Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 66

Class War or Culture War: A Further Note on Consciousness Raising

Hypnosifl left a comment on my previous post that resonates nicely with a few other things I’m working on at the minute. They write:

Speaking of iPhones and their effect on the way we think, something I’ve wondered when reading Fisher (and other accelerationists) is whether their picture of the transition away from capitalism requires some degree of voluntarism at the level of social movements (the hope for a spontaneous shift in popular consciousness), or whether it’s compatible with a more ...

Twilight of the Living

I started watching Fear the Walking Dead this week. I had previously seen the first season and enjoyed it back when it first aired but I didn’t bother keeping up with it after its parent show, The Walking Dead, became the dead horse that AMC wouldn’t stop flogging. (A further new spin-off series was launched on Amazon Prime the other day, which I just couldn’t stomach. The AV Club, as ever, has the best small-screen reviewers — Alex McLevy is right that the show “makes the rookie mistake of trea...

Class War or Culture War: Notes on Social Media and the Precariat

A discussion took place in the XG Discord the other day about the tension between technological progress and class war, in part inspired by Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire lectures. More specifically, the question asked was about the shifting nature of the working class and how we are supposed to define the “working class” as such in an information economy. My own contribution went down quite well and people asked to share it so here it is, extended and in blog form.

What I find c...

Moving Day / Mail Art

Right. I’m off. Bye London.

I’ve been trying to write about leaving this place a lot over the past two weeks but the post I’d wanted to write for today isn’t ready yet.

The main reason for this is that I’ve been having a tough time with my mental health in the run-up to moving day. I’ve realised that this isn’t an unprecedented thing for me. Most periods before or after a big move — of which there have been three in the last decade — coincide with a very low and very fragile state for me...

Solidarity Without Similarity (Judith Butler Remix)

My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. But what if the individual — and individualism — is part of the problem? It makes a difference to understand ourselves as living in a world in which we are fundamentally dependent on others, on institutions, on the Earth, and to see that this lif...

XG on Acid Horizon (Part 2)

Back in July, I had a really excellent time chatting with Craig, Matt and Will of the Acid Horizon podcast about my book Egress.

Just a few months later and I’m back with Craig, Matt, Will and Adam to talk about Postcapitalist Desire, the collection of Mark Fisher’s final lectures I edited during lockdown.

You can listen to the first 40 minutes of our discussion above and, if you want to hear the rest, check out their Patreon here.

Xenogothic to Image API

After seeing this Text to Image API thing go around on Twitter and having the result flaw me, I decided to put “xenogothic” into the generator fifty times and gather together a gallery of trout-looking trout fishermen from Innsmouth… Just because… Embrace the full horror after the jump.

Happy nightmares!

“The Last Monday On Earth”: Enrico Monacelli on Mark Fisher

Enrico Monacelli has written the first review of Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures for The Quietus. It’s a really lovely piece of writing that is, by turns, a personal reflection on coming into contact with Fisher’s work, the world he created through his writings, and that other world we should still be encouraged to yearned for.

You can read the full review here and find an excerpt below.

At the tail end of [the k-punk] anthology stands a fragment that disqui...

The Thames Path

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We went on the most magnificently long walk along the Thames path last night. I think it’s the furthest I’ve been along that route. We walked from Deptford to the Greenwich Ecology Park. It reminded me of walking to Tower Bridge with Robin the other way just before New Year’s.

I reckon if you combined those two walks and went from Tower Bridge to Greenwich Ecology Park, you’d hit 90% of my fav places in this city. I’m gonna miss the Thames a lot.

We had it confirmed today that our ...

Passing Paradoxes: A Quick Response to Some Quibbles With Anti-Praxis

Cybertrop(h)ic has written a response to my recent post on anti-praxis. After a less than interesting response to it on Twitter, it is nice to see some thought going into a critique from someone self-identifying as “post-libertarian/post-right”. The rest of the Twitter right largely seemed upset at something they’d barely read. I’ll happily take an argument built on good faith than that paranoid rubbish any day.

And so, Cybertrop(h)ic’s time taken to respond deserves a thoughtful response in ...