The Utopia Principle

Dear comrades-descendants, the labourers of the 20th century are writing to you. Tell your children and grandchildren how we struggled for your right to immortality. We lived in heroic times when great discoveries were made, when the world was shaken by revolutions and wars burned the planet. […] You have probably already eliminated all harmful bacteria and viruses and live without ageing or sickness. But it was us who helped you in this, when we discovered the mysteries of cancer and overcame the barrier of tissue incompatibility.

Read More

Cyborgs! Shoot the Moon

WHAT IF we become cyborgs right before the world ends, and because we are cyborgs we can no longer fear the apocalypse? Does the glowing sky on fire become, in our minds, an Instagram filter?

Read More

Event: Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy (Thursday Nov. 12)

Join us on Thursday, November 12 (18:30 GMT, 1:30pm EST, 12:30pm CST, 10:30am PST) for a Locust Review panel discussion at this year’s (virtual) Historical Materialism conference. Our panel, focusing on “Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy” will feature Locust editorial collective members Alexander Billet on “The Case for Critical Irrealism,” Holly Lewis on “How Collective Dreams Can End the Sleep of Reason,” Adam Turl on “Their Weird and Ours: Socialist Irrealism vs. Fascist Occultism,” and Anupam Roy on “Representational Impossibility: A Propagandist’s Urgencies and Crisis.” More information follows below.

Read More

We Demand An End to Capitalist Realism

TEN YEARS ago, as the Great Recession ripped through people’s lives, the left-wing cultural critic Mark Fisher penned his book Capitalist Realism. The book diagnosed a cultural logic of late-late-capitalism in which the Thatcherite idea of “There Is No Alternative” had been diffused through every politico-economic institution, every cultural manifestation, how we regard work and education, consumption and self-expression.

Read More