mark fisher

Josiah is joined by Luke Savage (@LukewSavage, Michael & Us, Jacobin) to reflect on the last fifteen years of U.S. electoral politics in light of the current election year: the failures of the Obama administration, the hyperpolitics of the Trump administration, and the attempted 'return to normalcy' of Biden's first term.

Follow today's guest on Twitter @LukewSavage
Check out Michael & Us here: https://soundcloud.com/michael-and-us
Luke Savage in Jacobin: https://jacobin.com/author/luke-savage
Become a Fruitless Patron here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11922141
Check out Fruitless on YouTube
Find more of Josiah’s work here: https://linktr.ee/josiahwsutton

Follow Josiah on Twitter & Bluesky @josiahwsutton

References

• The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History by Luke Savage
• Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality by Ed Broadbent, Jonathan Sas, Frances Abele, and Luke Savage.
• Leave the World Behind (2023), directed by Sam Esmail.
• "Everything is Hyperpolitical," Anton Jäger in The Point, https://thepointmag.com/politics/everything-is-hyperpolitical.
• Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Reshaped the World by Will Sommers
• "The Biden Era's Defining Characteristic: Anti-Politics," Luke Savage in Jacobin, https://jacobin.com/2023/09/biden-administration-anti-politics-trump-books-media-coverage. This is the article discussing political book sales and online news engagement during the Trump admin vs. the Biden admin that Luke references.
• The Day One Agenda, The American Prospect, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda.
• "Why Liberals Pretend They Have No Power," Luke Savage in The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/why-liberals-feign-powerlessness/616644.
• Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation by Alexei Yurchak
• "The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections Around the World in 2024," Koh Ewe in Time, https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024.

Music

• Yesterday – bloom.
• In My Dreams – bloom.

Josiah is joined by Jesse Goodman (@platofan402, Post-Cultural Amnesiac) to discuss 2023. Beginning with a focus on 2023 in personal media consumption, the conversation evolves into a broader discuss of the anecdotal "vibe shift," the sense of living in a hyperpolitical age, and the difficulty of talking about film or art while genocide and war unfolds in the background.

Correction: I (Josiah) briefly discuss the strange Osama Bin Laden going viral on TikTok situation and suggest that we will eventually find out who is behind that. We already have. It was Yashar Ali who platformed it.

Follow today's guest on Twitter @platofan402
Check out Jesse's Substack, Post-Cultural Amnesiac, here: https://jessedgoodman.substack.com.
Some of Jesse's poetry can be found in issues 17 and 24 of Wild Roof: https://wildroofjournal.com.
An essay by Jesse in Litro US: https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2023/06/baltimore-by-the-mid-morning-light.
Become a Fruitless Patron here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11922141
Check out Fruitless on YouTube
Find more of Josiah’s work here: https://linktr.ee/josiahwsutton

Follow Josiah on Twitter & Bluesky @josiahwsutton

References

• Poor Things (2023), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
• "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny," R.S. Benedict in Blood Knife, https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny.
• "The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow," Phil Christman in The Hedgehog Review, https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/who-do-we-think-we-are/articles/the-strange-undeath-of-middlebrow. An edited version of this essay appears in his collection, How to Be Normal.
• "Everything is Hyperpolitical," Anton Jäger in The Point, https://thepointmag.com/politics/everything-is-hyperpolitical.
• If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins
• "An Issue of Concern," John Ganz in Unpopular Front, https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/an-issue-of-concern.
• "Eyeless in Gaza," Death Is Just Around the Corner, https://www.patreon.com/posts/199-eyeless-in-90901189.
• Tweet Josiah paraphrased: https://twitter.com/LukewSavage/status/1270048044881502209.
• "Salvador Allende's Brief Experiment in Radical Democracy in Chile 50 Years Ago Today," Interview with Marian Schlotterbeck in Jacobin, https://jacobin.com/2020/09/salvador-allende-chile-coup-pinochet.

Music

• Yesterday – bloom.
• In My Dreams – bloom.

It's the Fruitless Christmas special. Chris Barker and Alien (aka Stewie Griffin DJ) join Josiah to discuss Children of Men (2006), the incredible craft behind the film, and the politics of hope and futurity.

Become a Fruitless Patron here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11922141
Check out Fruitless on YouTube
Find more of Josiah’s work here: https://linktr.ee/josiahwsutton

Follow Josiah on Twitter & Bluesky @josiahwsutton

References

• Children of Men (2006), directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
• The Possibility of Hope, an archival documentary about Children of Men on the Arrow Blu-Ray release.
• There Is No Future, video appreciation about Children of Men by Philip Kemp on the Arrow Blu-Ray release.
• "Count-Down to Dystopia," Armond White https://www.nypress.com/news/count-down-to-dystopia-DGNP1020080109301099976.
• O-Bi O-Ba, The End of Civilization (1985). I (Josiah) kind of mischaracterized the ending of this movie. It's a lot more ambiguous than that, and I kind of projected a hopeful ending on a dreamy, weird final scene. Watch it for yourself and decide what the ending means: http://exmilitai.re/film.html.
• "Why Children of Men haunts the present," Gavin Jacobson, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2020/07/children-of-men-alfonso-cuaron-2006-apocalypse-coronavirus.
• No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive by Lee Edelman
• Out of the Red Closet, https://files.libcom.org/files/out-of-the-red-closet-kasama-pamphlet_0_0.pdf.

Music & Audio credits

• Children of Men (2006)
• Interviews with James Lovelock, Slavoj Zizek, and Naomi Klein from The Possibility of Hope, an archival documentary about Children of Men on the Arrow Blu-Ray release.
• O Come, O Come Emmanuel, played by Kaleb Brasee, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnlhpXV5IM.
• Yesterday – bloom.
• In My Dreams – bloom.

Wake up, America! The MAGA spirit is alive and well, and it's about more than just politics. It's about love for our nation and its people. As a proud conservative, America-first patriot, I've seen the surprising shifts in support among Black voters in Georgia, and even a Black Lives Matter founder endorsing President Trump.
PLUS: Michael Hichbon, the founder of the LePanto Institute joins us for a no-holds-barred discussion on the intersection of Catholicism and politics. We're questioning everything, from controversial actions of Pope Francis to Catholic organizations promoting ideologies contrary to Church teachings.
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Architectural Horror and Vaporwave

Support Night Clerk Radio on Patreon

In this episode, we delve into the topic of architectural horror and its connection to vaporwave and other genres of haunted music. We explore the shared themes of disorientation, nostalgia, and the uncanny in both genres, uncovering the ways in which they use visual language, liminal spaces, and atmosphere to evoke powerful emotions and discussions about consumer culture, capitalism, technology, urban decay, and the complex interplay between our environments, our memories, and our psychological states.

Music Samples

核雪 by CT57

Credits

Music by: 2Mello
Artwork by: Patsy McDowell
Ross on Twitter
Birk on Twitter
Night Clerk Radio on Twitter

Oh we do like to be beside the B-sides. In this month’s episode of What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast, Mia Rankin, Ashley LeCron, Crawford Blair and Mark Fisher pick their favourite non-album songs , ranging from She's So Square to The World Is Full of Angry Young Men.

Music provided by Jeff Nicholson.

The episode was inspired by Mia’s ranking of all XTC B-sides on her Dead Letter Offices substack

What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book available from www.xtclimelight.com 

If you’ve enjoyed What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast, please show your support at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher

Thanks to the Pink Things, Humble Daisies and Knights in Shining Karma who’ve done the same.

What happens when a Christian, a Humanist and a Buddhist congregate to talk about the songs of XTC? Will they give praise? Or will they be torn asunder? 

David White, Belinda Blanchard and Ash Jñānagarbha share a pew with Mark Fisher to discuss Dear God, Dying, The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, Easter Theatre, The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul, Scatter Me and Senses Working Overtime.

Music by Christopher Underwood and 5 Guys Named Lars

Ash Jñānagarbha

Belinda Blanchard in Dear God

David White's S.C.R.A.P.E.S

What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book available from www.xtclimelight.com 

If you’ve enjoyed What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast, please show your support at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher

Thanks to the Pink Things, Humble Daisies and Knights in Shining Karma who’ve done the same.

Full episode in writing as well as video at:

https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-66-cybernetics--capitalism/

0:00 Intro 

1:56 Part 1: cybernetics _ machines, feedback, and cascades 

6:22 Part 2: one-dimension of capital _ Marcuse, consumerism’s false needs, subjecting justice to capitalism

9:55 Part 3: deterritorialization _ Deleuze and Guattari, positive/negative energy, decoding the regulation valves

14:00 Part 4: reterritorialization _ Mark Fisher, immediate recapture, mark fisher, refusal as lack of feedback 

23:26 Outro

Support Night Clerk Radio on Patreon

In this episode, we’re returning to one of our foundational topics: Hauntology. We cover Hauntology as a genre of music and learn about its distinctly UK-focused roots. This includes the history of veteran hauntological record label Ghost Box Records and discussions focused on two recent Hauntological albums.

Albums Discussed

u​,​i by Olivier Alary & Johannes Malfatti
Entangled Routes by Pye Corner Audio

Additional Links

Entangled Routes on Spotify
Ghost Box Records on Spotify
Ghost Box Records Primary Shop
Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past by Merlin Coverley
HAUNTED AUDIO, a/k/a SOCIETY OF THE SPECTRAL: Ghost Box, Mordant Music and Hauntology by Simon Reynolds
Hauntologists mine the past for music's future by Mark Pilkington
Hauntology Mix with Visuals

Credits

Music by: 2Mello
Artwork by: Patsy McDowell
Ross on Twitter
Birk on Twitter
Night Clerk Radio on Twitter

Josiah is joined by Phil Christman (@phil_christman) to talk about the Midwest, American evangelicalism, and the future of the left. Both the Midwest and evangelicalism are made up of lost futures—radical moral or political visions that eventually lost out to the iterations we see today. In a casual discussion, Josiah and Phil ask what we can learn from history, both the good and the bad, and how that can help in imagining the future.

Follow today’s guest on Twitter.

Find more of Josiah’s work here

Follow Josiah on Twitter @josiahwsutton

Referenced works
Midwest Futures - Phil Christman

How To Be Normal - Phil Christman

The Frontier in American History - Frederick Jackson Turner 

Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Latino Heartland - Sujey Vega

"Before I-235, Des Moines’ Center Street district was a bastion of Black commerce and culture" - Paul Brennan & Courtney Guein

"Unlearning the Language of ‘Wokeness’" - Sam Adler-Bell

Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher

Music

Yesterday – bloom.

In My Dreams – bloom.

 https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-63-the-one-dimensional-man 

Part 1: Captialism absorbs everything: even your rebellion against it becomes a published book, which feeds capitalism, and generates pro-capitalists books. In a dynamic system, each tactic has a counter, and this generates (cleverly) more capitalism. A famous example is of Che Guevara’s rebellion sold as a cheap t-shirt: a purchasable identity of rebellion. 

Part 2: The On-dimensional man is a book by Herbert Marcuse in the mid-60’s about our wealthy industrial nation orienting citizens into consumerism by developing “false needs” which we pursue. This drains our energy for cognitive activity as well as our desire for rebellion, which is channeled back into social status through material goods. This is a tactic of control by the affluent (the 1%) who increase luxury and comfort only to pair it up with increased exploitation. The dynamic of flattening values to a universal is that we no longer have polarity or dialectic controversy, which is the ultimate form of control. Marcuse says we don’t even question “technological rationality” anymore. 

Part 3: Cybernetics is a theory of how systems moderate themselves, taking in feedback and adjusting. Philosophers use these ideas to discuss capitalism in terms of “negatives” and “positives”: the negatives are the check valves or regulating systems that contain or diffuse the positive energy that can get out of control and break things. Deleuze and Guattari refer to the negatives as “territorialization”, such as a fence or limit, and the positives are efforts to “deterritorialize”. Mark Fisher says capitalism now instantly reterritorializes deterritorialization. This is just some vocabulary to help us move forward. 

0:00 Intro 

1:46 Part 1 capitalist absorption 

3:39 Part 2 the one-dimensional man 

7:20 Part 3 cybernetic systems theory 

10:11 Outro

Writer and podcaster Aaron Thorpe joins us (for once) firmly in the 21st century to discuss the 'The Matrix Resurrections', the divisive latest entry in the franchise. We examine director Lana Wachowski's incisive commentary on the commodification of revolutionary ideas, her vision of a less overt- but more insidiously oppressive- system of control, and the ways in which the film challenges the neoliberal hegemony of modern blockbusters through its subversive modes of storytelling.

Follow Aaron Thorpe on Twitter.

Read Aaron's piece "What May Have Been: Retroism, Nostalgia, & Futurelessness" at his Substack Space+Light

Listen & subscribe to Trillbilly Worker's Party and support the podcast on Patreon.

Consider becoming a Hit Factory Patron to get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content for just $5/month.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish

Headphones at the ready as audio-guru Steven Wilson talks to What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast about his stereo mixes and 5.1 surround versions of XTC classics.

Quizzed by three Marks – Fisher, Reed and Smotroff – the Porcupine Tree musician takes a deep dive into Drums and Wires, Black Sea, Skylarking, Oranges and Lemons and Nonsuch– not forgetting the Dukes of Stratosphear.

In a fascinating conversation, Wilson also reflects on his remixing work for Tears for Fears, Yes, King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

This episode's drink recommendation comes from Marianna Silva.

Further reading in The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book available from https://www.xtclimelight.com 

If you've enjoyed the XTC Podcast, please show your support at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher

Thanks to the Pink Things, Humble Daisies and Knights in Shining Karma who've done the same.

After enjoying a stateside hit with The Freshmen in 1997, Brian Vander Ark of the Verve Pipe got the chance to write with his hero Andy Partridge. His band had already recorded a cover of Wake Up (and an unreleased Blue Beret) and now he'd fly to Swindon to co-write Blow You Away.

It's a story he tells in Go Further: More Literary Appreciations of Power Pop (Rare Bird Lit, 2021), an anthology of essays about everyone from Squeeze to Teenage Fanclub and the Ramones.

In this episode of What Do You Call That Noise?, Vander Ark joins co-editor Paul Myers and power-pop fan Melanie (@mixtape64) to talk about harmony, songwriting and their love of XTC. Mark Fisher is the host.

Find out more at:

• Brian Vander Ark
• The Record Store Day Podcast with Paul Myers 
• The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book 

If you've enjoyed the XTC Podcast, please show your support at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher

Thanks to the Pink Things, Humble Daisies and Knights in Shining Karma who've done the same.

Biz Sherbert is a fashion theorist inspired by Mark Fisher, who's figured out how to make academic theory resonate with millions of people on TikTok.

➡️  Biz's blog: sherbert.biz
➡️  Biz on Instagram: @markfisherquotes
➡️  Biz on TikTok: BimboTheory

How Biz is building a career publishing social theory on TikTok

Biz Sherbert: The one that really got big was a video explaining the history of the e-girl heart, which is just a little heart that's drawn onto the cheek of e-girls. It's a really popular makeup style in that group. It actually comes from an 18th-century and earlier European cosmetic tradition of trying to cover up deformities on the face, scars and deformities from smallpox. I think that just hit a sweet spot for people because e-girls are so well known on that platform.

I started getting emails from journalists, asking me to provide insight on GenZ TikTok fashion. I've done that a couple times on Cottagecore, Dark Academia, the viral strawberry dress, Simping... 

They basically will write a story and they'll just look up "Cottagecore." And they'll see a couple people from " the hashtag that are on the top of the hashtag and interview them. 

Every single person who's found my videos has looked up "Dark Academia" or "Cottagecore" or something, and seen one of my video essays at the top of the hashtag. 

On the GenZ marriage postponement problem

Justin Murphy: I bet you'll get at least a couple. Just make sure they're not theorycels.

➡️  Contact me or submit questions you want me to answer on the podcast at otherlife.co/contact.
➡️  If you're working on your own intellectual project, request an invitation to IndieThinkers.org.
➡️  Or support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/jmrphy.

Illustrator and graphic designer Andrew Swainson has been collaborating with Andy Partridge for over 20 years. As well as working on XTC and Dukes of Stratosphear re-releases, such as Skylarking and The Complete and Utter Dukes, he helped create the distinctive look of records including:

• Powers, Partridge's tribute to abstract electronic artist Richard M Power, made to look like an early 60s paperback book
• Warm Robot by Jen Olive, with its sci-fi fold-out sleeve
• Gonwards, by Peter Blegvad and Andy Partridge, complete with Mexican-style loteria card game
• Orpheus: The Lowdown, another Blegvad/Partridge collaboration, with its haunting X-ray imagery
• Fuzzy Warbles, the gorgeous compendium of unreleased XTC rarities 

In this episode, Swainson joins XTC fans Mark Fisher, Sarah Crookall, Laura Wade, David White and Peter Mills – not to mention a brief visit by Andy Partridge – to talk about his mesmerising designs.

More about Andrew Swainson at https://www.andrewswainson.com/

Remember to subscribe to What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast on your favourite podcast app – and please support future episodes by donating at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher

Treat yourself to The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book, both available at https://www.xtclimelight.com

INTRO:
In this episode of InForm Neil & Jared talk more about the role of the analyst as a sort of detective of the weird and the eerie.

ROUGH OUTLINE:
Review: Last time we mentioned the role of the analyst is the secretary of the unconscious. Today we will be talking about the role of the analyst as a detective.

Freud has ideas about what makes things in life uncanny, odd, upsetting, etc.

1. The double:
2. The four registers — animism, castration-complex, repetition-compulsion, & omnipotence

Fisher has different ways of describing the uncanny
1. Weird — The presence of something that does not fit in.
- The Other where we don’t want the Other to be.
- Presence
- Unexpected effect
- The symptom

2. Eerie — The absence of something that one expects.
- A lack of the Other where we expect the Other to be.
- Absence
- Unexpected failure
- The gap

Jared’s point — “What is the sense of the weird and eerie during analysis, and what does it mean to both analyst and analysand? It is my assertation that during analysis, the weird acts as a signpost of the unconscious, and the eerie acts as the direction written upon the signpost; that is to say the eerie is the form of the unconscious material indicated by the weird.”

REFERENCES:
1. Freud’s The Uncanny (1919)
2. Mark Fisher, The weird & the Eerie (2017)