Abstract
Using the power of literary representation to subvert and challenge, the twenty-first century authors profiled by this study stage various debates in relation to the specter, interrogating concepts of anxiety and justice, intertextuality and hospitality, selfhood and trauma. The conclusion reflects on why their works are most radical in their spectral moments and in their representation of a range of specters that refuse to submit to homogeneity, but rather disrupt and open up moments or issues to uncertainty, challenging both the writer and reader in the contemporary moment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Blanco and Peeren, 2010, p. xiv.
- 2.
Weinstock in Blanco and Peeren, 2013, p. 61.
- 3.
Blanco and Peeren, 2010, p. xiv.
- 4.
Blanco and Peeren, 2010, p. ix.
- 5.
Derrida, 1994, p. 125.
- 6.
Blanco and Peeren, 2010, pp. xiii–xiv. ‘Ghosting’ has itself become a keyword in the contemporary period. Also referred to as the ‘slow fade’ or ‘the French exit’, it accounts for the process whereby one party ceases all communication with the other in the hope that the other person will simply disappear, like a ghost. In this scenario, silence speaks louder than words, and a phantom-like fashion for withdrawing from communication and view attempts to redress the heightened visibility of the subject.
- 7.
Andrew Smith, ‘Hauntings’, Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (eds.) The Routledge Companion to the Gothic (London: Routledge: 2007) p. 153.
- 8.
Derrida, 1994, p. 12.
- 9.
Derrida, 1994, p. 176.
- 10.
Derrida 1994, p. 76.
- 11.
Derrida, 1994, p. xviii.
- 12.
Fisher, 2009. p. 81.
- 13.
Gordon, 2008, p. xvi.
- 14.
Walter Benjamin suggests that the critical momentum of historical materialism ‘is registered in that blasting of historical continuity’ that liquidates the continuum of history, and in doing so ‘blasts out “the reified” continuity of history’ (Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, in Selected Writings: Volume Four Howard Eiland (ed.) and Michael W. Jennings (trans.) Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) p. 26.
- 15.
Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002, p. 215.
- 16.
Jameson in Sprinker, 2008, p. 40.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shaw, K. (2018). Conclusion. ‘In Return’: Towards a Hauntology of Twenty-First Century English Literature. In: Hauntology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74968-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74968-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74967-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74968-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)