Abstract
In conclusion, and as a way of opening up the question of selfhood’s hauntedness, the Afterword begins by explaining why there can be no general theory of the spectral, no programmatic reading of the ghost. Picking up on the figure of singularity introduced in the introduction, and considering the self/other relation, the Afterword returns to the idea of givenness, Jean-Luc Marion’s concept, which surfaces on a number of occasions throughout the book, and seek to think Marion and read him through particular remarks of Derrida’s from De la grammatologie so as to suggest the thought of a spectropoiesis and the matter of lived experience and its temporalization. This is illustrated by a return briefly to Julian Barnes and an already cited remark concerning memory, as the figure of singular loss and hauntedness. I conclude with a brief dialogue between Agamben and Derrida, arguing that what makes literature haunted, and so that which allows it to disclose to the subject the hauntedness of Being, is literature’s power (or gift) to reopen a breach in history, and so make truth. The making of truth is always, I argue, a haunting to come.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
All page references are given parenthetically to both the original and the translation, the French edition first, followed by the page in the English language version, thus: 68/47.
Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. Nudities. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Barnes, Julian. England, England. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Task of the Translator’. Selected Writings Volume I 1913–1926. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996. 262–63.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wolfreys, J. (2018). Afterword. In: Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98089-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98089-8_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98088-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98089-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)