nerd teacher [books] reviewed Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
Doesn't Merit Its Constant References
1 star
I don't think this merits whatever praise it gets, especially for how often it's used among leftist writers when developing their arguments.
This book really... feels devoid of its own thought. The analysis and synthesis of ideas doesn't seem to actually take place, with it relying heavily on the thoughts of others. Considering the amount of times I read some variation of the phrase "as Žižek said," I may as well have gone and read Žižek (or Deleuze and Guattari, for that matter).
There are far too many references to too many pieces of media, which makes everything feel entirely vague or superficial. Even if he could adequately build a point using those pieces of media, it falls short and a lot of that analysis is needless? Like there's some media analysis about how names like McCauley are anonymous and without history, while Corleone is full of history because it's …
I don't think this merits whatever praise it gets, especially for how often it's used among leftist writers when developing their arguments.
This book really... feels devoid of its own thought. The analysis and synthesis of ideas doesn't seem to actually take place, with it relying heavily on the thoughts of others. Considering the amount of times I read some variation of the phrase "as Žižek said," I may as well have gone and read Žižek (or Deleuze and Guattari, for that matter).
There are far too many references to too many pieces of media, which makes everything feel entirely vague or superficial. Even if he could adequately build a point using those pieces of media, it falls short and a lot of that analysis is needless? Like there's some media analysis about how names like McCauley are anonymous and without history, while Corleone is full of history because it's a name that comes from a village! And it's like... What was the point of mentioning this? Or even bringing it up? And it kind of feels like a weird way to say that you think history doesn't come from the Irish or the Scottish, but it does come from the Italians.
And the ableism, I swear. This book is a great example of how the "left" (or people perceived as such) provides entry points for harmful conspiracy theory, especially when it starts making an argument for how mental illness is really only addressed now that pharmaceutical companies can sell everyone SSRIs and make lots of money. He falsely claims that we don't discuss social causation of mental illnesses because we "individualised" it to brain chemistry to blame ourselves (which isn't true now, and definitely wasn't true in 2009). He tries to pin the use of the phrase "economic depression" on mental illness, when there's always been another meaning of the word "depression" (it's a very weird attempt at a gotcha and a strange failure to understand basic language).
He tries to claim that mental illness has increased over time without actually recognising all of the factors (so he'll look at numbers but not at factors contributing to the increase in mental illness, which also includes people feeling more comfortable getting help). He tries to claim that dyslexia has increased because ... people don't read since we have a lot of visual information? And... We don't have evidence for this because, like all learning disabilities, we... don't have full numbers of how many dyslexic people existed in the past and throughout time that writing has existed).
It's just... not good, very vapid, and sloppy. I cannot understand how it constantly gets referenced beyond it having a catchy title, a somewhat well-known author, and a few quotable lines.
