This is a variation of the Is/Ought problem, which is frankly one of the most frustrating things in the field of philosophy, and something that postmodern philosophy in general suffers from. I’m writing, of course, about the phenomenon where a writer will sit down and describe what is the case with something, and readers, critics, and commentators will then insist that the writer is describing not what actually exists, but what ought to be the case.
Read MoreMid-plague, it’s fairly easy to view an infection, seemingly from nowhere, as something like the judgment of god: as a sentence handed down that one has been insufficiently rigorous in the measures that they have been taking. It’s easy to look at it this way, because looking at it without this narrative framework is daunting: one in six Americans is Covid-positive. At this point, an individual isn’t really able to remain completely safe: you’re just bending probability curves slightly.
Read MoreMy worry is that, as alienating and bad as things are now, that the cessation of modernity might be followed by merely swapping one savagery for another. We like to believe that the world is growing less brutal and less violent, but the moral arc of the universe doesn’t bend towards justice: there is no arc. There is no absolute, inevitable progress. Everything that we get, we need to push for, fight for, argue for. It’s possible that the world might be a better and more just place if the modern era had never happened, but it has happened. If it is undone, it will most likely be undone through a great deal of suffering.
Read MoreThe class, Postcapitalist Desire, for which you can easily find a syllabus online, was something of a workshop where Fisher was talking through the concepts that were going to go into his last book Acid Communism and it was going to meet for fifteen sessions but Fisher passed away after the fifth one. He took his own life in January of 2017. This fact, for me, hangs over the whole of the book: this brilliant man, who seemed to be an enthusiastic and gentle educator , talking about the possibility of a world that could be free, died before the sixth lecture could be held.
Read MoreSo that happened. By “that” I mean an attempted coup happened – it occurred as I was putting together a slate of book reviews, and honestly I didn’t have the bandwidth to really do anything about it.
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