Capitalist Realism and Pandemic Realism
The cultural theorist Mark Fisher coined the term “capitalist realism” for the feeling that there’s no imaginable alternative to the murderous political-economic system that shapes our lives. Today we’re drowning in a COVID-era version of the same ideological bog. Call it pandemic realism: the way capital and the state have convinced so many of us that there’s no alternative to the eugenics of mass infection. Yet that realism is a kind of capitalist fantasy made real by capitalist power. Not inevitable, not necessary; the experiences of the COVID Zero territories prove it. Who knows what impossibilities we might make real – human survival on this planet, even – if we manage to build a counterpower that’s equal to the challenges we face now?Hopefully, I'll have some time to reflect on this in the not-too-distant.
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