Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: A Critical Examination

Mark Fisher (1968–2017), a blogger, cultural theorist, and academic, introduced the concept of 'capitalist realism' in his 2009 book 'Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?' The term describes a historical ideological formation within late capitalism that forecloses the imagination of viable alternatives. Fisher distinguishes his usage from Michael Schudson's 1984 definition, which applied to advertising. Fisher's concept involves two ideas: the widespread acceptance that capitalism is the only viable system (TINA), and the impossibility of imagining a coherent alternative. However, the article argues that Fisher fails to show how capitalist realism is analytically distinct from neoliberalism, and that his reliance on authorities like Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižek, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari substitutes for argument. Fisher never precisely identifies 'capitalist overlords' and does not anticipate objections. His claim that no alternative can be imagined is contradicted by his own admission that capitalism can change forms. The article concludes that Fisher's work, while descriptively powerful, does not prove that capitalist realism is something other than neoliberalism or that alternatives are unimaginable.