[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-40212-en":3,"doc-seo-40212-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},40212,16904993612988,"Olivia Brown","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd",2,"Literature","Capitalist Realism Is There No Alternative","Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? presents Mark Fisher’s analysis of how late capitalism makes coherent alternatives feel unimaginable. Using the film Children of Men as a key reference, it argues that dystopia is no longer a fictional warning but a lived extrapolation of current systems. Fisher connects this to the normalization of crisis under the War on Terror, the persistence of authoritarian state functions, and the emotional logic of despair mixed with “senseless hope.”","### zero\n\nbooks  \n## MARK FISHER\n\n# CAPITALISTREALISMIS THERE NO ALTERNATIVE?\n\nCapitalist Realism  \nMark Fisher is a writer,theorist and teacher.His writingregularly appears in frieze,New Statesman,The Wire and Sight&Sound.He was a founding member of the Cybernetic CultureResearch Unit.He is now a Visiting Fellow in the Centre forCultural Studies at Goldsmiths,University of London and a tutorin Philosophy at the City Literary Institute,London.His weblogcan be found at http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org.He ismarried and lives in Suffolk.  \nTo my wife, Zöe, my parents, Bob and Linda,and the readers of my website  \nCONTENTS  \n1:It's easier to imagine the end of the world than theend of capitalism  \n1  \n2:What if you held a protest and everyone came?  \n12  \n3:Capitalism and the Real  \n16  \n4:Reflexive impotence,immobilization andliberal communism21  \n5:October 6,1979:'Don't let yourself get attachedto anything'  \n6:All that is solid melts into PR:market Stalinism andbureaucratic anti-production  \n39  \n7:‘...if you can watch the overlap of one reality withanother':capitalist realism as dreamwork andmemory disorder  \n54  \n8:'There's no central exchange'  \n62  \n9:Marxist Supernanny  \n71  \n#### It's easier to imagine the end of the world than theend of capitalism\n\nIn one of the key scenes in Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children ofMen,Clive Owen's character,Theo,visits a friend at BatterseaPower Station,which is now some combination of governmentbuilding and private collection.Cultural treasures -Michelangelo's David,Picasso's Guernica,Pink Floyd's inflatablepig-are preserved in a building that is itself a refurbishedheritage artifact.This is our only glimpse into the lives of theelite,holed up against the effects of a catastrophe which hascaused mass sterility:no children have been born for a gener-ation.Theo asks the question,'how all this can matter if therewill be no-one to see it?'The alibi can no longer be future gener-ations,since there will be none.The response is nihilistichedonism:'I try not to think about it'.  \nWhat is unique about the dystopia in Children of Men is that itis specific to late capitalism.This isn't the familiar totalitarianscenario routinely trotted out in cinematic dystopias(see,forexample,James McTeigue's 2005V for Vendetta).In the P.D.Jamesnovel on which the film is based,democracy is suspended andthe country is ruled over by a self-appointed Warden,but,wisely,the film downplays all this.For all that we know,theauthoritarian measures that are everywhere in place could havebeen implemented within a political structure that remains,notionally,democratic.The War on Terror has prepared us forsuch a development:the normalization of crisis produces asituation in which the repealing of measures brought in to dealwith an emergency becomes unimaginable(when will the war beover?)  \n##### Capitalist Realism\n\nWatching Children of Men,we are inevitably reminded of thephrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek,that it iseasier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine theend of capitalism.That slogan captures precisely what I mean by'capitalist realism':the widespread sense that not only iscapitalism the only viable political and economic system,but alsothat it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative toit.Once,dystopian films and novels were exercises in such acts ofimagination -the disasters they depicted acting as narrativepretext for the emergence of different ways of living.Not so inChildren of Men.The world that it projects seems more like anextrapolation or exacerbation of ours than an alternative to it.Inits world,as in ours,ultra-authoritarianism and Capital are by nomeans incompatible:internment camps and franchise coffee barsco-exist.In Children of Men,public space is abandoned,given overto uncollected garbage and stalking animals (one especiallyresonant scene takes place inside a derelict school,through whicha deer runs).Neoliberals,the capitalist realists par excellenc","cbCaiaifZ7MYGmZ3","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaifZ7MYGmZ3","pdf",5431902,4,1,88,"English","en",105,"# It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism\n## Capitalist Realism","[{\"question\":\"What does “capitalist realism” mean in the text?\",\"answer\":\"It describes the widespread sense that capitalism is not only the only viable system but also impossible to imagine as an alternative.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is the film Children of Men central to Fisher’s argument?\",\"answer\":\"Its dystopia is treated as a late-capitalist scenario that extrapolates current conditions rather than offering a fundamentally different alternative.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the text link crisis politics to the impossibility of change?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that the normalization of crisis (e.g., shaped by the War on Terror) makes repealing emergency measures feel unimaginable, even within nominally democratic frameworks.\"}]",1783306925,136,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":85,"head_meta":87,"extra_data":89,"updated_unix":28},"capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative","",{"@graph":36,"@context":84},[37,52,67],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative/40212/",{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":53,"author":54,"headline":13,"publisher":56,"fileFormat":59,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":60,"datePublished":61,"encodingFormat":59,"isAccessibleForFree":62,"interactionStatistic":63},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":55},"Person",{"url":41,"name":57,"@type":58},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-12","2026-07-06",true,{"@type":64,"interactionType":65,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":66},"ViewAction",{"@type":68,"mainEntity":69},"FAQPage",[70,76,80],{"name":71,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":73},"What does “capitalist realism” mean in the text?","Question",{"text":74,"@type":75},"It describes the widespread sense that capitalism is not only the only viable system but also impossible to imagine as an alternative.","Answer",{"name":77,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":78},"Why is the film Children of Men central to Fisher’s argument?",{"text":79,"@type":75},"Its dystopia is treated as a late-capitalist scenario that extrapolates current conditions rather than offering a fundamentally different alternative.",{"name":81,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":82},"How does the text link crisis politics to the impossibility of change?",{"text":83,"@type":75},"It argues that the normalization of crisis (e.g., shaped by the War on Terror) makes repealing emergency measures feel unimaginable, even within nominally democratic frameworks.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":86,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":57,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":88,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":91},[92,96,99,103,108,113,118,123,128,131,135],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":98},80,"literature",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":100,"show_sort_weight":101,"slug":102},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":104,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":105,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":107},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":109,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":110,"show_sort_weight":111,"slug":112},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":114,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":115,"show_sort_weight":116,"slug":117},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":119,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":121,"slug":122},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":124,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":125,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":127},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":126,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":129,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":130},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":132,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":132,"slug":134},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":104,"slug":138},19,"General","general"]