Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures

Mark Fisher is brilliant, and he wraps words and stories and clarity and a zillion references around the wild and heady topics: future, music, technology, and the confluence + impact of all things time folding in on itself. Mind blown. I loved this book and am buying copies for all my smart friends who get culture, music, media, modernity, and their deconstruction.

Fischer is surprisingly capable of naming and summarizing the cultural experiences (or lack thereof) we share since the age of the internet consumed all of our medias, pointing out how we're not only caught in the redux of older styles and lost our ability to innovate, but also are haunted by the specters of lost futures while we indulge endless nostalgias during an age of rapid technological change. If you want to expand not only your media and cultural literacy, but your vocabulary, read this book.

I read this book in bits. Not because it's not good but because it takes me a while to process all the information I am taking in. The themes and ideas will live with you long after you've put the book down.

Some great ideas here and well explained. As an American old millenial, though, several of the essays are about things that I have little personal connection to (i.e. British mainstream and subculture stuff), but a cool place to find some nice new music recommendations!

Fascinating read. Interesting and insightful.

I really enjoyef this book! I am also going to try to get any other books or articles Mark Fisher has.done. Many parts of "Ghosts of My Life" felt like he was talking about my own life and hauntological observations, although in a much more literate And concise manner than I could hope to attempt! Thank you Mark Fisher for this wonderful book I read it in just about a day and it gave me so much to contemplate!

Some great essays by one of the best culture writers of our time.

The subtitle of this book is Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures. A more accurate description would have been something like Writings on Electronic Music, Some Movies and Television Shows, with a short Intro on Hauntology. Instead of the thematic cohesiveness of Capitalist Realism, one really feels that this text was thrown together by cobbling old essays from Mark's blog and trying to link them via the theme of Hauntology. You get the sense the publishers were trying to hide the true nature of the text in an attempt to nab some sales from those thinking it might be another C.R. Even the main concept of hauntology is only obliquely referenced in most of the articles, if it is at all. That said, I did enjoy some of the articles. For instance, the ones on Joy Division and Christopher Nolan's Inception. However, by the end I was skimming most of the articles due to the fact I was not familiar with the musicians or shows, etc. The concept of hauntology is indeed interesting and useful, and that will be a take away, for sure, but it isn't explored in suitably nuanced detail to be at all definitive on the subject. In fact, you can read the intro and get most of the meat there. Mark is a talented writer. It is impossible not to get something out of most of what he writes. He is a particularly creative music writer, it turns out, describing songs and genres in ways that are creative and striking. All in all, if you are coming to this text because you were impressed with his book Capitalist Realism and were hoping for more of that [social critiques], you may find yourself disappointed with this as it is less a philosophical tome which uses cultural texts to explicate its main points [a la Zizek] as it is a collection of reviews given a light philosophical gloss. All in all, a minor work in this thinker's oeuvre.

I wrote a review of Capatalist Realism that was banned here. I don't understand why as formatted rejection did not elucidate me to why. I only reviwed it from the perspective of how it made me think. Mark Fisher's writing is a provocative challenging read. Knowing he struggled with depression and took his own life makes his piece on Ian Curtis and Joy Division, retrospectivly, very moving.

Talvez a culpa nem seja do Fisher. Eu que estava esperando algo mais teórico, mais voltado pro conceito de hauntology do que um grande panorama de formas culturais que o encorporam. Em alguns pontos, a argumentação de Fisher é realmente acurada, rigorosa e teoricamente rica, principalmente no início. Tenho algumas questões sobre o que as orientações políticas que Fisher deduz da relação entre hauntology e algo como uma política da memória, mas a errância conceitual de Fisher faz com que tal confrontação seja difícil de ser assinalada em suas coordenadas precisas. Há duas vias que são tomadas no livro, ambas operando em gradientes que as põe majoritariamente em um campo ou em outro. Os melhores caminhos de Ghosts of My Life são os momentos onde Fisher consegue pôr em paralelo a lógica do conceito e a lógica da obra de arte e demonstrar suas relações de determinação recíproca, ilustrando que não se trata de "achar" hauntology nas obras de nossa era, mas analisar como as determinações da própria obra implicam em uma configuração específica do período onde a hauntology é hegemônica. Por essa via, Fisher é um grande discípulo de Jameson, quem acredito que seja sua maior influência (maior que Deleuze, Zizek e Land para Fisher). Há, por outro lado, caminhos mais fracos que Fisher toma. Por vezes parece que estamos lendo algum review da Pitchfork. Quem conhece vai entender do que eu estou falando. Uma analogia talvez ilustre o que quero dizer: imaginemos que Fisher é um biólogo, preocupado em comunicar aos espectadores o modo de vida dos animais que ele estuda. Para isso, nosso biólogo imaginário pensa em maneiras de apresentar como aquele animal se comporta em seu habitat natural. Eis o caminho que Fisher toma: as "ambientações" de zoológico. Ao invés de demonstrar a lógica segundo a qual aquele animal vive, o "cenário" funciona para indicar, de forma mistificada, certos signos que remetem a um simulacro de "natureza". Fisher acaba fazendo isso com alguns de seus objetos. Tentando expor os aspectos "hauntológicos" dos objetos artísticos apresentados, Fisher mistifica sua "ambiência", montando um texto característico de uma "crítica descritiva". Descrevendo o objeto, ficamos apenas com a areia artificialmente colorida e o arbusto seco que deveria nos dizer algo sobre onde vive essa cobra do deserto. Falta um pouco de crítica, é apenas isso que quero dizer. O livro é bom, os objetos são interessantes, mas o engajamento teórico deixa um pouco a desejar. Em retrospectiva, Realismo Capitalista é mais entusiasmante pois carrega a cadência humorística de Zizek, o tratamento minucioso de Jameson, a perspicácia de Deleuze e a forma de apresentação do blogger/colunista da Pitchfork/NME. Ghosts of My Life não consegue alcançar os mesmos níveis, sendo mais uma coletânea de resenhas curtas orientadas em torno de um conceito interessante mas pouco desenvolvido do que uma robusta exposição teórica de um dos conceitos mais importantes para entender a cultura, a temporalidade e a crise do capitalismo tardio.

As advertised

Sehr interessant.

Marvellous collection of essays. Terrible proofreading - e.g. [Arthur] Scragill.