Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Hauntology pp 1–23Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction. Hauntology: Ghosts of Our Lives

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 1713 Accesses

Abstract

Hauntology is a peculiarly English phenomenon. Karl Marx famously claimed that his Communist revolution would start in England and, more than a hundred years on, England has become a haunt for the specters of its most recent past. The existence of this Pivot is a timely reminder of the ever growing and changing field of critical and popular enquiry on hauntology. Hauntology destabilizes space as well as time, and encourages an ‘existential orientation’ in the haunted subject, making the living consider the precarious boundary between being and non-being. By the new millennium, hauntology had become part of the zeitgeist of academic and popular criticism in England. In areas as diverse as architecture and music, art and psychoanalysis, a range of critics harnessed Derrida’s concept as a critical lens through which to read a twenty-first century English culture seemingly more concerned with co-opting the past than embracing the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Pierre Macherey, ‘Marx Dematerialised, or the Spirit of Derrida’, Michael Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 2008) p. 18.

  2. 2.

    Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014) p. 21.

  3. 3.

    Elisabeth M. Loevlie, ‘Faith in the Ghosts of Literature. Poetic Hauntology in Derrida, Blanchot and Morrison’s Beloved’, Religions, 2013, 4, pp. 336–350; p. 337.

  4. 4.

    Mark Fisher, ‘SPECTERS OF ACCELERATIONISM’, K-Punk: Abstract Dynamics, 28 October 2008 <http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010782.html>

  5. 5.

    Fisher, 2014, p. 18.

  6. 6.

    Fisher, 2014, p. 28.

  7. 7.

    Frederic Jameson, ‘Marx’s Purloined Letter’, Michael Sprinker (ed.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 2008) p. 39.

  8. 8.

    Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (trans.) Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 193.

  9. 9.

    Fisher, 2014, p. 16.

  10. 10.

    Stuart Sim, Postmodern Encounters: Derrida and the End of History (Cambridge: Icon Books UK, 1999) p. 10.

  11. 11.

    Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, in: Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson (eds.) (London: Routledge, 1992) pp. 3–67.

  12. 12.

    Derrida teases out the spectral elements of Marx’s work, his ‘spectropoetic’ obsession with specters and spirits, and extends it into a concept of hauntology that works to open up the present to the past, and future. Derrida notes that the noun ‘specter’ appears three times on the first page of The Communist Manifesto, which opens with the infamous statement that ‘A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism’ (Derrida, 1994, p. 20). This dual focus on spectrality and on Marx, is mobilized to segue into a wider discussion of the specters that haunt both Marx’s writing and the spirit of Marxism that now haunts the contemporary world (Derrida, 1994, p. 64).

  13. 13.

    Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism (Winchester: Zero Books, 2009) p. 2.

  14. 14.

    See also Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End (trans.) Chris Turner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Jean-Francois Lyotard, Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory & History of Literature) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

  15. 15.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 107.

  16. 16.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 54.

  17. 17.

    Jospeh Natoli and Linda Hutcheon (eds.) A Postmodern Reader (New York: State University Press of New York, 1993) p. xi.

  18. 18.

    Derrida quoted in Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (eds.) The Spectralities Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) p. 38.

  19. 19.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xviii.

  20. 20.

    Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘Introduction to The Spectral Turn’, in Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectralities Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) p. 62.

  21. 21.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 2.

  22. 22.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xx.

  23. 23.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 203.

  24. 24.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 5.

  25. 25.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 36.

  26. 26.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xix.

  27. 27.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 39.

  28. 28.

    Weinstock in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 62.

  29. 29.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 125.

  30. 30.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 7.

  31. 31.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 108.

  32. 32.

    P. Buse and A. Stott (eds.) Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History (London: Palgrave, 1999) p. 1.

  33. 33.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 48.

  34. 34.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xix.

  35. 35.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xix.

  36. 36.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 70.

  37. 37.

    Buse and Stott, 1999, p. 2.

  38. 38.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 15.

  39. 39.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 13.

  40. 40.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 25.

  41. 41.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 11.

  42. 42.

    Ernesto Laclau, ‘The Time Is out of Joint’, Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer 1995) pp. 85–96; p. 87.

  43. 43.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 161.

  44. 44.

    Laclau, 1995, p. 86–88.

  45. 45.

    Derrida, 1994, pp. xvii–xviii.

  46. 46.

    Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) p. 208.

  47. 47.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 182.

  48. 48.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 65.

  49. 49.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 127.

  50. 50.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 190.

  51. 51.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 220.

  52. 52.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 151.

  53. 53.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xviiii.

  54. 54.

    Timothy Raphael, ‘Mo(u)rning in America: Hamlet, Reagan, and the Rights of Memory’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 2007) pp. 1–20; p. 20.

  55. 55.

    Derrida, 1994, p. viii.

  56. 56.

    Jacques Derrida, Memories: For Paul de Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) p. 47.

  57. 57.

    Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) p. 5.

  58. 58.

    Derrida quoted in Gordon, 2008, p. 66.

  59. 59.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 179.

  60. 60.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xvii.

  61. 61.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xix.

  62. 62.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 48.

  63. 63.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 196.

  64. 64.

    James Bridle, ‘Hauntological Futures’, booktwo.org , 20 March 2011 <http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/>

  65. 65.

    Derrida 1994, p. 10.

  66. 66.

    Derrida, 1994, p. xix.

  67. 67.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 46.

  68. 68.

    Jameson in Sprinker, 2008, p. 59.

  69. 69.

    Jameson in Sprinker, 2008, p. 60.

  70. 70.

    Jameson in Sprinker, 2008, p. 44.

  71. 71.

    Jameson in Sprinker, 2008, p. 43.

  72. 72.

    Werner Hamacher quoted in in Frederic Jameson, ‘Marx’s Purloined Letter’, Michael Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 2008) p. 197.

  73. 73.

    Weinstock in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 65.

  74. 74.

    Weinstock in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 66.

  75. 75.

    Gordon, 2008, p. xvi.

  76. 76.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 27.

  77. 77.

    Gordon, 2008, p. xv.

  78. 78.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 183.

  79. 79.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 66.

  80. 80.

    Esther Schor, Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria (London: Princeton University Press, 1994) p. 4.

  81. 81.

    Derrida, 1994, p. 122.

  82. 82.

    Gordon, 2008, p. 57.

  83. 83.

    Alex Murray, ‘Hauntology; Or, Capitalism is Dead, Let’s Eat it’s Corpse!’, MA Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015.

  84. 84.

    Fisher, 2014, p. 89.

  85. 85.

    Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (London: The MIT Press, 1992) p. 22.

  86. 86.

    Slavoj Žižek quoted in Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (eds.), ‘Introduction’, Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture (London: Continuum, 2010) p. xii

  87. 87.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2010, p. xi.

  88. 88.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2010, p. xi.

  89. 89.

    Weinstock in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 64.

  90. 90.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’ in Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky and Daniel Levy (eds.) The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) pp. 73–79; p. 78.

  91. 91.

    Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (London: Faber, 2012) p. xi.

  92. 92.

    Fisher, 2014, p. 5; p. 8.

  93. 93.

    Reynolds, 2012, p. xiv.

  94. 94.

    Jacques Derrida, On the Name Thomas Dutoit (ed.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) p. 2.

  95. 95.

    Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death & Literature in Secret (Religion and Postmodernism) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008) p. 223.

  96. 96.

    Mark Fisher, ‘Phonograph Blues’, K-Punk: Abstract Dynamics, 19 October 2006 <http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008535.html>

  97. 97.

    Jacques Derrida quoted in Buse and Stott, 1999, p. 9.

  98. 98.

    Derrida quoted in Loevlie, 2013, p. 336.

  99. 99.

    Jodey Castricano, Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing (London: McGill-Queens University Press, 2001) p. 29.

  100. 100.

    Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation: Texts and Discussions with Jacques Derrida (trans.) Peggy Kamuf (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1988) p. 53.

  101. 101.

    Colin David, ‘Etat Present: Hauntology, Specters and Phantoms’ in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 58.

  102. 102.

    Buse and Stott, 1992, p. 8.

  103. 103.

    Mary Luckhurst and Emilie Morin (eds.) Theatre and Ghosts: Materiality, Performance and Modernity (London: Palgrave, 2014) p. 5.

  104. 104.

    Jez Butterworth, Jerusalem (London: Nick Hern Books, 2009).

  105. 105.

    Castricano, 2001, p. 13.

  106. 106.

    Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 399.

  107. 107.

    Zadie Smith, NW (London: Penguin, 2012).

  108. 108.

    David Peace, Patient X (London: Faber, 2018).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Katy Shaw

Authors
  1. Katy Shaw
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Shaw, K. (2018). Introduction. Hauntology: Ghosts of Our Lives. In: Hauntology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74968-6_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation