Mark Fisher - Anti - Vital (on Nick Land, Lyotard, Freud, Vitalism) (2)

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane open-web-talk approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: standalone. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  Okay, so, um, this is not super organized, it might get a little difficult. But, I mean, what I want to talk about really is, to talk about Nick Land, partly in relation to what had preceded him, and the kind of canon of thought that was kind of excavated, repotentiated in the 90s, and then the relation of that…

• 00:08:15

  It will just emerge. If, if the blockages which obstruct it are removed, are removed, without the least effort. And this text is interesting because it's a reading of, it's partly a reading of fascism with different accounts of fascism. And in making of death, the reading of fascism, yes, comes from Deleuze…

• 00:22:55

  And probably that, I mean, I think Reich is probably the key attractor there in most of ways. You know, Reich's idea of this kind of, this kind of reservoir of libido, organs, ultimately, when he tries to cash out in terms of an actual kind of material quantifiable, or theory of kind of quantifiable matter in a way. I…

• 00:31:33

  Whereas capitalism is defined by its... There's no necessary sacred. Certain things at a certain point are forbidden but those can drop in and out. There's nothing in capitalism itself which says anything what goes and what doesn't go. And then it becomes this improvisational practice where it's skirting the line…

• 00:39:04

  But D&G themselves, this is a quote that Nick, Nick Lamb does use. He quibbles a lot of their account that, I mean, death is not desire. There is only death that desires. By virtue of the body without organs or the immobile motor, there is only life that desires. But desires by virtue of the working organs. There…

• 00:46:06

  Um, but I mean that's, that's one dimension. But I think the other dimension of it is just simply the problem of, of, of, of desire which, uh, you know, uh, you know, for, for, for, for a long time, I think, for a long time, I think, for a long time, I think, can't be answered by a simple question of false…

• 00:54:53

  A philosophical position in respect of things can only ever be transcendent. And it's an interesting conversation with Lyotard that he had in 1999, where he basically argues that the key thing is, again, it's not dualistic. Beyond the pressure principle is not dualistic, despite Freud's overt claims. What…

• 01:02:08

  And that's, and that's why it's so difficult and that's one of the reasons it's so difficult to struggle against capital because we don't have the same resources of libidinal engineering at, at our, at our disposal, at least on the face of it. All right, well I'll just, I'll just leave it there and then we can just…