Hauntology, Nostalgia, and New Music

This Element studies music in 'nostalgia mode', reproducing perfected versions of existing sounds, and hauntological music, which uses the past to reveal lost futures. This Element argues this paradigm applies to both popular and new music, challenging the notion of futurity in a world sceptical of historical change.

In the past quarter of a century, or longer, popular cultures and musics both popular and 'new' have become concerned, rather than with futurity, with their own pasts, in a world where, after Fukuyama's 'end of history' or Berardi's 'cancellation of the future', the idea of fundamental historical change has seemed increasingly incredible. This Element is a critical study of music in what Fisher calls 'nostalgia mode', a flattened, high-gloss reproduction of a music indistinguishable from that which already exists, save for its technical perfection, and of hauntological musics critical of this stance, which deploy the music of the past not in reassuring fashion, but to stress that, in 'unwounded' history, they would not still be here. Although normally treated separately, this paradigm applies not only to popular music but also to new music, which has historically claimed the music of the future as its privileged territory.