The first in a series of zer0 classics is published at the end of this month: a new edition of Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Matt Colquhoun aka Xenogothic supplies an excellent introduction that puts Mark's ideas in the context of the blogging scene of the 2000s and the arc of his intellectual odyssey. And I've contributed a new afterword.
Despite the melancholy occasion - contemplating the absence of a friend and the glaring gap in the scene where his energy, insight and provocation ought to be - it was a really enjoyable piece to write. Fun, even. As well as taking the measure of Mark's achievement and reassessing the ideas of hauntology and the retro-critique that we jointly explored, I also took the opportunity to speculate: wondering where he might have taken his thinking next. It's a tribute to Mark that it's possible to still spark thoughts off his work in his absence. I expect we will be doing that for a long while to come.
File under overtaken by events: in the afterword I make a passing reference to "the endless fraudocracy of Boris Johnson". Well, that ended! (Or did it? He's still in Number 10. And the fraudocracy will doubtless flourish on, even in his - eventual - absence. The fraud is dead, long live the fraud).