation, the turning out of products which very closely resemble those that are already successful.

Fisher wrote in his book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits:

The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.

The effect of permanent structural instability, the ‘cancellation of the long term’, is invariably stagnation and conservatism, not innovation. This is not a paradox.

Harvey argues that neoliberalization is best conceived of as a ‘political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites’.