Capitalist realism’s self-diagnosed realism mirrors the fatalism of depressive realism

Evidence

The way in which social and political problems are converted into individual pathologies, to be explained via chemical imbalances or family history, neatly sums up so much of what has happened under capitalist realism. It’s what I’ve called the privatisation of stress. Depression has been described as a pathology of responsibility: you feel intensely responsible for the state that you’re in. The excruciating paradox is that, while you feel that only you can get yourself out of depression, the condition consists precisely in your inability to act. There’s more than an analogy with the political hopelessness and fatalism that have characterised capitalist realism. Depression, after all, is a pathology which centrally involves a sense of realism (indeed, there’s a phenomenon called depressive realism): the depressive thinks that they are being realistic, that they have perceived the real state of things, denuded of illusion. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2217

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘On Sacrifice’-adjacent argument and strongly builds on ch103/ch92 which already linked therapy to Thatcherite denial of society.
• XREF: Connects to the ch92 and ch103 claims already noting the ‘private self-mastery’ ideology; here Fisher extends the metaphor structurally into depression itself. — connects to: Moral critiques of capitalism only strengthen its realism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 36; Depressive ontology seduces because it is half true — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 144; Depression constitutes a theory of the world, marshaling instances as evidence — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 138 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Realism both critiques and reinforces the status quo’s exclusions #expands (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438