The reality certainly exists, vouched for by the symptomatic analysis Fisher performs on a multitude of cultural phenomena and yet, crucially, a reality that always includes, and depends upon, our implicit acknowledgment of it as delineating the realms of the possible. This is a paradox, expressed in the somewhat desperate-sounding subtitle of Mark Fisher's book: on the one hand, the neoliberal faith in markets has been spectacularly discredited before the eyes of the world, together with the notion that obscene personal wealth - exemplified by banker's bonuses - is a sign of general economic health on the other hand, the only available response to such a monumental failure appears to be the most cautious, ameliorative regulation to get the old system up and running again.įisher defines "capitalist realism" as "a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning the production of culture, and the regulation of work and education", something which acts as an "invisible barrier constraining thought and action".
In this essay, I suggest that some of the recent work of student activists demonstrates both the contingency of this position and the possibility of cultivating new political subjectivities and critical-experimental modalities of resistance, within and beyond the university.Following the biggest financial collapse since the 1930s, the apparent relief that astronomical government bailouts have returned us to "business as usual" is surely proof that the expression "there is no alternative“ - once an extremist ideological battle cry - is now an accepted mainstream orthodoxy. While the academic literature is replete with analysis of the long-anticipated ‘crisis of the university’, many professional responses to the most recent privatisation policies have been muted and ambivalent or, at the very least, hopeful that the trends can be arrested or mitigated by sanctioned operations of professional critique and opposition.
Yet, while these politics are pushing the limits of critical knowledge about the cultivation of new modalities of radical political resistance, their theoretical significance remains marginalised within the academy. It stands to reason that critical theorists should be interested in the newest student movements working to challenge the neoliberalisation of higher education. Published in the Graduate Journal of Social Science, 2011, 8, 1.
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