Hauntology and Lost Futures

In his work, The Ghosts of My Life, which is a collection of writings, the author Mark Fisher argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. In the following short piece, I try to extract the main idea of "Hauntology" and "Lost Futures" from his work.

The 80s was the last decade when any original creative art actually arose. The art in the later decades had just been an attempt to somehow mimic those specters of 80s art and the art before 80s. The reason for this is the emergence of global free market capitalism which became universalised in the 90s with the fall of the Soviet Union. This kind of extreme Capitalism just focuses on profit, and everything, including all forms of art, get reduced to profit. Hence, the only reason for creating new art is profit. This forces the artist to look back to the successful art of the  past and simply reproduce it in a "better" quality. 

For example, most of the movies we have today are simply movies of old times (they are same in their stories, themes etc.) but just in high definiton. So, in this way, the past, especially the 80s still haunt us. The philosopher Mark Fisher calls it "Hauntology", an inability to move on from the past to something new and more creative. 

Another aspect of Hauntology is that our notions of future are just the reproduction of past notions of future, if you see a futuristic painting made in the 50s, for example, and a futuristic painting of modern times, there won't be much difference except for the quality. In this way, our ability to imagine a new future is also lost. Mark Fisher calls this, "Lost Futures".