A public figure’s death can crystallize the collapse of an entire cultural era.

Evidence

If there is a current coalescence of fascination around hauntology, there is also a mounting anxiety about the death, dearth, end of pop. A few examples: this atrocious piece on the “death of black music” (significant only for the statistics it cites), Simon’s 05 round-up for Frieze, and a number of recent threads on Dissensus. The suspicion is inescapable: part of the reason why hauntology should appeal to us so much now is that, unconsciously, and increasingly consciously, we suspect that something has died. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1082 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

For some people, being dead is only a relative condition; they wreak more than the living do. After their first rigor, they reshape themselves, taking on a flexibility in public discourse. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 272 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Around Thanksgiving, Albert Ayler’s body washed up on the Brooklyn side of the East River. He was thirty-four. Unstable and depressed, Ayler blamed himself for his brother Donald’s breakdown after he had dropped him as a trumpet player. Ayler almost certainly took his own life but, as with Hendrix, who was being tracked by the FBI’s Cointelpro and the CIA’s Operation CHAOS, and whose disgruntled manager had Mob connections, Ayler’s death inspired conspiracy theories: The FBI assassinated him. Mafia hitmen threw him in the river, tied to a jukebox because he refused to make more rock ‘n’ roll records for Impulse! (which had canceled his contract). — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1643 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Dead public figures wield influence and keep reshaping in memory. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 272; Hauntology’s appeal arises from a sensed cultural death — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1082; Avant-garde death followed the loss of the anticipated revolution — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 253 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Hauntology’s appeal arises from a sensed cultural death #exemplifies (0.86) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1082
• Dead public figures wield influence and keep reshaping in memory. #corroborates (0.82) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 272
• Counterculture icon deaths in 1970 generated conspiratorial interpretations. #exemplifies (0.80) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1643
• Avant-garde death followed the loss of the anticipated revolution #exemplifies (0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 253
• The masses’ enthusiastic participation destroys the cultural apparatus that courted them. #complicates (0.72) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 220