Mark Fisher, REALISMO CAPITALISTA, 2018

A famous adage (sometimes attributed to Slavoj Žižek or Fredric Jameson) says that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The slogan There Is No Alternative, so dear to Margaret Thatcher, was finally adopted also by the liberal left, and not even the crisis of 2008 was able to scratch the widespread belief that, outside capitalism, it is impossible to hypothesize other ways. But what is the effect of this «capitalist realism» on our imagination? And what is its role in the widespread feeling of resignation and unhappiness that permeates our lives?

In this short but fundamental text that has had a huge impact on cultural environments primarily Anglophone, the critic and theorist Mark Fisher thinks about how capitalist realism has occupied every area of our daily experience, and wonders how it is possible to fight it. And it does so through examples taken not only from politics, but also from films and science fiction, from pop music and television.

With Capitalist Realism, Fisher signed one of the most insightful, illuminating and painful analyses of the world in which we live. But capitalist realism is also a text that opens to the idea of possibility, and that reaffirms that an alternative is there.