We propose to intensify theorizing on retromarketing and nostalgic consumption by further developing “hauntology” as a conceptual lens for assessing the retro aesthetic as a commodified affective excess of meaning. This allows us to explore the consumption of marketized retrospective signs not from the perspective of personal experiences or creative meaning-makings but rather as affective encounters that desire in consumption desperately latches onto. In our view, it is thus not an aesthetic satisfaction, nostalgic comfort, or playful emancipations that are offered to us by retro consumption. Following a darker development of hauntology, we find ourselves instead thrust into spectral presences that we can never quite articulate, a haunting within us in an atmosphere of late capitalism where temporal belief in the future has been “cancelled.”

我们建议通过进一步发展“困扰论”作为概念镜头，将复古美学评估为一种商品化的情感过度意义，从而加强对复古营销和怀旧消费的理论。这使我们能够从个人经验或创造性意义的角度探讨市场化追溯标志的消费，而不是将渴望消费的情感遭遇紧紧地抓住。因此，在我们看来，这不是复古消费给我们带来的审美上的满足，怀旧的舒适或嬉戏的解放。随着困扰学的黑暗发展，我们发现自己陷入了我们永远无法清晰表达的频谱存在，在晚期资本主义的氛围中困扰着我们，其中对未来的时空信念已经被“取消”。