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Comment by LocutusOfBorges | Hacker News Reader

For the sake of a counterpoint to this essay, which widely derided at its time of publication - this is an example of the contemporary backlash it received. I’d urge anyone taken by Fisher’s essay to consider giving it a read.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/all-hail-va...

A more detailed critique is available here, if the above is too light on specifics:

https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/vampires-...

Nine years later, Mark Fisher is in the grave, and his proposed great voice of the working class Russell Brand is hawking crank nonsense like anti-vaccine conspiracies [1] and the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 [2].

I think it can be quite comfortably said that the essay hasn’t aged as well as some would like to imagine.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34zd9/russell-brand-ivermec...

[2] https://www.bigissue.com/culture/russell-brand-interview-loo...

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Between this essay and your counter, I'd say the essay has aged a lot beter. Intersectionality is still used primarily, in practice, to promote the interests of higher classes against lower ones. Brand was, as it turned out, dragged down by personal attacks rather than any real refutation of his politics, and identity politics still serves primarily as a stick for the powerful to beat the weak with. "Queer approaches to identities" as described in your link sound like an excellent thing, but one that bears no relation to the approaches to identities that the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the queer community actually employ. And for what it's worth, historical witch hunts actually victimised men more than women.

> Intersectionality is still used primarily, in practice, to promote the interests of higher classes against lower ones.

I don't follow what this means? How does one 'use' intersectionality to promote interests? I thought intersectionality was the idea that intersections of identities have different experiences than the components.

Ex: Black women have experiences that are unique to that intersection of identity, which aren't experienced by people who are only one of women or Black.

> I don't follow what this means? How does one 'use' intersectionality to promote interests?

The same way as any other idea/concept/framework; one finds arguments which it supports that promotes the interest one wants to promote. What's so strange about that?

I guess I didn't think 'use' meant 'use facts to make arguments to advance your interests'?

Like, I wouldn't say that I 'use' 'asymptotic complexity' to promote engineering priorities over product management. I read a lot of nefariousness in that phrasing, but I guess that's not what was meant.

I've certainly seen cases where people would "use asymptotic complexity" to, say, argue for a system that was better for their CV than one that was appropriate to the amount of data actually being processed. I did mean to at least suggest a certain amount of nefariousness; I think a lot of those who adopt intersectionality as a way of framing/approaching issues do so not solely out of sincere truth-seeking but because (consciously or otherwise) it makes it easier to reach conclusions that suit the upper classes and, perhaps even more importantly, makes it easier to avoid reaching conclusions that don't suit the upper classes.

> Nine years later, Mark Fisher is in the grave

That is a rather smug way of putting it. Fisher’s suicide was a tragic event caused by lifelong depression. The fact that he killed himself doesn’t make the essay age better or worse. Bringing it up as some kind of “own” against him is pretty disgusting.

I'd say, the "desire to excommunicate and condemn" is still prevalent – and this is, nota bene, different from (healthy) deconstructivism.

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