#reflexive impotence

[tabithasholloweyes]

[kenyatta]

Reflexive impotence amounts to an unstated worldview amongst the British young, and it has its correlate in widespread pathologies. Many of the teenagers I worked with had mental health problems or learning difficulties. Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the National Health Service, and is afflicting people at increasingly younger ages. The number of students who have some variant of dyslexia is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatizing these problems – treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individual’s neurology and/or by their family background – any question of social systemic causation is ruled out.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? (Zero Books) John Hunt Publishing.

[threeecologies-blog]

But this, I want to argue, is a matter not of apathy, nor of cynicism, but of reflexive impotence. They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can't do anything about it. But that 'knowledge', that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

[paleeyesmusic]

“Neo-anarchist ideas promote withdrawal from mainstream media and politics in favour of direct action. The imply it’s possible to act now, if only we recognise our own power. This is the left version of magical voluntarism. Often the emphasis on direct action comes out of a depressive conviction that there’s no possibility of indirect action, of changing things at the level of dominant ideology and institutions.”

Mark Fisher, in ‘The politics of depression: Mark Fisher on mental health and class confidence’ by Anindya Bhattacharyya

https://www.rs21.org.uk/2014/04/27/kpunk/

[alethia-olio]

Remains scattered across the street, windows shattered. This once used to be a residential area. VRG own it now...neo-punks with a fetish for beating on citizens from central. They've got a weird aesthetic going on, bits of old Tokyo mixed with late 90's gangsta. They prefer the top-down viewpoint and quad-polygons, picking away at the artifacts from the last era of political benevolence... Things just got steadily worse. We didn't notice. Reflexive impotence set in... We had the headphones in, but no 'tunes were playing...

Gerard Carson

[gustywinz-blog]

Walk into almost any class at the college where I teach and you will immediately appreciate that you are in a post-disciplinary framework. Foucault painstakingly enumerated the way in which discipline was installed through the imposition of rigid body postures. During lessons at our college, however, students will be found slumped on desk, talking almost constantly, snacking incessantly (or even, on occasions, eating full meals). The old disciplinary segmentation of time is breaking down. The carceral regime of discipline is being eroded by the technologies of control, with their systems of perpetual consumption and continuous development. I like this article a lot. However read the last paragraph andi cam tell you based off the conclusion i would say there really doesnt need to be a point of action taken. I know its nice to have a conclusion or summary or plan of action on critical essays. There is a lot of reality here. What i think he is missing is a lot , the majority, of these students who graduate college are getting jobs and professions which they can make a living and also completely bypass ever thinking or knowing about this essay. I think it brings up a lot of good points. I was in a college classroom not longer than 3 years ago and i saw this bubbling up- people using their phones like crazy and doing stuff on them which completely is self fufillment. All leading to what the author calls "hedonic (or anhedonic) lassitude: the soft narcosis, the simstim eternity, the comfort food oblivion of Playstation, all-night TV and marijuana. Capital's interpassive nihilism."