Class and Identity Politics: Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire Castle

[arranfan]

Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire Castle (2013) is an interesting essay about class and identity politics (some of the original formatting lost from quotation):

The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.

I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’ Castle uses an ultimately liberal understanding of race and gender to obfuscate class. In all of the absurd and traumatic twitterstorms about privilege earlier this year it was noticeable that the discussion of class privilege was entirely absent. The task, as ever, remains the articulation of class, gender and race – but the founding move of the Vampires’ Castle is the dis-articulation of class from other categories.

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

In hindsight, it's interesting to see the change in Owen Jones' emphasis but I see that as a side show to Fisher's discussion of class and other categories.

I find this fascinating and would like to read more about it. Any recommendations?

I've seen a lot of praise for Mark Fisher's lectures (available on YouTube):

Place marking for later.

(It's good to remember what a furore the Vampire Castle caused and how much of it was prescient. RIP k-punk.)

I didn't know of him. I've looked him up - very sad ending to the story but I might try and read more because of the clarity. His output mostly coincided with my baby and toddler years which explains why I missed it. It's like my mum missed most of the 70s because she was having kids.

I don't remember the paxman brand interview. Interesting take on oj. One important point is the tendency to impose a negative identity on someone as 'a xxxist' or a 'a xxxphobe' because of one bad thing said. And that's that forever.

I enjoy the quotation in the OP, but find it hard to read due to his defence of Russell Brand. This isn't a class-based criticism as the author suggests, but one of character, as having read Brand's autobiography he appears to be nothing more than a narcissist who will say or do anything to gain fame. The author also tries to gloss over him being sexist, but I remember at one point in his autobiography he describes going to a brothel somewhere in the far East where the girls would line up and a blinding light would be shone in their eyes when then had been selected, which he found highly entertaining.

Yes I thought the same but this essay predates brands bookywook (!) and the Jonathan Ross incident. Lots has happened to suggest he was wrong on brand. But the essay is worth reading anyway.

Brand's born again as a Buddhist or some such who is fully right on, anyway. A re-branding!
On Mark Fisher, I remember him getting such a steaming pile of shit for writing this. Was my first exposure to toxicity of social media.

Yes, much like those who find religion in jail to try to change their image and get parole, call me cynical. A good read otherwise.

I had to read the essay putting aside the defence of both Jones and Brand and found the remainder of the framework to be very helpful about the people who push identity politics above every other category or consideration.

I wonder what Fisher would make of some contemporary reports about the mental distress and loneliness that are reported among some demographics on our society.

In Capitalist Realism he argued that: the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals.

Bumping this with a critique of it that is a little right-left binary for my taste but I found interesting on the topic of shame and 'call out culture':

www.themantle.com/philosophy/stuck-inside-vampire-castle

I thought it was interesting, and his vampire castle metaphor is very good.

But some of the stuff at the beginning about the proletariat etc I found a little - precious, maybe? The stuff about Jones and Brand seemed to be almost naive.

Maybe it'sjust out of time a little.

Maybe it'sjust out of time a little.

Agreed.

It's aged better than some other work - and he feels prescient about identity politics and privilege and those who present themselves to speak for others despite having no ties to that community and no understanding of their perspective. The experience of Deptford People Project comes to mind:

All I have ever wanted to do is to try and empower working class people into supporting ourselves and, in doing so, empower our community. Being working class isn’t just about poverty. It’s about resilience and an unspoken understanding of violence. We don’t talk about our struggles because that places us at greater harm.”
…

"She tells me there is “a very real lack of understanding about female victims of abuse… and their need to be protected from predatory men.” But it has become impossible to debate or even discuss these issues. “Suddenly (mainly) white middle class students were shouting down and abusing working class women for expressing concern,” she says. “These people were bullying real victims into [submitting to] their ideology — women who have spent their lives being forced to accept situations they don’t want.”

Mcdonagh says she doesn’t believe that “a rich white boy” can “understand the needs of a working class ex-care system woman, raped and abused for decades by many different men — a woman living in a world that won’t ever feel safe again and who is bringing up children in a community that is suffering [due to] poverty, abuse, and trauma.”

“I couldn’t sit back a watch this final episode of ‘Gentrification Deptford’ invade the only thing that working class women have left: their experience.”

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3203804-The-Deptford-People-Project-and-the-impact-of-self-ID-and-transactivism-on-working-class-women

It's interesting. Last week, it occurred to me that identity politics is just a western version of the phenomenon of confessional politics that ties Lebanon up in knots.

Though the Lebanese are primarily politically divided by religion, rather than race or subculture, the eventual outcome is the same: the political arena is defined by bickering over who gets a piece of the pie, rather than how to change or expand the pie, so nothing practical ever really changes.

If we see identity politics in this light, we can see that it is a recipe for stasis. But at least Lebanon has a good reason for its confessional system, as its inheritance from the years of Ottoman rule, the mandate, and its late twentieth century history have pushed it into this corner. By contrast, Britain really doesn't have a good reason at all.

I love Fisher's writing - it really stretches you. Prior to this essay ' the bullies were in a different part of the playground , they hadn't noticed me' as he put it. They soon made up for lost time though. Angela Nagle's book Kill the Normies covers this episode. It is a good overview of the cancel culture phenomenon. Although the first half of the book dissects the alt right and she is even handed , she got trashed by feminists for the part on ID politics. RIP Mark.

phenomenon of confessional politics that ties Lebanon up in knots

I remember reading a very powerful essay about 'shame' in some cultures many years ago and how that affects modern politics and society so profoundly in some global regions.

I must read up on the phenomenon that you mention - thank you. I was intrigued by your reference to the Ottoman Empire as it was either a recent WHRC or WPUK webinar where a speaker referred to the Millet System in the empire.

Abhannmor - the professional and personal ostracism for ideas has such a substantial toll on an individual's quality of life. If heterodoxy and commentary is to be restricted, how do we attain any necessary understanding?

And why Identity Politcs overiding class is very much a USA preoccupation, unfortunately now being forced on us via USA cultural imperialism. Ironically stemming in some ways from a deep seated Mccarthyite suspicion of European "reds under bed" and why weirdly ID politcs is described as "Marxism", when its the opposite