Mark Fisher

The Profile

British cultural theorist and writer (1968–2017), known for the k-punk blog and books including Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life, and The Weird and the Eerie; he taught at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Publicly known: wrote the k-punk blog; authored Capitalist Realism (2009), Ghosts of My Life (2014), and The Weird and the Eerie (2017); British; taught at Goldsmiths; died in 2017.

A tightly argued review praises Fisher’s Capitalist Realism for dissecting late capitalism without jargon, using film and music metaphors. It highlights systemic roots of mental illness, bureaucratic self-surveillance in education, and the co-optation of counterculture. The piece quotes Fisher’s post-crisis diagnosis of neoliberalism as a “walking dead.” Overall sentiment is admiring yet sober about solutions.