Ghosts of My Life

This collection of writings by Mark Fisher, author of the acclaimed ‘Capitalist Realism’, argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carre, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others. 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.