Not sure how many boxing fans or casual-engagers with low-yield cultural events are present, but tonight's Mike Tyson fight was peak hauntology.
You have the literal spirit of pugilism, terrifyingly-replacéd of testosterone, lighting quick but incapable of punching (as in my bad dreams) feigning something familiar (as in my social engagements) in a fixed fight against who but an algorithmically-unbeatable Instagram Influencer with an Iron Jaw; and even with the fix in--exactly nothing happens, probably meaning nothing can ever possibly happen again. It was like the past's last half-hearted bob-but-no-jab at temporalizing itself though the process of having naught but what--a weigh in?
I look forward to listening. In the interim there's never a bad time to test the limits of Substack comment word count with this long quote from Merlin Coverley's magical 'Hauntology' describing the influence of Alan Garner's 'Red Shift' on Fisher:
Nowhere is the impact between topography and chronology felt more keenly than in the work of Alan Garner (b. 1934). The recognition that certain landscapes may resonate with the histories of the events they have played host to is a hallmark of hauntology, and within Garner’s work such a belief is paramount.
‘Not really now not any more’, acts as a mantra within Garner’s novel, its repetition within the text and its usage as the novel’s concluding line simply emphasising the temporal repetitions, continuities and distortions with which Red Shift is concerned. Garner considered the line as an alternative title to the book, a shorthand for his own experience of the complexities of ‘inner’ time; for in its forceful suggestion of an alternative temporality, this phrase, much like Hamlet’s declaration that ‘the time is out of joint’, points far beyond the confines of Garner’s text in anticipating our own similarly uncertain engagement with the present.
Discovery in a piece of anonymous graffiti may be attributed to more than mere chance:
There is something so eerie, so cryptic, so suggestive about that phrase, especially when written as an anonymous graffito. What did the nameless author of this vagabond poetry mean by it, and what did it mean to them? What event – was it a personal crisis, a cultural event, a mystical revelation of some kind? – prompted them to write it? And did anyone else but Garner ever witness the phrase graffitied onto the railway station wall? Or was it only Garner who saw it? Not that I am suggesting he imagined it – but the phrase so perfectly captures the temporal vortices in Garner’s work that it seems as if it could have been a special message meant only for him. Perhaps it was, whatever the “intentions” of the graffiti writer happened to be. [...] To say that there was something fated about Garner’s encounter with this graffiti is to redouble the phrase’s intrinsic, indelible eeriness. For what does the phrase point to if not a fatal temporality? No now, not any more, not really. Does this mean that the present has eroded, disappeared – no now any more? Are we in the time of the always-already, where the future has been written; in which case it is not the future, not really? [...] What Red Shift discloses is not, evidently, a linear temporality, in which different historical episodes simply succeed one another. Nor does it present the episodes in a relation of sheer juxtaposition – in which no causal connection at all is asserted amongst the different episodes, and they are offered to us merely as sharing some similarities. Nor do we have the idea [...] of a causality operating “backwards” and “forwards” through time, so that past, present and future have influence upon one another…
Looking forward to this one. It seems like it will be right up my alley.
i read that book :) its Revol Press, right? 🤗 o love their collective.. everyone gets paid, for every book... true underground book stuff
Not sure how many boxing fans or casual-engagers with low-yield cultural events are present, but tonight's Mike Tyson fight was peak hauntology.
You have the literal spirit of pugilism, terrifyingly-replacéd of testosterone, lighting quick but incapable of punching (as in my bad dreams) feigning something familiar (as in my social engagements) in a fixed fight against who but an algorithmically-unbeatable Instagram Influencer with an Iron Jaw; and even with the fix in--exactly nothing happens, probably meaning nothing can ever possibly happen again. It was like the past's last half-hearted bob-but-no-jab at temporalizing itself though the process of having naught but what--a weigh in?
I look forward to listening. In the interim there's never a bad time to test the limits of Substack comment word count with this long quote from Merlin Coverley's magical 'Hauntology' describing the influence of Alan Garner's 'Red Shift' on Fisher:
Nowhere is the impact between topography and chronology felt more keenly than in the work of Alan Garner (b. 1934). The recognition that certain landscapes may resonate with the histories of the events they have played host to is a hallmark of hauntology, and within Garner’s work such a belief is paramount.
‘Not really now not any more’, acts as a mantra within Garner’s novel, its repetition within the text and its usage as the novel’s concluding line simply emphasising the temporal repetitions, continuities and distortions with which Red Shift is concerned. Garner considered the line as an alternative title to the book, a shorthand for his own experience of the complexities of ‘inner’ time; for in its forceful suggestion of an alternative temporality, this phrase, much like Hamlet’s declaration that ‘the time is out of joint’, points far beyond the confines of Garner’s text in anticipating our own similarly uncertain engagement with the present.
Discovery in a piece of anonymous graffiti may be attributed to more than mere chance:
There is something so eerie, so cryptic, so suggestive about that phrase, especially when written as an anonymous graffito. What did the nameless author of this vagabond poetry mean by it, and what did it mean to them? What event – was it a personal crisis, a cultural event, a mystical revelation of some kind? – prompted them to write it? And did anyone else but Garner ever witness the phrase graffitied onto the railway station wall? Or was it only Garner who saw it? Not that I am suggesting he imagined it – but the phrase so perfectly captures the temporal vortices in Garner’s work that it seems as if it could have been a special message meant only for him. Perhaps it was, whatever the “intentions” of the graffiti writer happened to be. [...] To say that there was something fated about Garner’s encounter with this graffiti is to redouble the phrase’s intrinsic, indelible eeriness. For what does the phrase point to if not a fatal temporality? No now, not any more, not really. Does this mean that the present has eroded, disappeared – no now any more? Are we in the time of the always-already, where the future has been written; in which case it is not the future, not really? [...] What Red Shift discloses is not, evidently, a linear temporality, in which different historical episodes simply succeed one another. Nor does it present the episodes in a relation of sheer juxtaposition – in which no causal connection at all is asserted amongst the different episodes, and they are offered to us merely as sharing some similarities. Nor do we have the idea [...] of a causality operating “backwards” and “forwards” through time, so that past, present and future have influence upon one another…