SIX YEARS FOR THE LOCUST: CRITICAL IRREALISM AS MARXIST CULTURAL THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LOCUST REVIEW ( (2019-2026)

Author

• Adam Turl, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

8-1-2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Mass Communication and Media Arts

First Advisor

Kapur, Jyotsna

Abstract

Locust Review, an arts and literature journal published by a network of artists and writers in North America, the United Kingdom, and India, was founded in late 2019 by former editors of the 2010s journal, Red Wedge Magazine. Red Wedge was probably the most widely read broad arts Marxist publication (in English) at that time. Locust was designed to be avowedly socialist, and centered its theory and practice on countering Mark Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism” with Michael Löwy’s concept of “critical irrealism.” Mark Fisher (1968-2017), a lecturer at Goldsmiths in London, had recently taken his own life. The central concept of capitalist realism, popularized in Fisher’s 2009 book, Capitalist Realism, was that neoliberalism conditioned politics and culture to disallow narratives and ideas that conflicted with the logic of capitalism, even within “oppositional” gestures. Michael Löwy, the French/Brazilian philosopher and sociologist, used the term “critical irrealism” to describe cultural narratives and gestures that critiqued capitalism and oppression by attacking realism through alterity — surrealism, speculative fiction, fantasy, myth — creating something like critical distance (as in Brechtian theater). At the start, Locust Review argued that there was a competitive race between the left and right to explain, both in art and practical politics, the attenuation and coming failure of capitalist realism (tied to mainstream political centrism). The inability to imagine alternatives to capitalism allowed the immiseration of larger social layers, undermining the narrative of capitalist realism itself. This text will focus on the first six years of the publication, its theory and practice, and touch on the disasters that complicated its original plans — in genocide, in the rise of the far-right, in climate disaster, in increased inequality, in war, in the pandemic, in the substitutability crisis facing the arts in digital media and generative AI. It will do so examining both the overall journal as well as selected work by individual members and contributors.