{"id":6854,"date":"2025-02-07T13:48:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T13:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=6854"},"modified":"2025-02-07T13:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T13:49:08","slug":"issue-160-hauntology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=6854","title":{"rendered":"Issue 160 – Hauntology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebulous and indefinable by its very nature, <\/strong>the notion of HAUNTOLOGY has <\/strong>nevertheless stuck its shadowy fingers into <\/strong>the nooks and crannies of 21st century <\/strong>popular culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the hankering for a halfremembered, <\/strong>half-imagined past by a Gen X <\/strong>hitting middle age and choosing forest walks <\/strong>and arcane folklore over fingertip technology <\/strong>and hyper-consumerism, or a broader sense <\/strong>of nostalgia and cultural memory being lost <\/strong>as the old and the new become increasingly <\/strong>intertwined, there\u2019s been something in the air <\/strong>since the turn of the millennium.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CAMILLA AISA enters her own Ghost <\/strong>World, with the help of key voices from <\/strong>music, literature and beyond.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this extract she muses “What exactly is Hauntology?”<\/b><\/p>\n

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From the first instances of the \u201chauntology\u201d moniker being used, the artists to which it was applied were noticeably diverse. There was, for instance, the avant<\/em>-pop of Broadcast, the fractured soundscapes of Burial and the voracious electronic collages of The Focus Group. The principal trope uniting them all could be traced back to their discursive relationship with the past, and the consequent unveiling of a new, productive take on nostalgia. The particular nostalgia expressed by hauntology isn\u2019t merely a longing for an actual past but, rather, for past visions of the future. In the genre\u2019s decades of reference, imagining the future indeed had its share of eeriness (something hauntology releases, with their penchant for the occult, would eagerly highlight), but there was also a sense of hopefulness to it. The evolution of technology was slower, leaving time to wander and to wonder, much to fantasise about. The mystery of it all was beguiling. From this perspective, hauntology can be seen as the manifestation of a need to claim a future that could be dreamed about, and to maintain contact with the past that dreamed it. \u201cHaunting,\u201d Mark Fisher wrote, \u201ccan be construed as a failed mourning. It is about refusing to give up the ghost or \u2013 and this can sometimes amount to the same thing \u2013 the refusal of the ghost to give up on us. The spectre will not allow us to settle for the mediocre satisfactions one can glean in a world governed by capitalist realism.\u201d<\/p>\n