Acid Communism and Pacified Existence. Between Realism, Reality and the Real
PDF (Język Polski)

Keywords

Herbert Marcuse
Mark Fisher
realism
depression
psychotherapy

How to Cite

Potępa, E. (2021). Acid Communism and Pacified Existence. Between Realism, Reality and the Real. Praktyka Teoretyczna, 40(2), 59–93. https://doi.org/10.14746/prt.2021.2.4

Abstract

The article points towards the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse as significant source of inspiration for Mark Fisher’s cultural criticism. It compares selected ideas from both authors, taking the analogy between the relation of the performance principle and pacified existence (Marcuse) and capitalist realism and acid communism (Fisher) as its main framework. The text is built around the concepts of reality, realism and the Real, which are applied in order to analyse the problem of mental health and therapeutic culture in the capitalist system. Particular attention is given to the theory of depressive realism, as popularised by Fisher, according to which depressive perception is more realistic than “normal” perception. For Fisher, depressive realism is a dominant mode of understanding reality as such under capitalism. Sociopolitical transformation requires, above all, a change in the understanding of reality itself—Fisher’s concept of “acid communism” is such a proposition.

https://doi.org/10.14746/prt.2021.2.4
PDF (Język Polski)

References

Alford, C. Fred. 1987. „Eros and Civilization after Thirty Years: A Reconsideration in Light of Recent Theories of Narcissism.” Theory and Society 16(6): 869–890.

Allan, Lorraine G., Shepard Siegel, i Samuel Hannah. 2007. „The Sad Truth about Depressive Realism.” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 60(3): 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210601002686.

Alloy, L.B., i L.Y. Abramson. 1979. „Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 108(4): 441–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.108.4.441.

Burston, Daniel. 2018. „Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry: History, Rhetoric and Reality.” Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 2(4): 75–88. https://doi.org/10.26319/4717.

Cohen, Bruce M.Z. 2016. Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Crary, Jonathan. 2015. 24/7. Późny kapitalizm i koniec snu. Tłum. Dariusz Żukowski. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Karakter.

Cvetkovich, Ann. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham–London: Duke University Press.

Dawson, Kim A. 2005. „A Psychedelic Neurochemistry of Time.” http://cogprints.org/4034/1/Psychedelic_Neurochemistry2.htm.

Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Tłum. Peggy Kamuf. New York – London: Routledge.

Farr, Arnold. 2018. „Unhappy Consciousness, One-Dimensionality, and the Possibility of Social Transformation.” Tempo Social, Revista de Sociologia da USP 30(3): 25-48.

Fisher, Mark. 2010. „Deconstruction as Pathology.” K-punk. http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011650.html.

Fisher, Mark. 2014. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books.

Fisher, Mark. 2018. K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), red. Darren Ambrose. London: Repeater.

Fisher, Mark. 2020. Realizm kapitalistyczny. Czy nie ma alternatywy? Tłum. Andrzej Karalus. Warszawa: Książka i Prasa.

Forman, Michael. 2013. „One-Dimensional Man and the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism. Revisting Marcuse in the Occupation.” Radical Philosophy Review 16(2): 507–528. https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev201316239.

Foucault, Michel. 1987. Mental Illness and Psychology. Tłum. Alan Sheridan. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Fuchs, Christian. 2016. „Herbert Marcuse and Social Media.” Radical Philosophy Review 10(1): 113–143. https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev20163950.

Grof, Stanislav. 2000. Obszary nieświadomości. Raport z badań nad LSD. Tłum. Andrzej Szyjewski. Kraków: Wydawnictwo A.

Harvey, David. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Hassan, Robert. 2015. „The Function of Time in Marcuse’s One-Dimensional World, and its Relevance in the Networked Society.” New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 7(2): 101–115.

Holland, Nancy J. 2011. „Looking Backwards: A Feminist Revisits Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization.” Hypatia 26(1): 65–78.

Horney, Karen. 1999. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. London: Routledge.

Horwitz, Alan V., i Jerome C. Wakefield. 2007. The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Illouz, Eva. 2008. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Kellner, Douglas. 1999. „Marcuse and the Quest for Radical Subjectivity.” Social Thought & Research 22(1/2): 1–24.

Laing, R.D. 1967. The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. London: Penguin Books.

Lasch, Christopher. 1984. The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York – London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Lorenc, Maciej. 2019. Czy psychodeliki uratują świat? Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.

Luke, Timothy W. 2000. „One-Dimensional Man: A Systematic Critique of Human Domination and Nature-Society Relations.” Organization & Environment 13(1): 95–101.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1991. Człowiek jednowymiarowy. Badania nad ideologią rozwiniętego społeczeństwa przemysłowego. Tłum. Andrzej Chwieśko, Maciej Ćwirko-Godycki, Wiesław Gromczyński, Zofia Koenig, Stanisław Konopacki i Marek Kozłowski. Warszawa: PWN.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1998. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge.

Metzl, Jonathan M. 2002. „Prozac and the Pharmacokinetics of Narrative Form.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27(2): 347–380.

Moncrieff, Joanna. 2008. The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment. Hampshire – New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Moore, Michael T., i David M. Fresco. 2012. „Depressive Realism: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Clinical Psychology Review 32(6): 496–509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.05.004.

Neill, R.D. 1975. „Character, Society, & the Politics of Hope: A Comparative Look at the Theories of Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 2(2): 36–48.

Rapley, Mark, Joanne Moncrieff, i Jacqui Dillon. 2011. De-Medicalizing Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Free Association Books.

Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Rose, Nikolas. 2019. Our Psychiatric Future: The Politics of Mental Health. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Syme, Kristen L., i Edward H. Hagen. 2019. „Mental Health Is Biological Health: Why Tackling »Diseases of the Mind« Is an Imperative for Biological Anthropology in the 21st Century.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 171(S70): 87–117. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23965.

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham – London: Duke University Press.

Whitebook, Joel. 1996. Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press.

WHO. 2011. „Global Burden of Mental Disorders and the Need for a Comprehensive, Coordinated Response from Health and Social Sectors at the Country Level.” https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB130/B130_9-en.pdf.

Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor. 1993. Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork. New York: Guilford Press.