[D66] Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?

[Antid Oto]

"This book offers a brilliant analysis of the pervasive cynicism in 
which we seem to be mired, and even holds out the prospect of an antidote."

Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? (Zero Books)

Book Description
Publication Date: December 16, 2009 | Series: Zero Books
After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only 
realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis 
of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the 
development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived 
ideological framework. Using examples from politics, films, fiction, 
work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas 
of contemporary experience. But it will also show that, because of a 
number of inconsistencies and glitches internal to the capitalist 
reality program capitalism in fact is anything but realistic.

Review
Let's not beat around the bush: Fisher's compulsively readable book is 
simply the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have! Through 
examples from daily life and popular culture, but without sacrificing 
theoretical stringency, he provides a ruthless portrait of our 
ideological misery. Although the book is written from a radically Left 
perspective, Fisher offers no easy solutions. Capitalist Realism is a 
sobering call for patient theoretical and political work. It enables us 
to breathe freely in our sticky atmosphere. -- Slavoj Zizek

What happened to our future? Mark Fisher is a master cultural 
diagnostician, and in Capitalist Realism he surveys the symptoms of our 
current cultural malaise. We live in a world in which we have been told, 
again and again, that There Is No Alternative. The harsh demands of the 
'just-in-time' marketplace have drained us of all hope and all belief. 
Living in an endless Eternal Now, we no longer seem able to imagine a 
future that might be different from the present. This book offers a 
brilliant analysis of the pervasive cynicism in which we seem to be 
mired, and even holds out the prospect of an antidote. -- Steven 
Shaviro, Author of Connected and Doom Patrols

About the Author

Mark Fisher is a writer and lecturer who maintains a highly successful 
weblog. He lives in the UK.