The Liminal Philosophy of Mark Fisher: The Weird and the Eerie

this video is brought to you by Masterworks in the beautiful irony of Mark fiser we're talking Finance but we cannot Escape it if we are to be normal as humans we still have to think about money primarily how and where to store and invest it we also cannot escape the common rule of never leaving your eggs in one basket the concept of diversifying which is the absolute main thing you should pay attention to if God willing we can all retire one day Masterwork seeks to create an option for common people that used to be reserved

for a larger wealthier counterpart in society that being art now I completely understand art as a commodity is always a tough thing to swallow I get it but art as investment has existed for hundreds of years and only in the palms of the richest in society Masterworks is an online investment platform augmented towards normal people who want to purchase shares of specific pieces of art making it incredibly seamless and easy if you purchase shares of an art piece you receive returns when it's C of course I am only me this cannot be seen as Financial

advice and you have to make those decisions for yourself I also want to personally thank Masterworks for graciously sponsoring this video if you want to give Masterworks a go check out my link in the description [Music] below if there is one constant in mark Fisher's Legacy it's his ability to colorfully describe types of temporal cultural and sociological States we find ourselves in within the 21st century his first text capitalist realism spoke on the ideological stasis of 21st century life a narrowing of the possibilities of the future a lifeless corporatization of political thought if you will

a political thought that only sees progress as possible squarely within the confines of privatization capitalism and pure monetary function his second book ghost of my life laid bare cultural and aesthetic reactions to this capitalist realism bringing forth his concept of hauntology a larger cultural malaise that haunts us particularly being haunted by unfulfilled political artistic and cultural potentials of the past this manifests as a desire towards retro Aesthetics unrealized Futures that we saw during the mid 20th century while not necessary for this video if you would like to learn more on Fisher's capitalist realism and his

concept of hology we've done two videos on the topic link above this leads us to our third video on fiser on his work the weird and the Eerie [Music] this is an incredibly interesting one and dare I say Fischer's most quote unquote philosophical in a sense up to this [Music] point while still completely engaged in cultural Theory and Analysis the weird in the Eerie contends with phenomenology quite explicitly for a general refresher or for individuals new here phenomenology roughly meaning a philosophical study of Consciousness and how we interact with the world through senses and sensory

meaning in essence seeing the world through phenomena rather than substance or objective science and [Music] rationale anyhow fers the weird in the Eerie puts phenomena in the Forefront encapsulating his concepts of the weird and of the Eerie we'll dive into the nitty-gritty but in a unique spin Fisher pulls heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis while remaining in his traditional historical and materialist lens of individuals like Frederick Jameson fers the weird and the Eerie really is a unique piece that I believe goes underappreciated amidst his larger work that said fers the weird in the Eerie isn't a very

systematized work thus can be a bit confusing if you are looking at concrete answers like his prior text ghost of my life he gives long droning examples by way of film art and literature my main goal of this video is to bring forth a more concrete view of the weird and the Eerie while also maintaining some of the more Loosely interpretated areas seen within his cultural commentary with that out of the way let's get into it right out of the gate Fisher describes the weird in the Eerie as finding symmetry in Freud's concept of unim

lick which Freud detailed in his 1919 essay The Uncanny on The Uncanny many consider uncanny to be the direct English translation of unim lck albeit some debate this including fiser himself Freud describes the unim as the strange edge of human phenomenon something rooted in a category of of psychological Aesthetics Freud details the feeling invoked by dreams repressed hidden desires more material examples Freud highlights are doppelgangers repetition that invokes a feeling of deja vu we can see the unim lick as something at the edge of rational Human Experience where the unknown starts to pervade but not

just the unknown the unknown of the already repeat experiences we thought we OD just from Fisher's title weird in the Eerie we can see why he would draw upon Freud but fer wants to posit something outside of individual psychology something Beyond as fer posits the introduction as beyond the unlick he states there is certainly something that the weird the Eerie and the UN heck share they are all affects but they are also modes modes of film and fiction modes of perception ultimately you might even say modes of being when contending with phenomenology and philosophy it

can be tempting to see things such as sensory experience the senses as something confined merely within the self but with Fischer's approach of exploring the edge of art culture Aesthetics more philosophically the edge of Human Experience of human calculus it cannot be firm understood as something merely rooted in ourselves just like kant's concept of the sublime it can really only be understood and how it relates to structures we often consider outside of ourselves things like culture Society political institutions and religion now we all understand what weird means something odd out of the ordinary delving into

an existing well-known word iron ically highlights the conundrum of the weird Theory seeks to work beyond the shell of existing linguistic Frameworks of our standard language at large meaning Beyond lingual meaning and in the case of Fisher's concept of the weird perceptual experience beyond the definable if that wording sounds a little confusing or pretentious I don't blame you but I find this clarification important and will make it make sense here language is never static it's something that is in complete flux a layered system where words phrasing can produce and contain multiple meanings being in flux

and movement create holes between our perceivable time the nanc occurrence that may scientifically exist but is completely outside of perception Concepts like K numina the thing the all knowing truth that we'll never be able to grasp because of our mere human limits perhaps real world entities such as black holes may be relatively non- understood behavior in quantum [Music] mechanics the things that shouldn't be there that shouldn't exist but everything else points to it otherwise fiser stated the weird has more than just cultural implications something that contends with modes of being a hidden portion of Nature

and metaphysics and I find this is where the weird and the Eerie lay I find a hidden subtext in the weird and the Eerie that points towards fiser making almost his most metaphysical claims an initial cursory reading here may indicate commentary whereas we may find the weird and the Eerie rooted in cultural Theory alone but I'll pause it here that fer has a wider lens it's a metaphysics or a phenomenology that then overflows into culture into film into the examples that fer writes about here fer visualizes the weird as a phenomenon that can be seen

from a number of areas in film literature and in art but he starts out with the genra of love crafy and horror or Aesthetics highlighting the weird in our world with biological lovecraftian surrealism the form of something like cthulu a humanlike visual but with anomalous tentacles pervading the space around us fer also highlights the weird with the phrasing the door in the wall he draws this from HG wells's use of doorways throughout his novels for the weird existence is the seemingly understood flat surface that then jaggedly expands into a fractured opening an opening into the

weird feelings Aesthetics questions about our existence why we even exist at all fer highlights a discussion here that is uniquely human something at the very edge of our existence that the weird and our human recognition of it therein is one of the least represented examples of what makes us human it's around this fiser highlights that the weird isn't something explicitly horrifying it's a disjointed eeriness the simple cultural constructs around self gender career occupation status or ideological adherence as subjects in the 21st century this lack of concrete knowing and our occasional brush with the strange and

Eerie feelings it invokes one example I found particularly useful was Fisher's use of Philip K dick useful as to understand understand the weirds relationship to time history's simulator effect and conceptual limit of cause and effect is at the Forefront here in the vein of thinkers like Bo dard fiser highlights authors like Philip K dick who can Envision a type of feeling based upon the historical and ideological presuppositions of a specific period in this lukewarm World ambient discontent hides in plain view a hazy Malay is given off by the refrigerators television sets and other consumer durables

the vividness and plausibility of this miserable world with misery itself contributing to the world's plausibility somehow becomes all the more intense when its status is downgraded to that of a constructed simulation the world is a simulation but it still feels real this passage is from Philip K Dick's book time out of joint a science fiction novel set in a dystopian future with Aesthetics similar to the game franchise and TV show Fallout think the progressive Atomic American Centric Aesthetics of the 1950s but the same dystopian result of capitalism left Unleashed in the blatant bigoted stereotyping that

was present in that era all things sazed and Fallout but even the though we think of this era within rosebed lens we forget that this progress or aesthetic of the golden years isn't real it's a simulation of what was and in the case of fiser something that can be understood by the pervasive edge of the weird [Music] now the weird may be a construct an understanding a phenomenon we can point to that represents the very edge of understanding something that shouldn't exist but does but what may be a direct effect of this that's the Eerie

[Music] fer doesn't outright say that there is a cyclical linear connection between the weird and the Eerie such that the Eerie only exists because of the weird but I find it helpful to understand that there is a common connection to the two that can exist in that light one thing to visualize the Eerie in conjunction to the weird is the recent internet phenomenon of linal spaces artistic r renderings of the back rooms empty places that invoke what is described as liminality liminality is actually an academic term but one rooted in anthropology and specifically ethnography the

Anthropologist sorry if I pronounced this name incorrectly but Arnold van ganp used it to describe the process of Rights of P in small scale often tribal societies roughly put this liminality is seen within this type of Passage a state of cultural flux in an individual sense perhaps in post-industrial society we can see this as graduating high school or events such as this but in a contemporary sense liminality has taken on a more multi-dimensional definition going back to the relationship between the weird and the Eerie let's take a picture of what we could call a lional

space the weird here is the strange and hypers specific architecture of the wallpaper drop ceiling fluorescent lights the Eerie could be seen as the invoked Feeling by this Oddity an emptiness of something that should not be empty perhaps this back room represents a doorway that also represents a type of real posited from psychoanalysis or the sociopolitical reality of The Emptiness of representative democracy the moment of the untethering of years of institutional propaganda were all fed in grade school the intrinsic belief were brought up upon that genuine power lies in the hands of Congress or the

courts of Representative institutions at large when in reality that very representation is just a simulation it's not real it's a face a mask of power if you will but what sits beyond that mask is an empty husk a back room like Fisher's example of the lovecraftian use of doorways as portals things like Capitol Hill monuments of American political institutions that are supposed to be the actual power but are only the mere faces of it real power lies [Music] here I believe fiser was writing this around 2015 and what's pretty impressive about this is that he

was describing so specifically a feeling and conundrum that turned into an internet sensation just 5 years later or so in some ways the weird and the Eerie could easily be the Lial and it wouldn't lose its content but Fisher's sociopolitical implications are what separates it there's a wonderful video I stumbled upon by the YouTuber Euro Thug 4000 that highlights fer use of the weird in the aie with the video game control for anyone who hasn't played this game which you should I highly recommend it the video serves as an absolutely wonderful example of fishers weird

in the Eerie in game format but what makes this specific example so worthwhile is it highlights the actual sociopolitical commentary Fisher is making after the video go give it a watch I will leave the video link [Music] here but this is a good jumping off point I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that throughout the first 10 minutes of this video or so or portions through Fishers the weird and the Eerie what's the point of all of this sure we can see the weird and the Eerie the Lial effects that pervade our existence but why is

this important what's the overarching narrative here while I don't want to spend time on selling you why this may or may not be important I would like to still offer the position that theory in its best form is something that forces you to creatively grapple with the state of things and in Fischer's work his concern and his state of things are the cultural effects of neoliberalism and the pathologies of late stage capitalism the weird in the Eerie can be seen as a theoretical bedrock and framework that allows us to make sense of strange forms of

protest from midcentury hippie movements to the use of psychedelics and a sociopolitical context in line with Bard's thesis in the illusion of the end that in post-modern capitalism our Civics have reached a point where or protest any seemingly ideological Ingenuity is simply captured by the past that we've hit an apex underneath the simulation that whatever we think is new is now permanently Tethered to the Past proper that modernity is over for Fisher though the bleeding edge of these movements that Encompass things that are weird and strange are produced by a desire to truly want something

new in a landscape where many argue it's exceedingly impossible well it's not explicitly stated in the weird and the Eerie there's actually a hopeful subtext here that with the genuine presence of the weird and the Eerie it indicates that maybe novelty or something new is indeed possible we don't have everything figured out there are things that we've yet to grasp and it's not that we're just stupid mortal beings in a funny way this feels like Mark fiser almost quietly telling later 20th century philosophy to jump off their pretentious high horse albe it while also sharing

similar ideas throughout his prior [Music] work Mark Fisher's work can often be approached with a dismal sens ability and while I do understand this I think we're missing the larger picture of Fisher's work that contends with emancipation in many ways there is an element here that without the Dismal understanding of the state of things we have no opportunity to explore the edge of it the weird and the Eerie and the possibilities that can bring emancipatory Futures into existence within the very weird edge of this existence of science of art perhaps a new world is [Music]

possible as always thanks so much for making it to the end uh if you want to see more join us over on patreon it's the best way to help Ensure this channel keeps going for the people that do help here thank you so much and for the individuals who go truly above and beyond Cedric watman Kevin hoop and Kate thank you all for going above and beyond it truly means the world thanks to everyone again and hopefully I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Music]