about this book

Mark Fisher taught a generation to hear the disappearance of the future in contemporary music, as if the rhythm of the world were synchronised with the periodic emergence of new creative forms. His diagnosis was devastating: stagnation in music was akin to a venous insufficiency or, worse, a kind of nuclear winter that would ward off spring for generations to come.

Drawing on musicians such as SOPHIE, Arca, and Iglooghost, Matt Bluemink argues that the future is not lost; it still speaks to us through music. If Fisher’s hauntology—an attention to the ghosts of the past—reflects a logic of depression, then Anti-Hauntology proposes a logic of hope, in which voices from the future continue to shape the present.

Moving through Stiegler’s philosophy of technics, Simondon’s theory of individuation, and the spatial imaginaries of cyberpunk and solarpunk, Bluemink develops a theoretical framework attuned to the present moment—one that takes seriously our capacity not only to diagnose the world, but also to remake it. To create new futures, he argues, we must reimagine our relationship with music, technology, and culture. The world of tomorrow remains a blank canvas, and new beginnings are always possible.

This book was selected by Tique for Objects & Sounds.