Neoliberalism captured the anti-boredom critique that defeated the organised left, replacing it with anxiety.

Evidence

One of the most intriguing and provocative pieces on politics and culture this year was We Are All Very Anxious by the Institute of Precarious Consciousness (the essay gained a great deal of attention when it was republished on Plan C’s website). It argues that the key problematic affect capitalism now faces is anxiety. In an earlier, Fordist era, it was boredom that was the “dominant reactive affect”. Repetitive labour on production lines engendered boredom, which was both the central form of subjugation under Fordism and the source of a new oppositional politics. … It could be argued that the failure of the traditional left is tied up with its inability adequately to engage with this politics of boredom, which wasn’t articulated via trade unions or political parties, but via the cultural politics of the Situationists and the punks. It was the neoliberals, not the organised left, who were best able to absorb and instrumentalise this critique of boredom. Neoliberals quickly moved to associate Fordist factories and the stability and security of social democracy with tedium, predictability and top-down bureaucracy. In place of this, the neoliberals offered excitement and unpredictability — but the downside of these newly fluid conditions is perpetual anxiety. Anxiety is the emotional state that correlates with the (economic, social, existential) precariousness which neoliberal governance has normalised. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1759

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the boredom/anxiety politics discussion in earlier chapters of Fisher’s own corpus and to his notion of capitalist realism. — connects to: Neoliberalism’s triumph reduced left politics to survival through a desert trial. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1560; Neoliberalism’s dominant emotion was anxiety, not confident hubris — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 81; Neoliberalism won by absorbing sixties desires the left failed to address — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1716 (+5 more)
• SEED: A magazine piece on how a generational affect politics (boredom -> anxiety) maps onto the shift in regime technologies of control.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism’s dominant emotion was anxiety, not confident hubris #corroborates (0.90) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 81
• Neoliberalism appropriated dancefloor freedom while the left ceded it #exemplifies (0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1386
• Capital absorbed the left’s own liberation desires against it #corroborates (0.88) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 74
• Neoliberalism won by absorbing sixties desires the left failed to address #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1716
• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self #exemplifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421
• Neoliberalism’s durability rested on transforming culture and winning over former opponents #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1607
• Neoliberalism generated desires that remain unsatisfied and could anchor left renewal #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 163