A new book from Phil Smith offers a chance to consider Mark Fisher's hauntological legacy and the politics of life lived without a future, among the remains of the past.

Phil Smith, Albion’s Eco-Eerie: TV and Movies of the Haunted Generation, Shrewsbury: Temporal Boundary Press, 2024.

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) founded Zero Books, Repeater Books and the k-punk blog. He was the author of Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of My Life, and taught at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Culture has lost the ability to grasp the presentMark Fisher

If we gift them the past we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently, we can control them better.Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner.

Perhaps a better hour may at some time strike even for the clever fellows: one in which they may demand, instead of prepared material ready to be switched on, the improvisatory displacement of things.Adorno

Podcast Discussion Summary »

TLDR: A discussion about the details of Phil’s book quickly turns into a reappraisal of the work of Mark Fisher and his kin (Zero Books, Repeater Books, Nina Power, Nick Land, Simon Reynolds, David Stubbs, et al.) and their ideas about hauntology and the Ghost of Marx.

Films reviewed in the book include: Night of the Demon, The Company of Wolves, Fireball XL5, Quatermass and the Pit, O Lucky Man!, Children of the Stones, Whistle and I'll Come to You, Hellraiser, Hellbound.

It is a bold book that takes the weaving path of blood, trauma and sensuality away from Folk Horror and fashionable 'hauntology' into new, enchanted spaces. Digging up and doubling down on messy ideas and demon lovers that exist not to elevate us to transcendence but to immerse us in the mud of grotty instinct.Stephen Volk, author of The Dark Masters Trilogy and Ghostwatch