taCity

I sat down over the weekend to watch a Muppet’s Christmas Carol with the kids, and despite it being a tale a about a super-rich oligarch that is essentially guilt tripped into being a charitable entrepreneur, yet maintains his exploitative corporate enterprise but with just slightly higher wages in lieu of a functioning welfare state (and hence Dickens’ most festive of works is less a tale of emancipation from capitalist greed, more a foreshadowing of 21st century billionaire philanthropy and the ossification of the neoliberal state), it did make me think about the concept of ‘hauntology’. You can see why given that it emerged from Derrida’s 1993 work ‘Spectres of Marx‘, in which he critiques of the linear conception of history and time, in which he argued that the present is always haunted by the ghosts of the (albeit not Christmas) past and the unfulfilled promises of the future. 

But it was Mark Fisher in his gothic masterpiece ‘Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures‘ in which hauntology was reinterpreted as the context of what he saw as contemporary cultural and societal stagnation. Hence Fisher perceived hauntology not just as a philosophical concept but as a cultural condition of late capitalism. 

Fisher’s version of hauntology revolves around the notion of ‘lost’ futures — the sense that the future has fallen foul of the pernicious cancel culture of capitalism; in that the socio-cultural progress promised in by the paragons of 20th century enlightenment never materialized. According to Fisher, society is haunted by the remnants of these lost futures, leading to a cultural landscape where nostalgia and revivalism are predominant, but only really on superficial, aesthetic level. The main aspect of Fisher’s hauntology, and one that resonates with me (not least within my Against Creativity book) is the critique of contemporary culture’s inability to generate new ideas and paradigms. He observed a recycling of past styles and aesthetics, leading to a cultural flatness and homogeneity where the new is just a reconfiguration of the old. This sense of cultural recycling creates a haunting effect, where the past persistently echoes in the present.

You will not need me to evidence this for you in the constant stream of Hollywood remakes, the rapidity of cycles that churn through our fast fashion high-street jumble-sale stores, the nostalgia industry, major bands constantly reuniting for money-spinning tours; the list is endless. But Fisher’s hauntology also had profound political and societal implications. He argued that the neoliberal consensus has trapped society in a perpetual present, devoid of the possibility of a different future. This, in turn, has led to a political landscape lacking in visionary ideas, where past ideologies and failures continually haunt the present. Starmer’s return to austerity, Biden’s continual support for Israel; despite the dangerous rise of far-right fascist ideologues, the neoliberal ‘centrist’ ground remains steadfastly obdurate. 

While all this sounds relatively pessimistic, the potential resistive politics then of Hauntology is that it challenges us to recognize the ghosts of the past and the lost futures that haunt our present. In a consumerist society that is driving us towards climate catastrophe, where the new so often is a repackaging of the old, Fisher’s hauntology urges us to confront the stagnation and seek genuine progress and innovation; a real creativity.

And as the world spins headlong into yet another year of permacrisis, it may not have passed you by that there is increasing unrest among the masses. The huge swell of support for the Palestinian people has brought millions onto the streets, seen companies lose billions through coordinated boycott campaigns, mass organising of planetary general strikes; and with a potential return of President Trump and the intensification of fascism in the heartland of Empire, there will no doubt be more of this planetary uprising to come. Maybe it’s just me reading to much into it all but there is a tangible ‘haunting’ of an uprising in the air. If that really is the case, then the ‘new’ is coming. Marx prophesied the capitalism will give birth to the new world, and whether or not we see it in our lifetimes remains to be seen; but what hauntology tells us is, at least we can be ready…