Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, films, fiction, work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas of contemporary experience. But it will also show that, because of a number of inconsistencies and glitches internal to the capitalist reality program capitalism in fact is anything but realistic.
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Community Reviews
This book was recommended to me on the pretext that it required very little background on critical theory and political philosophy to understand. Promised that the author writes in an approachable style and uses references to pop culture that keep the text grounded to the familiar.
I find most of these promises to have been broken. As a neophyte on these matters, I come away from this book feeling like I've glimpsed some insights but have utterly failed to understand critical parts of the work. The references the author alludes to are more obscure than popular and he seems quite fond of quoting authors without making it at all clear whether he is agreeing, disagreeing or only mentioning in passing their positions. He does this frequently enough to leave people unfamiliar with this extended body of literature, such as myself, feeling somewhat alienated.
Perhaps in my critique here I am only confirming the old adage that analytical philosophers need to have everything chewed up for them. I certainly miss the conceptual clarity of a more systematic treatment.
Nevertheless, the insights I did glimpse were significant. Capitalism facilitating a loss in the sense of temporality and a certain distancing from culture and the public sphere. The mental health issues predominant in many youths today framed as a systemic, rather than individual issue. The way capital co-opts and incorporates its detractors into its own system. The possibility of a postcapitalist desire, disarming notions of consumerism as antithetical to socialism. These ideas are fertIle and will stay with me for a while. Perhaps I may reach even further insights on a second read of the book. Though that is nowhere in my immediate future.
I find most of these promises to have been broken. As a neophyte on these matters, I come away from this book feeling like I've glimpsed some insights but have utterly failed to understand critical parts of the work. The references the author alludes to are more obscure than popular and he seems quite fond of quoting authors without making it at all clear whether he is agreeing, disagreeing or only mentioning in passing their positions. He does this frequently enough to leave people unfamiliar with this extended body of literature, such as myself, feeling somewhat alienated.
Perhaps in my critique here I am only confirming the old adage that analytical philosophers need to have everything chewed up for them. I certainly miss the conceptual clarity of a more systematic treatment.
Nevertheless, the insights I did glimpse were significant. Capitalism facilitating a loss in the sense of temporality and a certain distancing from culture and the public sphere. The mental health issues predominant in many youths today framed as a systemic, rather than individual issue. The way capital co-opts and incorporates its detractors into its own system. The possibility of a postcapitalist desire, disarming notions of consumerism as antithetical to socialism. These ideas are fertIle and will stay with me for a while. Perhaps I may reach even further insights on a second read of the book. Though that is nowhere in my immediate future.
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