"Non-Time and Hauntology"

I really hope this hasn't been posted before as few things of late have tweaked my brain cells into action like this. I was actually relieved to see it so well defined and articulated.

For more than a few years I haven't been able to pin point what it is about the world, existence, whatever you call it, that bothers me - what it is that seems so soul-less, hollow and post modern - but one of the things I have consistently said is that there are rarely any water-cooler moments or common themes and anthems that get us united in spirit, purpose or mindfulness. It's part of why things such as the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards or the latest breaking news- all previously superficial, hedonistic or narrow snap shots of culture or time, have gained such influence.

Long after main street and the town square faded into obscurity, music and pop culture defined generations. However, basic cable, formula radio and ipods killed even that.

All thats left seems to be but a mere reflection of a reflection.

www.popmatters.com...

I went to a talk last night at NYU by Mark Fisher about “hauntology,” which refers to a kind of intermediate space-time between places palpably shaped by organic time and nonplaces (shopping malls, etc.—see Marc Augé), which are wrenched out of time and posit an unending nontime, the end of history, an undisruptable retailing present that perpetually recurs. I didn’t really get what hauntology was all about: it seemed to have to do with cultural productions that are aware of the nonplace/nontime crisis—the way neoliberalism has foisted non-space/time on us, along with a subjectivity without depth that must flaunt its requisite flexibility by shuffling the deck of floating signifiers—and are “reflexive” and “critical” and “negative” about this condition. Fisher made this point with music: British pop music now is blithely appropriational of the past without foregrounding that in any particular way; retro has ceased to be a meaningful descriptor. So music made now would not be at all disruptive, he argues, if someone living in 1979 heard it. There would be no retroactive future shock. It doesn’t sound like the future; the future that should be occurring now has been thwarted, lost, effaced. The sense of cultural teleology is gone, vanished, perhaps, in the now pervasive relativism that regards all culture product as potentially valuable...

...It reminds me of Douglas Haddow’s “Hipsters are the dead-end of Western culture” argument:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society...

,,,In my view, social media have become the extension of non-spacetime, where nothing, no identity or incident, is necessarily contingent or organic, and one is doomed to the “freedom” of endless ontological insecurity, the forever search for a grounding authenticity that can only generate more memes. Social media are where we go to protect our experience of nontime, which is threatened by the Real, by historicity, by death...

Anyway, it blew my mind with it's exactness, with it's absolute truth. I can see that part of my addiction to news is just a yearning for a common denominator among my fellow humans. I'm interested in reading what members think about this, if others feel the disconnect, separation or creepy sense of hollow deja' vu that I do.

This whole post is true. We are at an end. It is sad a scary,

I think it's all an illusion.

For example there is no such thing as "culture", it is just in our minds. In reality it does not exist.

Something simple like a baseball cap, it is clearly a part of our culturally accepted clothing. This is totally arbitrary and it is only acceptable because we are comfortable with it and it is fairly commonplace.

We could have been wearing bananas on our head though. If that was what we were doing, no one would notice it was odd or out of place because that is the "way it was".

The point of this is that all of these "cultural expectations" are merely illusions and fabricated within our minds and we share our illusions with others and they adopt them out of a sense of conformity and community.

We humans believe in all kinds of fantasies and consider them real, while at the same time we deny the existence of harsh realities and consider them unrealistic. It's a dichotomy that is difficult to grasp or explain because it runs deep within all of us, so deep that we may never even realize how delusional we really are.

Are "Nations" real? No, they are figments of our imagination. If we "imagine a nation collapsing", in our minds it does.
Similarly there is no such thing as "government" and there is no such thing as a "leader".

We believe in all kinds of fantasies, and Culture is one of them. There is no such thing as culture, there are only human beings copying other human beings because of social needs and dynamics that make up our subconscious and play out automatically without anyone noticing or thinking about it objectively.

Originally posted by Kargun
This whole post is true. We are at an end. It is sad a scary,

I would argue we are at the Middle. Always have been, and always will be, at the middle.

Here is why.

Time itself is probably Eternal. That means right now is the middle of the time scale. There is equal future ahead as there is past behind.

No matter where you mark an infinite line, your mark is always in the middle of that infinite line.
That is the definition of infinity.

We are always stuck in the middle.

Nice find and thanks for sharing!

Not sure if your familiar with this but, I sure love Terence Mckenna and this little speech is quite relevant to your post...