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

by Mark Fisher

From its very beginnings, (Robert Johnson, Sinatra) 20th-century Pop has been more to do with male (and female) sadness than elation. Yet, in the case of both the bluesman and the crooner, there is, at least ostensibly, a reason for the sorrow. Because Joy Division’s bleakness was without any specific cause, they crossed the line from the blue of sadness into the black of depression, passing into the ‘desert and wastelands’ where nothing brings either joy or sorrow. Zero affect.

Depression is, after all and above all, a theory about the world, about life.

Some viewers complain that Beloved should have been reclassified as Horror…well, so should American history…

Media and high finance on the one hand, faux-mysticism and superstition on the other: all the strategies of the hopeless and those who exploit them

Superficially, the obvious tag for Savage Messiah would be psychogeography, but the label makes Ford chafe. ‘I think a lot of what is called psychogeography now is just middle-class men acting like colonial explorers, showing us their discoveries and guarding their plot. I have spent the last twenty years walking around London and living here in a precarious fashion, I’ve had about fifty addresses. I think my understanding and negotiation of the city is very different to theirs.’