K Punk: classic or dud?

it still just-about exists but yes, it's quite diffuse now -- i guess repeater books is its central nexus if anywhere, but no, it has no real conversation space now*. ppl now have jobs and families, and various sharp political splits have taken their toll (i'm on-line acquaintances with a number of people who have become mutual foes -- of one another not me -- and will i imagine never speak to one another again).

*actually someone recently told me that dissensus also still rumbles on but i haven't checked

this has been interesting reading
I always assumed this was a thread about Korean punk rock

It isn’t?

I always assumed this was a thread about K records K Punk imprint

^That’s what I assumed when I clicked just now

so glad NRQ and Dom are gone

For real

Wow, hadnt known he passed away. Ive been a big admirer of his article on the "pulp modernism of The Fall", for years now. Reread it a few times. Great stuff indeed! Think i will imagine him badgering old man MES with his theories, in the great hereafter. RIP.I will miss them both.

yeah.

with regard to what mark s said about beefs you'd have hoped that one good thing that could have happened after mark f's death is that people would put those behind them and moved on.

xpost

I was with a friend on Saturday who teaches at Goldsmiths and he intimated that part of the issue with Mark was that Gs were wary of legitimising his research and kept him on a part-time contract, accordingly. Which is kind of staggering, but makes sense all the same.

Which specific aspects?

I'm not sure of the specifics. The intimation was more a general response to his writing, ideas and research. It does sort of make sense from an academic institution, I suppose, but it looks more short-sighted by the year. And what it must have done for a general sense of precarity is immeasurable.

An article by? about? with? How To Dress Well, in which they mainly talk about Mark Fisher

https://www.talkhouse.com/how-to-dress-well-on-mark-fishers-theory-of-capitalist-realism/

jeremy gilbert and pals have released a mark fisher-inspired podcast abt radical/leftist culture

https://soundcloud.com/novaramedia/acfm-trip-1-out-of-the-box

Interesting - will have a look.

I'd like to read a few reviews of the book.

there's one in the wire by some fool

lol I need to get myself to an actual shop that stocks it.

I was just chatting the other day about how (as someone who was addicted to checking the blog bitd) his recent semi-lionisation seemed to come out of nowhere - this is a case of me not being switched on probably. Anyway there is never enough talk about how classic it was when he would call ppl “smugonauts”

I fell asleep while reading the new anthology and had unsettled, f-ed up dreams. Serves me right.

Kinda always wanted him to do more dialectical-ish historical accounts on popular music culture (modern, post-modern, post-post-modern type of deal) instead of so much personal critique, much of which I found a bit contrived. The hauntology stuff is underrated, though.

Also, what does the opening statement of this thread mean?

start of this thread is relatively scathing

<3

aye <3

Otm

Hold your loved ones close, believe in a better world, read loads of k punk pic.twitter.com/ojKmghKBCr

— Ellie Mae O'Hagan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@MissEllieMae) January 13, 2019

i love the sentiment of that quote but it badly needed an edit to trim it down :(

booooooooo

xp fair

i love you, k-punk but that quote is so garbled i'm amazed that someone thought it should go on a wall.

"we can have better things and the people who tell you otherwise have reasons"

i love the sentiment of that quote but it badly needed an edit to trim it down :(

i love you, k-punk but that quote is so garbled i'm amazed that someone thought it should go on a wall.

http://mattiswiedmann.co.uk/how-many-have-we-lost-due-to-our-failure-to-treat-them-as-comrades/

The main takeaway from the lecture was an emphasis on the importance of comradeship. How many have have we lost due to our failure to treat them as comrades? This does not mean, as Dean emphatically said during the Q&A, that justice for wrongdoing goes out of the window, merely that it is important for us to acknowledge that people change, and that we should be more willing to allow people a path back to the movement, not to simple “cancel” individuals for good once they say something slightly out of line, the credo of the twitter call-out, the social media whirlpool of knee jerk and absolutist moral judgements which forms the heart of so much modern politicizing.

It was stirring stuff, despite her concession that her deeply apocalyptic framing of capitalism may not have made anyone feel good about themselves, and the lecture left off on distinctly positive sentiments. It may have been divisive to some, but the message of comradeship, of abstract political belonging, is one that feels apt to any emancipatory desire, for how can we hope to get anything done if we hole up inside our cocoons, so assured of our importance as individuals? To create we must act, to act we must think we act, and to act and think effectively we must think and act relationally. We must in Spinozist terms generate encounters of joy, and to do this we must work together, as Comrades, not as the mythic hero acting alone to save the planet. For the collective is the embodiment of action, the action of embodiment. It seems like a painfully obvious point, but it is when we act for and with others that may reach for the communist horizon and find our way out of the murk of Capitalism.

The above K-Punk quote seems a bit overtaken by events now. I think he originally applied it to neo-liberalism, and how neo-liberal capitalism presented itself as some sort of "natural order". Of course, in the brexit/trump era, we're seeing neo-liberalism replaced with something even worse

https://k-postpunk.blogspot.com/2019/01/and-jesus-said-follow-me-and-i-will.html

an epigone! bloomian!!!

Neoliberal capitalism still positions itself that way tbh

His ideas of cyberspace-time and the dominant mood of modern capitalism being anxiety, not boredom as in the past, are beyond vital. I’m happy there is still such interest in his work.

excellent long review of the collected works:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2019/02/28/long-read-review-k-punk-the-collected-and-unpublished-writings-of-mark-fisher-2004-2016-by-mark-fisher-edited-by-darren-ambrose-with-simon-reynolds/

in my (not so long) review i also forgot to say "why doesn't this 800-page book have a fkn index?" even tho it is literally the book's biggest and most obvious failing

While some of the distinctive qualities of the blog are indeed absent, the book compensates for this by providing a clearer sense of continuity than is available from posts accessed individually via a web browser.

Show your workings...it doesn't sound like the collection is giving a lot more than what Capitalist Realism does.

Reading through the review I have a feeling of not wanting to read anymore around that brand of anglo anti-middlebrow culture like Joy Division/The Fall/Ballard/Cronenberg. It never reckons with the limitations that kind of escapism provided and the reviewer doesn't address how that stuff totally bypasses the younger left ppl he connected with.

all that stuff maybe not but KP also raves abt moloko!

i want fizzles to explain why the three-part fall essay is bad not good

i'm not sure i'd say it was bad not good. i remember reading it and thinking it was great that someone was going in deep on The Fall in ways that I also found interesting. There were things that I disagreed with iirc, but that may just have been hair-splitting. I'll give it a re-read and report back.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-necessity-of-being-judgmental-on-k-punk-the-collected-and-unpublished-writings-of-mark-fisher/

"The lack of index is frustrating"

k-korrekt as we used to say

also sorry, MF decided he liked coldplay and you have to also: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/001181.html

Reading Jenny Turner's piece last night and it was hard agree on his dismissal of Sebald.

I think this could've been reviewed alongside A Hidden Landscape.

I've also been reading around what Nina Power is up to these days and there is an added bit of sadness. The connections with Nick Land begin to get at the progressive and reactionary nature of this group and it's projects.

I think this could've been reviewed alongside A Hidden Landscape

SO DO I

I must not be looking right, but can't find the piece and playlist (?) on the site, even though Turner tweeted it should be there by now?

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6aoCiRc4psD2TV0KM1Y6EN

Thanks Ogmor

dare I ask for an explanation of wtf is going on with Nina Power?