Capital’s missing center still gets posited because what exists cannot take responsibility

Evidence

The supreme genius of Kafka was to have explored the negative atheology proper to Capital: the centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there – it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 138

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Negative atheology proper to Capital’ is a genuinely new conceptual formulation — center always posited yet never present as a responsible agent.
• BMF: ‘The centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it’ evokes the absent-but-presumed central authority that structures life in We (Zamyatin) and in The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s never-visible corporate/state power — systems where subjects keep addressing an authority that cannot answer as an agent.
• DEEPTHINKING: One compressed sentence distinguishing ‘nothing there’ from ‘incapable of responsibility’ is a precise, reusable analytic lens for institutions, gods, markets, and states alike.
• XREF: connects to: Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 138; Capital is constitutively blind to its own nature like a disconnected AI — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1979; Capital as cause-that-is-not-a-subject escapes all accountability structures — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 145 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 138
• Capitalism has no center, only entities incapable of responsibility #exemplifies (0.85)
• Capital as cause-that-is-not-a-subject escapes all accountability structures #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 145
• Capital is constitutively blind to its own nature like a disconnected AI #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1979
• The world’s perceived order always implies a center that we are yet cannot objectify #expands (0.70)
• Class antagonism cannot be deduced from the concept of capital. #expands (0.70) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 298