The dimension of the future has disappeared. In some ways we're marooned; we're trapped in the 20th century still. What it is to be in the 21st century is to have 20th-century culture on higher-definition screens.
I'm a big fan of Mark Fisher's work. Although his reference points are steeped in sometimes obscure 80s and 90s British pop culture, and he quotes just as easily from Derrida as he does from Joy Division, his ideas are always clearly articulated and never impenetrable. In "Ghosts of My Life," these ideas revolve around the interplay of culture, the subjectivity of time, and the structural forces that have slowly eaten away at our creative institutions.
As the subtitle indicates, much of the book revolves around two interconnected ideas: that of hauntology, and that of lost futures. The third portion of the subtitle - 'depression' - is in some ways the crux of Fisher's thesis. There's always been a preoccupation with the depressive within art - relentless positivity is a tool of the status quo, so perhaps the depressive appears more real, more relatable, even as we convince ourselves otherwise. Indeed, Fisher hints at this notion in his section on Christopher Nolan's Inception:
Not caring whether we are lying to ourselves may be the price for happiness – or at least the price one pays for release from excruciating mental anguish.
Fisher's concept of hauntology (a term borrowed from Derrida's Spectres of Marx, though somewhat redefined by Fisher) is difficult to pin down. If an ontology is a thing's being (what a thing is), then a hauntology is the echo of what could have been within something's ontology. It's the absence of something affecting a thing's being (Fisher's lost futures). Fisher also appears to use it to describe the return of the past within the present. It's the music of The Weeknd being 'haunted' by the sounds of Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, or the 'future nostalgia' of Dua Lipa being mired in 70s disco and R&B. Modern music's fetishisation of past sounds is everywhere, and has resulted in a strange phenomenon: the music sounds as though it is out of a distinctive period (the 70s, the 80s) but at the same time it sounds entirely detached from time. Fisher's example of this phenomenon is Amy Winehouse's Valerie:
Up until then, I had believed that 'Valerie' was first recorded by indie plodders the Zutons. But, for a moment, the record's antiqued 1960s soul sound and the vocal (which on a casual listen I didn't at first recognize as Winehouse) made me temporarily revise this belief: surely the Zutons' version of the track was a cover of this apparently 'older' track, which I had not heard until now?
The highlight of the book is the first piece - "The Slow Cancellation of the Future." Here, Fisher lays out his thesis for the decline of 21st-century culture. Structural forces (largely driven by the neoliberal state) have removed art's catalysing institutions - the welfare state that supported artists as they created; public broadcasters who were able to create experimental, daring television; the now-gentrified neighbourhoods that were previously the nexus of counterculture. Commodification has dramatically reduced tolerance of risk for both artists and consumers alike. Art is now the domain of the bourgeoisie. What we are left with is a constant rehashing of the past - in film a tidal wave of reboots, remakes, and sequels; in music a retreading over the same musical ground since the early 2000s; in visual art, an inability to innovate beyond postmodernism. Fisher calls this "20th-century culture on higher-definition screens." It's worse than that - it's 20th-century culture without anything worthwhile to say.
I think people misunderstand Fisher's criticisms of 21st-century culture. His major point is that the new is now an aesthetic. It's akin to Capitalist Realism - we can no longer imagine new sounds or new art because newness itself has taken on a distinct shape and sound. In music, for example, we're reduced to blindly combining old sounds, or pursuing a kind of 'musical accelerationism' wherein genre tropes are 'turned up to 11' in the hope of breaking through into something truly new (hyperpop being the obvious example). Our conceptions of what the future would sound like from 90s continue to haunt our modern creations. It's not as though there isn't anything 'new,' more that modernity is defined by a pervasive feeling that culture has reached peak saturation; our own aesthetic 'end of history.'
Fisher's other major point is that the speed and homogeneity of modernity have reduced culture to being something we passively consume, rather than a way of measuring temporality. Even if culture were to progress similarly to the post-war period, with distinct 'eras' and aesthetics, it's hard to imagine any one movement becoming a cultural touchstone. Culture has simply lost its temporality; how we experience time has changed - perhaps irreversibly. Fisher doesn't mention it (at least not in detail) but the internet has been a major factor in this phenomenon. Culture is no longer primarily experienced in a given geographic context: it's experienced individually, within highly niche online subcultures and communities, largely determined by algorithm. Outside of a few mega-artists (Taylor Swift being the biggest), shared cultural references are scarce. If culture is how we understand ourselves, then it stands to reason that the increasing fragmentation and polarisation we're seeing across the world stems in part from a loss of shared experiences.
The remainder of the book is comprised of old blog articles from his k-punk archive; album liner notes; and interviews with the likes of Burial, Tricky, and The Caretaker. Even if you aren't familiar with these artists, there are stunning moments of insight and beauty throughout Fisher's writing. His piece on the rise and fall of Joy Division is particularly arresting, as is the diatribe on the London Olympics, where he lays bare the attempted 'covering up' of London's social problems for the spectacle.
The depressive is always confident of one thing: that he is without illusions.
There are some interesting ideas here, but the nature of the book (essentially a collection of disparate blog articles) became frustrating towards the end. It's as though the concept of hauntology itself is haunting the pages; never fully explained or pinned down. Instead, the reader is left to piece it together from what amounts to several examples of the phenomenon. Perhaps that's the way Fisher intended it. One can't help but read these pieces in a different light since Fisher's suicide. In a way, Fisher himself has created his own hauntology; his own lost futures can be felt keenly throughout the book. These fragments of his thought really do have a temporality to them, they truly do feel as though they are from the past, and one can't help but think what he'd say about the world today. I think he'd like hyperpop.