An economic boom coexisting with mass youth depression signals late capitalism’s affective failure.

Evidence

What struck me about this was, “Why is this acceptable? Why, particularly in a period in which we can look back now and see as a period of boom — why in this period of so-called boom were so many people, particularly young people, why were so many of them depressed? Doesn’t this indicate some fundamental kind of affective problem with late capitalism?” It seems to me that one aspect of the privatisation of stress is there’s not an availability of a kind of cultural language of disaffection and discontent, particularly for the young, I think. And one of the interesting things about the last year or so, with the student militancy at the end of 2010 and the riots this year, is this kind of eruption of a negativity, which I don’t think was available to young people in lots of ways in the high pomp of capitalist realism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2122

Categorization

• XREF: The boom-with-depression paradox resonates with the malaise threaded through DeLillo’s White Noise and the affective critique in Fisher’s own capitalist realism thesis. — connects to: Depression mirrors capitalist realism, rendering collective problems as personal failures — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2217; Depression is privatized adjustment to capitalism while melancholia refuses that adjustment — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2289; Capitalism’s boom-bust cycles mirror and produce bipolar disorder in populations — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1409 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s required realism is essentially a normalized collective depression #corroborates (0.88) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1907
• Depression mirrors capitalist realism, rendering collective problems as personal failures #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2217
• Depression is privatized adjustment to capitalism while melancholia refuses that adjustment #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2289
• Depression’s felt realism mirrors capitalist realism’s lowered expectations #corroborates (0.83) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1489
• Capitalist realism’s required realism is an escalating series of depressive thresholds #expands (0.80)
• Late-capitalist crises are displaced from economy onto culture as legitimation gaps #expands (0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 403
• Capitalism’s boom-bust cycles mirror and produce bipolar disorder in populations #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1409
• Capitalism is structurally bipolar, feeding on population mood cycles #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1409
• Capitalism structurally requires collective mood swings to function #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 75
• Capitalism is symptomatic of a deeper civilizational disorder that Marxism fails to name #complicates (0.72) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1427