The New Realism: Seeking Alternative to Postmodern Pessimism

Abstract

Postmodern pessimism has been newly expressed by Mark Fisher as capitalist realism: the sense that one can't even imagine an alternative to capitalism. Fisher's use of the term realism points to the subjective content of the contemporary capitalist life-world. In contrast, a new brand of realism as assemblage theory has become prominent through Manuel DeLanda: that is, a complex ontology of interwoven networks of immanent unfolding that operate on multiple scales of size. DeLanda supplies a basic ontology of society that, combined with Fisher's sense of realism, elaborates a new potential for socio-economic change. This paper will examine Fisher and DeLanda's views and add the speculative materialist economic work of Benjamin Lozano as a means of bringing the two together.