New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology » September 30th: Capitalist Realism

September 30th: Capitalist Realism

Plan for the Day

What’s a comma’s favorite type of music?
–Punc Rock

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and UNC Charlotte Resources

We might not get into this discussion, but, just in case we do, or you’re in need of services, please know that your health (mental and physical) is extremely important to me, your family, and the University. If you are experiencing anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, or any other mental health concerns, I highly encourage you to see a professional to help. The University has resources for those who want them. Please know the Christine F. Price Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides support for students. I do know they have after-hours phone counselors available by calling 704-687-0311. It’s never too early or late to get help, so please use the resources available.

Additionally, you can dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is available 24 hours.

Why Zombies?

Before we get too far ahead and wonder why there’s all these socialist authors we’re reading, remember, I first read this on the way home from Las Vegas–one of the most grandiose centers of American consumerism. There are tons of zombies there. These authors weren’t selected for us to start a global revolution; instead, we read them because they have quite insightful observations to make about a system that we assume to be a given, one that’s beyond critique.

Critical thinking is uncomfortable.

Below is a quotation that should always be on our minds when discussing Fisher’s book:

“Capitalist realism: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (Fisher, 2009, p. 2).

Below are some definitions from or for the text:

  • neoliberalism: the idea of a total (or nearly total) market-driven economy with little or no government regulations.
    • In America, we often label people who promote this philosophy conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, or Republicans. In American popular media, the term “neoliberal” would be confusing because a “liberal” is considered (these are generalizations, of course) having the opposite view of the term “neoliberal.” This term is more a European one and rarely heard outside of academic discussions in America. As a fun side note, check out the history of the usage of liberalism.
  • socialist realism: an artistic style that glorifies the socialist cause, especially that of Joseph Stalin’s authoritarian regime (Scroll to “Cultural and Foreign Policy”).

Psychoanalysis Terms

  • Id: the unconscious, unorganized part of one’s personality; often accessible through dreams.*
  • Ego: (overly simplified definition) the conscious part of one’s personality. From Freud: “The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions” (p. 25).
  • Super-ego: the mainly conscious conscience of one’s personality that embodies ideals, goals, and confidence; it also prohibits drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions; is an internalization of culture and cultural norms.
  • Confabulation: in psychology it means to replace fact with fantasy unconsciously in memory.
  • Lacuna: empty space or missing part (often in the mind or memory).
  • Compensation: taking up one behavior [may be embodied in an object] because one cannot accomplish another behavior [often a behavior considered normal].
  • Displacement: An unconscious defense mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a ‘dangerous’ object to a ‘safe’ object. In psychoanalytic theory, displacement is a defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion (or, perhaps, action) to a safer outlet.
  • Identification: the act of seeing oneself as similar to or (rarely) identical to another person or object. Often the process of identification completes a subject as when one sees himself or herself represented in another figure (a parent, friend, celebrity, avatar, etc.).
  • Manque à être: (via Lacanian psychoanalytic theory) literally, “the want to be”; we’re born into the experience of lack, and our history consists of a series of attempts to figure and overcome this lack, a project doomed to failure” (Lapsley and Westlake 67).
  • Scopophilia: “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 1975, II. A. para. 1). Similar to voyeurism.
  • Transference: unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another.

Rise of Right-Wing Anxiety

Since the rise of MAGA-Trumpism, Lacanian psychoanalysis has been employed to understand both Trump and his followers. Something about Trump’s style and content speaks to this group. One theory is that this group feels incomplete and is desperate for a fantasy that completes them. Claudia Leeb’s “Mystified Consciousness: Rethinking the Rise of the Far Right with Marx and Lacan” analyzes this through a Marxist-Lacanian lens, and a synopsis of her article (article cited below) claims,

“White, male working-class Americans…embrace the ideology of the far right to fulfil the unconscious yearning to be whole again. This ideology provides them with fantasies that compensate for feeling non-whole or inadequate, such as achieving the American Dream of economic success, finding fulfillment in an afterlife through religion, hatred of ethnic minorities and disdain for women.”

“Understanding the current rise of the far right using Marx and Lacan”

Recently, losing UFC fighter Jorge Masvidal praised Donald Trump after his fight (4/08/2023). Trump and DeSantis were in attendance at UFC 287 in Miami. UFC and MMA, in general, are hugely popular sports along with the NFL. What comment can be made about the praise in relation to the material from this class?

  • Trumpism and the deflection of criticism
  • Ron DeSantis as Top Gov
  • An anti-racist film set in Florida about banning Shakespeare

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009/2022)

Below are some notes from the text:

  • p. 6: “[Francis] Fukuyama’s thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious.”
  • p. 9: “In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had happened.”
  • pp. 21-22: “…depressive hedonia…an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure.”
  • p. 22: “Control only works if you are complicit with it.”
    Consider Anthony Giddens theory of structuration: humans operate under a pre-existing social structure, which controls actions. Citizens abide by and reproduce the overall structure, but this means they consent to the agents of social control that govern them.
  • p. 24: Being bored means NOT being instantly, immediately gratified.
  • p. 25: Teenage slogan recognition. Think of the logos (not speaking Greek here…that’s logos) that kids these days recognize.
  • p. 26: “education…is the engine room of the reproduction of social reality.”
    • Explain…How does education reproduce social reality? Maybe we need to return to a previous discussion on Base + Superstructure.
  • p. 28: “neoliberal politics are not about the new, but a return of class power and privilege.”
  • p. 33: Families produce labor power.
    {Modern Family…same as it ever was: Disneyland, Javier’s Fiancée, and Phil’s backing out of getting snipped. All support the view that families should raise children, thus, reinforcing the idea that the family (superstructure) supports capitalism.}
  • p. 36: “In the entrepreneurial fantasy society, the delusion is fostered that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates” (James, qtd. in Fisher, p.36).
  • p. 49: Bureaucrats don’t make decisions “they are permitted only to refer to decisions that have always-already been made.” {What does that tell us about a “democratic society”?}
  • p. 54: “The ‘reality’ here is akin to the multiplicity of options available on a digital document, where no decision is final, revisions are always possible, and any previous moment can be recalled at any time.”
  • pp. 55-56: consensual confabulations–“the world we experience is a solipsistic delusion projected from the interior of our mind…[, and] it conforms with our infantile fantasies of omnipotence.” {compare with narcissism}
  • p. 58: What can Jason Bourne tell us about culture?
    • ahistoricity
    • continuous present of film editing
    • p. 58: “…Jason Bourne’s quest to regain his identity goes alongside a continual flight from any settled sense of self.”
    • pp. 58: “Bereft of personal history, Bourne lacks narrative memory, but retains what we might call formal memory: a memory – of techniques, practices, actions – that is literally embodied in a series of physical reflexes and tics.”
    • p. 59: reflects “a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate.”
  • p. 60: Capitalist realism fills our minds (our dreams) by removing “the gaps and lacunae in our memories.”
    • Somewhere I have heard this before
      In a dream my memory has stored
      As defense I’m neutered and spayed
      What the hell am I trying to say?
      –Nirvana “On a Plain”
    • Have I ever told you about my first New Year’s Eve memories?
  • p. 61: “solutions in products, not political processes.” {Images of Consumption–what can a picture show…”}
  • p. 61: Mistaking choice and freedom.
  • p. 63: Media doesn’t look at the root, systemic causes.
  • pp. 69-70: “And it is not as if corporations are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by/ expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-a-subject: Capital.”
    • There’s a pre-Citizens United comment here on corporations and individuals.
  • p. 73: “…addiction is the standard state for human beings, who are habitually enslaved into reactive and repetitive behaviors by frozen images (of themselves and the world).”
  • p. 75: “Instead of having to confront other points of view in a contested public space, these communities retreat into closed circuits.”
  • Echo chambers
  • p. 81: (Last two sentences):
    “The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

“Capitalist realism…entails subordinating oneself to a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment” (Fisher, 2009, p. 54).
{Your Weekly Discussion Post is to think about the ideal worker and the attributes they have in the service economy vs. the manufacturing (industrial) economy? Of course, just reflecting on work, workplaces, or work-life-balance is fine to reflect upon.}

Modern Family can have multiple readings (interpretations). On the surface, ABC’s Modern Family is a funny story and a leading character triumphs. Below the surface, it’s a trite display of gender roles and gendered value in patriarchal culture. Check out Gloria meeting Javier’s fiancée. (Here’s a short article about the first part of the episode–Season 4, ep. 20). Here’s the link to Jay getting Gloria new shoes. Phil worried about his manhood when discussing his potential vasectomy with Jay. Here’s an article/review on the entire episode–Modern Family: “Schooled”/”Snip.”

Next Class

Keep up with the reading: Fisher’s “What is Hauntology?”. Don’t forget to at least preview your Weekly Discussion Post #7.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Freud, The Ego and the Id. 1923.

Lapsley, Robert and Westlake, Michael. Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2006 (1st edition published in 1998).

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16.3 (1975): 6-18.