Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 67

Known Only As Mark

I found a document in an old folder the other day whilst going through house stuff that I thought I’d lost a long time ago. It’s a faded and still-fading family history, typed up by a social worker following interviews with my birth mother, her mother, and her siblings.

It’s an amazing read. The family’s history is complex and often sad but also powerful. All of the women are so strong and self-assured — a fact I’m happy to have eventually confirmed for myself some twenty-five years later.

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A Matter of Style: Further Notes on Commie Shit

When I suggested in a previous post that Vincent Garton’s original anti-praxis position “resonates with more positions than many are willing to generously conceded — a more hubristic brand of environmentalism, for one”, I had Gary Snyder in mind, specifically the following anecdote from Jim Dodge’s forward to The Gary Snyder Reader:

After a full day of scholarly panels and speakers on various aspects of the poem [Mountains and Rivers Without End], Gary concluded the day’s discussion with some...

Our Social Dilemma Has Plenty of Names: Notes Towards a New Social(ist) Media

The Social Dilemma, a new documentary from Netflix, is a pretty fascinating watch, not least because it shows how well the tech industry understands what it is doing to us, and even how full of regret it is at its own impact. But, on the whole, this Netflix-hosted self-flagellation makes for a weird and somewhat confused watch.

On the one hand, there is a great deal of honesty from those who have run various social media platforms and who have found themselves getting high on their sup...

A Further Fragment on Unconditional Accelerationism: What is Anti-Praxis?

It is clear that the concept of anti-praxis within unconditional accelerationism remains woefully misunderstood. Regularly confused with Nick Land’s brand of horrorism — “Do nothing” — many still believe that “anti-praxis” is some pretentious way of expressing the same sentiment. I doubt even the most insufferable of accelerationists would think such a position warranted a term so pretentiously over-specific to describe something as basic as inactivity.

My own attempt to rectify this, by emp...

No Transformation — Hennessey

Friend of the blog and real person Leah Hennessey has an EP out this week. We’ve been engaged in a fragmentary back-and-forth ever since I lightly declared war on her project Slash back in February, following which we found ourselves torn in two and then stitched together across cyberspace. She’s been an excellent pen pal.

Earlier this week, Leah sent over the press release for her band’s first self-titled EP Hennessey, out September 11th (yesterday!) from Velvet Elk Records. I didn’t need an...

The Unspeakably Familiar (Part 1)

Summer, 2006

The mail order package was sturdy and wrapped in custom parcel tape, with my name and address both writ large in india ink. For god’s sake what’s the shipping you’ve paid on that, my dad asked with a groan of disapproval, noticing the customs form attached and the multitude of stamps. In silent denial, I chose not to answer. It was certainly more than any sixteen-year-old could responsibly account for.

I slipped the package from his hands, still looking at the tape, water acti...

Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures of Mark Fisher — Out Now

Edited with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element — the classroom — outlining a project that his death left so bittersweetly unfinished.

Beginning with that most fundamental of questions — “Do we really want what we say we want?” — Fisher explores the relationship between desire and capitalism, and wonders what new forms of desire we might still excavate from the past, present, and...

K-Punk Quarantined — Ctrl Network

A few weeks / months ago — what is time? — the Contemporary Theory Reading Group at the University of Birmingham organised an amazing series of lectures and workshops during quarantine around the work of Mark Fisher. The sessions brought together some wonderfully like-minded people and I was honoured to be asked to present some of my research as part of the series.

The Contemporary Theory Reading Group has now changed shape and they have re-launched themselves as a proper online entity called...

The Story Is We’re Stuck: Notes on Accelerationism and the Climate Emergency

A contradictory tension that has defined the last couple of decades of life on earth is one between the accelerative nature of technological progress and the encroaching stagnation that defines life for the rest of us. Something has got to give. How can we catch up and get a piece of the progress? Because speed isn’t just for the owners of the means of production — it’s clear they can’t handle it on their own.

The rest of us have surely proved, by now, that we can keep up. We have adapted be...

Rejecting the Hardened Subject

It is sad that, for many, Mark Fisher’s career is defined by his essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle”. It remains controversial — although, personally, I think he has been largely vindicated — but the essay was all for nought if we remain blinkered to its place within the wider context and trajectory of his thinking.

Unfortunately, we’re far from that mode of thinking today. What is so often missed by our perpetual focus on the essay’s fallout is all that Fisher did after it.

Was Fishe...