Hauntology

Spectres of YHWH - Deuteronomy and hauntology

by Jaco Gericke

Weird Britain in Exile: Ghost Box, Hauntology, and Alternative Heritage

by Jamie Sexton

Popular Music and Society (Vol. 35, Issue 2, 2012)

This article interrogates some of the themes that have been noted in the critical reception of the musical movement... more This article interrogates some of the themes that have been noted in the critical reception of the musical movement that has been dubbed “hauntology.” In particular, it focuses on a specifically British strain of hauntology—largely concentrating on the record label Ghost Box—and explores the network of associations referenced by the artists involved. The author argues that Ghost Box and related artists reflect on issues such as collecting and heritage, claiming that they are engaged in a form of alternative heritage. Further, he argues that they engage with the uncanny nature of media technologies, particularly the sense in which current digital technologies can be considered as haunted by their analogue counterparts. Finally, he suggests that critics have tended to steer away from exploring issues such as nostalgia and pastiche within the work of such artists due to their rather negative connotations; yet these concepts are crucial to the strategies of many hauntological artists.

“Spells Out The Word of Itself, and Then Dispelling Itself”: The Chaotics of Memory and The Ghost of the Novel in Jeff Noon’s Falling out of Cars

by Andrew Wenaus

Forthcoming: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

This article is a study of British author Jeff Noon’s most recent novel Falling out of Cars (2002) as a literary... more This article is a study of British author Jeff Noon’s most recent novel Falling out of Cars (2002) as a literary experiment engaged in raising the ghost of the modern novel, long hailed as dead.  Here, Noon samples canonic literature then transforms, manipulates, and reconfigures it in much the same way a message is transformed when being passed through a communication circuit. The result is a kind of poetic prose Noon terms “metamorphiction”: an elegant experimental mode of fantasy in which signs mutate within certain systemic parameters.  In metamorphiction, the textual past literally haunts the textual present.  This formal experiment is mirrored in the content: the novel concerns a middle aged woman mourning the death of her daughter.  Ultimately, Falling out of Cars is both a virtuosic piece of fantastic fiction and a serious meditation on the contemporary state of the novel.     

2012 - Penser la politique spectrale (II)

by Dominic Desroches

Article rédigé en deux parties. Il s’agit ici de la seconde partie à paraître dans la revue de l’Action nationale, Montréal, Québec, mars 2012.

Résumé

Nous étudions, dans cette seconde partie, le retour des fantômes au service de l’identité... more Résumé

Nous étudions, dans cette seconde partie, le retour des fantômes au service de l’identité canadienne, c’est-à-dire de cette nouvelle identité forgée par les Conservateurs majoritaires au pouvoir dans la maison hantée. Ensuite, nous demandons s’il convient de prendre les « revenants » au sérieux. Par le rappel de quelques anecdotes « royales », nous réalisons que les fantômes sont sérieux. Dans le contexte du repliement identitaire, le Québec, qui ne doit plus de rire de sa situation (celle de la décomposition de son mythe moderne) peut recourir à la spectropolitique pour penser sa situation, laquelle exige la formation d’une jeune élite capable de rencontrer les fantômes, d’interpréter leur message afin de les exorciser dans le but ultime de persuader le peuple de l’importance de sa liberté.

Exhibition essay - Lisa Cianci, Colour Fields

by Stefan Schutt

Exhibition essay for Lisa Cianci's 'Colour Fields' at Oscura Gallery, Melbourne, September 2011

2011 - Penser la politique spectrale (I)

by Dominic Desroches

Article rédigé en deux parties. La première partie vient de paraître dans la revue de l’Action nationale, Montréal, Québec, nov-déc 2011.

Résumé

Cet article pose l’urgence d’une politique attentive aux fantômes qui affolent le peuple québécois... more Résumé

Cet article pose l’urgence d’une politique attentive aux fantômes qui affolent le peuple québécois dans l’écriture de son histoire. Il situe le retour de certains revenants pour montrer que les fantômes, sous différentes formes, sont parmi nous. Loin de la paranoïa, attentif aux faits, il montre que le Canada est une haunted House coresponsable de politiques d’horreur et de peur qui nous oblige à envisager une spectropolitique à la hauteur de notre destin historique. Il est écrit en deux parties. S’il présente tout d’abord notre histoire à travers le prisme des revenants, cet article s’achève sur un point positif : le Québec doit former une jeune élite capable de rencontrer les fantômes, interpréter leur message afin de les exorciser dans le but ultime de persuader le peuple de l’importance de sa liberté.

Paul Auster's Ghost Writers

by David Coughlan

Published in "Space, Haunting, Discourse." Ed. Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wennö. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2008. 145-54.

Paul Auster has written of ghosts and writers since his first major work, The Invention of Solitude, where he wrote of... more Paul Auster has written of ghosts and writers since his first major work, The Invention of Solitude, where he wrote of the dead father and of the writer son. His works, however, are not about writers and ghosts, but about writers as ghosts.

Auster’s writers haunt two locations, the city and the room, uncanny places. Alone in labyrinthine cities, Auster’s characters tend to lose themselves unless they follow others, shadowing their subjects in a doubling which is, initially, a reading of the other’s passage, but then, inevitably, a re-writing of a path which is their own. As Derrida describes in “Perjuries” (speaking of trying to be faithful to those writers he follows like an acolyte), writing about, or for, another person, ghost writing so to speak, means an inevitable betrayal. But what does this mean for those who follow in mourning, as Auster’s characters do? Alone in the room, as in their lives, Auster’s characters give themselves over to the text, and become ghosts writing, uncannily undead or buried alive.

This essay analyses the significance of ghostly writing, taking place in cities and rooms, as a recurring theme in Auster’s work, arguing that, through this, Auster theorises on the nature of reading and writing as ethical practices related to the past, to mourning, to betrayal, and responsibility.

Hauntologies: Spectral Mechanisms

by Steen Christiansen