xenogoth
looking for an exit
did the last one ever really end?
ask xenogoth
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
entertainment
Well-known member
bit gay but fair enough
IdleRich
IdleRich
Bills deep.
xenogoth
looking for an exit
a project for the instantiation of a new "group consciousness" that combines psychedelic consciousness with class consciousness.
probs
xenogoth
looking for an exit
i think it's an interesting project and a much-needed one. it could certainly function as a decent and rigorous counter-movement to the impotence of "cancel culture" discourse. but the point of it is to inaugurate a collective subject and that's always what i've wanted to emphasise, along with the difficulties of actually achieving that ideal in our present moment. frankly, i'd quite like to move away from an explicit association with mark's work after this year. letting myself become known as the "mark fisher guy" is probably the ultimate failure of my engagement with his work. i was just really sad he died but found a project in it that wasn't coming across in anyone else's posthumous summaries. unfortunately, i've buried myself under his shadow to the extent i'm blocking access to the kind of closure i wanted out of all this. i'd rather just signal boost the strengths of his projects and then fade into obscurity to go write about the other things i like and which mark himself really didn't. feels a bit late for that now at present tho.
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william kent
Well-known member
What do you think of J. H. Prynne?
xenogoth
looking for an exit
Never heard of him. Quite interested in poetry but it's a very new interest. Been trying to write something on it today actually. Never liked poetry before but it started to click for me very recently, and quite late in the day.
william kent
Well-known member
J. H. Prynne
One for luka to do something with tomorrow. He's telling me to buy his big, yellow book.
dissensus.com
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Do you know of other scholars - or anyone, really - interested in elaborating acid communism any further? Or are you saying its not well known enough, and you're trying to make people aware of it?
Could the collective subject take as its point of departure the kind of widespread (pseudo)depression Fisher talked about?
constant escape
winter withered, warm
That is, if you are trying to define and mobilize a mass/collective subjectivity - not sure if I misunderstood that or not.
luka
Well-known member
Viva Ken
by JH Prynne
Euphoric gloom writes itself off into
the air: some views are quite terrific but
really I don't give a damn and
flimsy scorn-like sails scatter all
over the lake. It's like stencilled
cardboard again, ascending to its
lumpy clouds and the snow creeps into
meek sexy puffs, ready for monring.
And there
is this much more, as the march of
literary lancers pales in the mirror:
sweet nothing for lunch this time, yet another
talk about diamonds. What is this
glittery filth; not the factual remains
of desire, not refinements all over
again? Comic disbelief fractures
the glottis, glottal pauses, nothing
is in high season &
your tender looks are
frankly incredible
here
the prevailing sense of
occassion minces feelingly
to the meter and pops in another ketchup insult, beneath
which the spirit
labours uncontaminated by
you me or anyone but
the old man caressed by his
sweating animal chair. Here
zooms into view the new floor, spinning down
ready-dirtied with vengence and catastrophe:
fate strikes! fainting members compose
"hope" and "trembling", mere watchers burst
into pieces!
That's what happens at the
harbour, that too is
rabid for traffic
in
hilarious absolute daybreak or drop
at the very first call.
by JH Prynne
Euphoric gloom writes itself off into
the air: some views are quite terrific but
really I don't give a damn and
flimsy scorn-like sails scatter all
over the lake. It's like stencilled
cardboard again, ascending to its
lumpy clouds and the snow creeps into
meek sexy puffs, ready for monring.
And there
is this much more, as the march of
literary lancers pales in the mirror:
sweet nothing for lunch this time, yet another
talk about diamonds. What is this
glittery filth; not the factual remains
of desire, not refinements all over
again? Comic disbelief fractures
the glottis, glottal pauses, nothing
is in high season &
your tender looks are
frankly incredible
here
the prevailing sense of
occassion minces feelingly
to the meter and pops in another ketchup insult, beneath
which the spirit
labours uncontaminated by
you me or anyone but
the old man caressed by his
sweating animal chair. Here
zooms into view the new floor, spinning down
ready-dirtied with vengence and catastrophe:
fate strikes! fainting members compose
"hope" and "trembling", mere watchers burst
into pieces!
That's what happens at the
harbour, that too is
rabid for traffic
in
hilarious absolute daybreak or drop
at the very first call.
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xenogoth
looking for an exit
Jeremy Gilbert and others have done a lot of work on it and "Acid Corbynism", but it has far more in common with Gilbert's interests than Mark's own. To be honest, I don't think there's enough out there in the world for anyone to really think with it productively. That's what I'd like to do, if anything -- just complicate the cliched version of Fisher's thought that came to dominate after his death and make readily available other resources that are out there but people are a lot less familiar with.
xenogoth
looking for an exit
Maybe. That's what I was thinking when I wrote 'Egress' but I'm not as inclined to think that anymore, mostly because we're not in that moment. In the cloud of political and personal grief that defined 2017 for me (Mark's death; Trump's election; Grenfell; continued Tory dominance), it felt like engaging in a somewhat psychedelic project (albeit not in the cliched flower power sense) could be a useful way to channel that (negative) energy. Not sure if that was successful or not in retrospect but that's because the world has changed again.
Lockdown, for instance, is a whole new scenario and one which I think has made potential other worlds and modes of life thinkable again. All the current lamenting around the "death of the commuter" or the handwringing around "working from home". 2020 has been weird but its accelerated the normalisation of other politics circumstances that other people have been trying to signal boost for years. I see 'Egress' as a bookend in that respect -- it came out just ten days before lockdown came into effect -- and my sense of place in the world has shifted radically since then.
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william kent
Well-known member
Doing it in the 90s.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
It would be great if you could do that - and you're well on your way, from what little I've read/heard so far. I'll look into Gilbert, as I'm unfamiliar with him.
Not sure what would qualify as "vanguardism", but what do you think about the base around Joe Rogan and the likes, which seem to approach the psychedelic from a more politically conservative set of positions? Not sure if there is a similar group/base in England, but could they be candidates for an acid proletariat? The "vanguard" would be the administers of mind expansion (don't know enough about the pertinent feminist "consciousness raising" to make that comparison).
I've only heard Edward Snowden and Cornel West interviews with Rogan, so I can't claim much familiarity with him and his base either.