Reading Capitalist Realism

We Can’t Afford to Be Realists: A Conversation

A Conversation with Mark Fisher and Jodi Dean We Can’t Afford to Be Realists Jodi Dean: With your account of capitalist realism, you took an idea that Slavoj Žižek got from Fredric Jameson and made it completely fresh. Žižek said that it was easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But whereas for Žižek this observation is basically depoliticizing, or symptomatic of a depoliticization that he, at the time, oscillated between confirming and critiquing, you make it into a critical wedge, a category for criticism. When you started writing Capitalist Realism, were you aware of the ways you were upgrading and extending the concept or did that come later, through the writing? Further, could you say something about how you understand the concept working? I find myself using it in a couple of different ways, but not completely sure if you agree with both or either. On the one hand, “capitalist realism” designates a general ideological formation, that of late neoliberalism, wherein all illusions and hopes for equality have been shed. On the other, it is a more specific ideological weapon, an argument wielded against those who might try to challenge capitalist hegemony. Do you find one of these renditions closer to your argument than the other? Mark Fisher: I think both of the senses of capitalist realism that you describe are valid. But perhaps the use of capitalist realism as a specific weapon is necessary only when capitalist realism as a general ideological formation fails, as it has started to fail since 2008. One way of thinking about capitalist realism is as a belief that capitalism is the only viable political-economic ­ system—­ that other systems may be desirable, but capitalism is the only one that works. w e c a n ’ t a f f o r d t o b e r e a l i s t s 2 7 Another way of getting to capitalist realism is thinking of it as an attitude in relation to all ­ this—­ a feeling of resignation: there’s no point struggling, we just have to adapt. But there are problems with conceiving of capitalist realism in either of these two ways because they suggest individual psychology, when what we are talking about is more like a transpersonal psychic infrastructure. It’s ideological, not in the sense that it directly persuades people of the truth of its propositions , but more because it convinces people that it is an irresistible force. I mentioned in the book the example of managers who implement neoliberalizing changes in the workplace, while saying, “I don’t believe in any of this stuff, but this is just the kind of thing we have to do now.” Ideology I think operates at two levels here: the first is the acceptance and propagation of the belief that neoliberalism can’t be fought; the second is the notion that adapting to neoliberal domination is just a question of pragmatic survival, not political at all. Ideology is of course at its strongest when it appears as non-political, just the way things are. When capitalist realism is at its most powerful, it always generates this depoliticizing effect. JD: I like very much your emphasis here on the affective dimension of capitalist realism. One of the most difficult challenges facing the contemporary left is the resignation you mention. People have a hard time gearing themselves up to protest, to engage in long-term battles in a variety of terrains, because they think that, ultimately, it won’t really matter. We will lose. We will be co-opted. Capital will adapt (it always does). And if we win, it will be even ­ worse—­ the ultimate lesson of the twentieth century is that anything other than capitalism is death. Enter Stalin and Mao. MF: We have to bear in mind something that you have brought out very well in your own ­ work—­ that what we are talking about is really a retreat of the left, not really depoliticization per se. It’s our politics that are missing, not politics as such. Capitalist realism is a pathology of the left. It’s no accident that many of the experiences I recount in the book happened while I was working as a teacher during the high pomp of New Labour, because the concept of capitalist realism is re- 2 8 j o d...