Mark Fisher's Final Lectures on Postcapitalist Desire Published as Primer on Left-Accelerationism

Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures (2020), edited by Matt Colquhoun, collects Mark Fisher's 2016 Goldsmiths University course. The book offers a toolbox for thinking beyond capitalist realism, exploring whether desire for alternatives can escape capitalist capture. Fisher taught the Monday morning sessions for the Master's in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London during autumn 2016. His unfinished project Acid Communism aimed to reappraise 1960s-1970s counterculture and psychedelia. Fisher died in January 2017, leaving behind influential work including Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009). The lectures position postcapitalism as developing from within capitalism, engaging with accelerationist debates. Transcribed from recordings, the text reveals Fisher's teaching style through dialogues with students. Readings included texts by Naomi Klein, Shulamith Firestone, Jodi Dean, J.K. Gibson-Graham, Silvia Federici, and Eden Medina. The curriculum also covered Herbert Marcuse, György Lukács, Jean-François Lyotard, Ellen Willis, Nancy Hartsock, and Jefferson Cowie. Concepts examined include the death drive, ressentiment, standpoint epistemology, and reification. One lecture analyzes consciousness-raising as political strategy for oppressed groups. Repeater Books published the collection, providing access to Fisher's pedagogical approach. The work serves as both historical document and contemporary resource for left theoretical traditions.