Abstract
In this paper I will attempt to reconstruct Mark Fisher’s theoretical path, his analysis of capitalism and his revival of marxism. Therefore, I will focus in the first part of the essay on Fisher’s text, Capitalist Realism, to examine the structural features of today’s capitalism and, in a second part, on Fisher’s 2016 lectures and conferences at Goldsmiths University in London, in which the libidinal link between desire and capitalism is investigated. Finally, I will analyze Fisher’s other writings in which he tries to develop a series of strategies to exorcise the fear that a revolt against the lack of economic, social and cultural alternatives that torment our present is impossible. The purpose of this article is to emphasize how the originality of Fisher’s interpretation of marxism lies in his awareness of shaping new political subjects, forms of social aggregation and new cultural and libidinal structures removed from the dominance of capitalist realism, eschewing easy solutions that appeal to spontaneity and nostalgic vagueness anchored in a rhetoric of failure and defeat.