In the context of widespread precarity and ongoing crises, it is no surprise ruins have captured much attention in recent years. This book is about a new kind of space, one that is deeply troubling for consumer society: the retail ruin. Jacob C. Miller bridges human geography, archaeology and critical urban studies to offer a starting point for conceptualizing retail ruins. Drawing on fieldnotes and photographs, Miller crafts a hauntological approach informed by the theories of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to more recent thinking on assemblage, spectacle and the politics of urban space.

This radical and experimental book advances a new approach to understanding spectacle, one that helps us better understand how consumer culture paved the way for the post-truth politics of Donald Trump. Miller innovatively blends social and political theory, newspaper articles and contemporary commentary on Trump and Trumpism to provide a unique perspective on how capitalism intersects with and enables fascistic forms of power. His analysis contributes fresh insights to the rise of Trump and the politics of everyday consumer culture today.