Mark Fisher: Exiting the Vampire Castle

I often read Mark Fisher along with Byung Chul Han because I hear resonances between these two very different authors, Fisher being the social and cultural themes sung to the tune of Han’s philosophy. In Fisher’s essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, we see Fisher’s personal struggle with depression and exhaustion, brought on, in part, by involvement in social media, particularly ‘twitter wars” among Leftists. Fisher writes:

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics. Exhausted through overwork, incapable of productive activity, I found myself drifting through social networks, feeling my depression and exhaustion increasing.

‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.

The open savagery of these exchanges was accompanied by something more pervasive, and for that reason perhaps more debilitating: an atmosphere of snarky resentment. The most frequent object of this resentment is Owen Jones, and the attacks on Jones – the person most responsible for raising class consciousness in the UK in the last few years – were one of the reasons I was so dejected. If this is what happens to a left-winger who is actually succeeding in taking the struggle to the centre ground of British life, why would anyone want to follow him into the mainstream? Is the only way to avoid this drip-feed of abuse to remain in a position of impotent marginality?

(Read the rest of “Exiting the Vampire Castle” at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/)

Fisher’s description of overwork, depression and exhaustion is very much how Han describes it in The Burnout Society, with one difference: Han argues that burnout culture is generated by the neoliberal economic order, and I think Fisher would agree with that. But whereas Han describes burnout and depression in terms of a free and voluntary narcissism, Fisher would argue that burnout and depression are the product of compulsory overproduction, social fragmentation, and conflict. I think both views can be reconciled—at first, the neoliberal self undertakes the exploitation of the self with voluntary enthusiasm, believing it will ultimately pay off in a high income and life satisfaction. But as it ages, the neoliberal self becomes exhausted with the effort, yet never realizes the hoped for wealth and satisfaction. It then becomes compulsory self-exploitation, grudgingly endured out of a need for sheer survival, which Han calls “bare life.”

In Fisher’s social critique in “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, we can see the corresponding social conditions that lead to burnout, exhaustion and depression: the fragmentation of social relations into self-identity wars over privilege v. marginalization; the insistence, as Han points out, that everything reflect “my version of the world”, which Han calls “the Same”. This does not mean that real conditions of injustice stemming from race and gender discrimination aren’t real, or are just products of one’s imagination: far from it. But we must learn to find solidarity amongst our differences in order to rectify those injustices, without (socially) killing each other in the process.

Sadly, and for many reasons we may never understand, Mark Fisher did not survive these violent social conditions, and in the end, took his own life.

Fisher concludes in “Exiting the Vampire Castle”: “We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.”

Han writes in both The Burnout Society and Vita Contemplativa that we must learn to allow in the Other and engage in “deep listening” to the Other, who is different from us, not “the Same” as Self.