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

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Daniel, James Rushing (7 March 2017). "The Weird and the Eerie". Hong Kong Review of Books . Retrieved 28 March 2018. Fisher published several books, including the unexpected success Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009), and contributed to publications such as The Wire, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was also the co-founder of Zero Books, and later Repeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with depression, Fisher committed suicide in January 2017, shortly before the publication of The Weird and the Eerie (2017). While Fisher’s suffering as a depressive is intrinsic to his work, the explicit naming of the condition in the book’s subtitle seems to me a mistake, giving the not-quite-accurate impression that Ghosts is a downer read. While Fisher’s outlook is certainly dark, it’s thrilling rather than deflating to watch him outrun and outwit the demons of his life, switching frenetically between zealous advocacy and bitter disparagement. His prose is the kind that has you compulsively underlining passages wherein ideas are inseparable from the sensual charisma of the language through which they are expressed. He evokes music not with technical jargon but a lyrical rainstorm of evocative, synaesthesic images – Burial’s Untrueis “an audio vision of London as a city of betrayed and mutilated angels”. He can be incisively aphoristic too: “In conditions of digital recall, loss is itself lost”; “Depression is, after all and above all, a theory about the world, about life.”

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-06-25 11:14:32 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0006 Boxid IA40579723 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Political writing that aims to produce an affective response in readers is often described as ­“polemic”, but another way of thinking about Fisher’s writing is as “consciousness-raising”. This, Fisher explains in a 2015 k-punk post, is a process of “people sharing their feelings, especially their feelings of misery and desperation, and together attributing the sources of these feelings to impersonal structures”.Fisher, Mark (13 November 2018). K-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016). Watkins Media. p.620. ISBN 978-1-912248-28-5. OCLC 1023859141. She not only stayed alive, she turned her hard beginnings around, became self sufficient, successful and someone with respect for herself. She didn't let the naysayers and judgers stop her. She's the one sitting in the drivers seat at the end. I believe this is another amazingly on point and nuanced commentary on the insanity that follows emotionally abusive relationships. The abuser has no anxieties, no emotional pain, or salience/memory for that matter, so the survivor appears to be the crazy one, obsessed with the abuse and that buzzword that seems to ignite arguments about diagnosing people without a degree, etc. funny how you say the words domestic violence, abuse, abuse survivor and boom the subject changes. Anyways, I especially relate to her midnights becoming afternoons, complex PTSD often leads to this phenomenon, whether due to purposeful sleep deprivation by the abuser, or just hyper vigilance associated with the PTSD, along with the fear of facing people, especially your loved ones, who Whether you agree with such counter-opinions, it's likely your enjoyment of this book will rest on similar matters of taste - i.e. whether you're as interested in or enraptured by the various musicians or film-makers that Fisher is. Yet when it comes time for the vicious take-downs of 'corporate hip hop' and the ubiquity of 'autotune music', most will probably be inclined to agree. The suggestion that Will.i.am's I Got A Feeling is the rather bleak, unconvincing self-help affirmation of a depressive attempting to goad himself into some form of social engagement - if only a swift half at Wetherspoons - is spot on. As is the more politically-minded analysis of Guetta's 'Play Hard' which is unremittingly savaged as “the perfect anthem for an era in which the boundaries between word and non-work are eroded”.

Despite the fact that I spend a lot of my free time reading, I'm not the sort of person who goes around saying books have 'changed my life'. I struggle to see how even the most brilliant and memorable books I've read have actually changed me. But Ghosts of My Life might truly deserve that epithet. It is essentially a collection of essays about music, TV, film and novels, but it feels like something much bigger and more significant is shifting beneath its skin. This book has introduced me to entirely new ways of looking at and thinking about pop culture. It's a reading of the world through the lens of pop culture. Rather than ridiculing Mensch’s disingenuous argument – as her fellow contestants do – Fisher takes it seriously. The protesters, he explains to his students, “may claim, ethically, that they want to live in a different world but libidinally, at the level of desire, they are committed to living within the current capitalist world”. Mensch’s criticism is, Fisher says, part of “the negative inspiration for the course, where I’m going to pose the question: is there really a desire for something beyond capitalism?”You're killing me, Zero Books, just killing me. Years ago, when Hope and Change were in the air my wife asked me what sort of revolutionary are you? I responded, I'm a janitor -- which is likely a quote from a George Clooney film. Such is the sinew of my critical ontology. If you’re into really obscure music, this book is for you, as well. I was introduced to a few new musicians that I was not familiar with, but one of my favorite pairs of essays was about The Caretaker, who I know well. The oddest thing was, well odd for an Irish wake, when I arrived at the house, there was no one there except family. Normally at any wake you are queuing with your friends and neighbours for at least 30 minutes before you even get into the house. At the time of his death, Fisher was said to be planning a new book titled Acid Communism, [2] excerpts of which were published as part of a Mark Fisher anthology, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), by Repeater Books in November 2018. [38] [39] Acid Communism would have attempted to reclaim elements of the 1960s counterculture and psychedelia in the interest of imagining new political possibilities for the Left. [2] On Vanishing Land [ edit ] k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016) | Repeater Books | Repeater Books". Repeater Books . Retrieved 16 July 2018.