Three Questions for Mark Fisher


CRIT
01-04-02022

On January 13th, 2017, Mark Fisher, you now infamous author of 𝗖𝗔𝗣𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗠, hung yourself . . .

“For the depressive, the habits of the former lifeworld now seem to be, precisely, a mode of playacting, a series of pantomime gestures (‘a circus complete with all fools’), which they are both no longer capable of performing and which they no longer wish to perform – there’s no point, everything is a sham.”― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures

. . . I’m tempted to credit 𝕵𝖔𝖞 𝕯𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓’s, Ian Curtis, for your choice in method. Curtis’s suicide by hanging at 23 was discussed, by you, as prophetic of the of the mental illness, addiction, and depression crystalizing within the West . . . “𝕵𝖔𝖞 𝕯𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 became a very dangerous drug for young men. They seem to be presenting The Truth. Their subject, after all, is depression . . . depression, whose difference from mere sadness consists in its claim to have uncovered The (final, unvarnished) Truth about life and desire.” ― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures

. . . was your choice of the noose a sardonic underscore?

“I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?” ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

The qustion of why you hung yourself doesn’t nag me. I can read your work and piece together an intimate portrait of your depression. The haunts are all there. They are same the bumps in the night that haunt every authentic creative soul under 𝗖𝗔𝗣𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗠 and modernity . . . or, at least, that haunt me.

They were more than bumps for you though, because your talent was the ability to stalk those bumps back to their lair.  To ░e░x░p░l░o░r░e░ the secreted, delusional places of state, capital, and psyche. You seemed to be searching for something they’d not co-opted, the spark to ignite, as you put it, a ᗯOᖇᒪᗪ ᗯᕼIᑕᕼ ᑕOᑌᒪᗪ ᗷE ᖴᖇEE . . . “The impress of ‘a world which could be free’ can be detected in the very structures of a capitalist realist world which makes freedom impossible.” ― Mark Fisher, Acid Communist (Unpublished & Unfinished Introduction)
Which brings me to my first question . . .

𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝘿𝙄𝘿 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏 𝙎𝙊 𝙇𝙊𝙉𝙂 𝙄𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙎𝙀𝘼𝙍𝘾𝙃?

Saddled, were you, with that talent for naming the malevolent spirits of modernity; for wrestling them into words. Your writing could so artfully extinguish the gas-lights, validating alienated souls like mine. “Finally,” I would say in relief, “a name for the nagging dis-ease.” With such a talent, how did you last as long as you did?

Because when I consider the suicides I’ve known, willed by thoughts so oppressive that they would harang a being to seek oblivion—how painful were they? Give me the day-by-day 1-10 scale, right up until the end. Does it work that way? Because I’m curious about the limits. Just asking, you know, for a friend.

And, if it was your talent that killed you, how ironic that your talent’s creation is helping me & many so much.

My next question is . . .

𝘞𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌 𝘋𝘐𝘋 𝘠𝘖𝘜 𝘛𝘏𝘐𝘕𝘒 𝘠𝘖𝘜 𝘞𝘌𝘙𝘌 𝘎𝘖𝘐𝘕𝘎?

Oblivion, I suppose. Suicide is more often a flight from something, not towards it.

But did you know you would become a memetic ghost? You must have. The concept of the past haunting the present was so ubiquitous in your writing, how could you not consider what trickster fun your ghosts would get up to. I hope you didn’t believe you would be more powerful as those ghosts. That your death held more potential for the ᗯOᖇᒪᗪ ᗯᕼIᑕᕼ ᑕOᑌᒪᗪ ᗷE ᖴᖇEE . . .

“Suicide has the power to transfigure life, with all it quotidian mess, its conflicts, its ambivalences, its disappointments, its unfinished business, its ‘waste and fever and heat’ - into a cold myth, as solid, seamless and permanent as ‘marble and stone.’” ― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
 . . . maybe, but I wish you weren’t a myth Mark, I wish you were here and warm. Am I being selfish?

My last question is . . .

𝘞𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘞𝘈𝘚 𝘐𝘛 𝘠𝘖𝘜 𝘓𝘌𝘍𝘛?

Was it the oppressive machinations of state & capital, or just your own pained mind? Externality or internality Mark? Which hung you?

O, I know it was both of course . . . "The pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals." ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
. . . but your suicide [ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴋᴜʀᴛ ᴄᴏʙᴀɪɴ’ꜱ ꜱᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴀɴ ᴄᴜʀᴛɪꜱ’ꜱ ꜱᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴀᴠɪᴅ ꜰᴏꜱᴛᴇʀ ᴡᴀʟʟᴀᴄᴇ’ꜱ ꜱᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ] became a bead on my rosary, an ever growing mala of 𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖎. Because I am a creative who ░e░x░p░l░o░r░e░s░. In a very real way, I find life-meaning in the search for that same spark to ignite your ᗯOᖇᒪᗪ ᗯᕼIᑕᕼ ᑕOᑌᒪᗪ ᗷE ᖴᖇEE. Am I vulnerable out here?

“I didn’t hear 𝕵𝖔𝖞 𝕯𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 until 1982, so, for me, Curtis was always-already dead . . . my whole future life, intensely compacted into those sound images . . . way too much stim to even begin to assimilate. Even they didn’t understand what they were doing. How could I, then?” ― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
I didn’t read you until 2019, so, for me, you were always-already dead. I am left to reconcile the solace your writing gives with the knowing that it was not enough for you. If it wasn’t enough for you, Mark? Can it be enough for me?

Are you just another 𝕵𝖔𝖞 𝕯𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓, a ‘very dangerous drug’? Do I really read you with the same eerie compulsion that drove, as a shivering 8 year old, to say . . .

𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞,𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞,𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞

. . . three times to the bathroom mirror, beckoning a darkness to defeat. I don’t want your work to become a grimoire of dark magick. It’s too bleak to ░e░x░p░l░o░r░e░ this way for long.

Because, more often, your writing is the spark that ignites my compassionate, rebel heart. With your help, it's been easier to find that spark. With it, I bring my own writing into being, and it gazes back at me with love. It whispers ‘𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝓃 𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓉𝓁𝑒 𝑜𝓃𝑒’ to the tiredness of my being. It’s less & less dependent on the validation of some capital externality. I see it, and I contain multitudes. I contain teeming masses, yearning for the ᗯOᖇᒪᗪ ᗯᕼIᑕᕼ ᑕOᑌᒪᗪ ᗷE ᖴᖇEE.

Because your talent was to take any topic and go so VAST with it. VAST as the all human collective. VAST as a God, Mark. To blast holes through the walls of modernity’s depressive cells of delusion; cells once that claimed confidently to be the whole of the world.

You blasted me a fucking view, Mark. A view of the ᗯOᖇᒪᗪ ᗯᕼIᑕᕼ ᑕOᑌᒪᗪ ᗷE ᖴᖇEE.

You gave ░e░x░p░l░o░r░i░n░ to do.