Hauntology – the study of spectralities – has become a lively field in contemporary cultural theory and criticism. Jacques Derrida coined the French term “hantologie” in his 1993 book Spectres du Marx. Taking up the famous phrase of the “spectre of Communism” from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, Derrida examined the spectral presence, or haunting, of Marxist thought in post-communist Europe. Since then, the concept of hauntology has taken on a life of its own. In 2004, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock even announced a “spectral turn”.
The British cultural critic Mark Fisher can be credited with expanding on the notion of hauntology and making it productive in the context of contemporary culture and politics. For Fisher, hauntology can make sense of the ways we deal with the past and the future from a vantage point in the present: “we can provisionally distinguish two directions of hauntology. The first refers to that which is (in actuality is) no longer, but which remains effective as a virtuality […]. The second sense of hauntology refers to that which (in actuality) has not yet happened, but which is already effective in the virtual” (2014: 19).
In that, as Katy Shaw has argued, hauntology is a “peculiarly English phenomenon” (2018: 1). In this course, we will discuss hauntology and the spectral turn in British culture, from ghost stories and the gothic novel to film, popular music and cultural criticism.
Seminar 1 will be an introduction to the theories of the spectral turn and hauntology and trace the history of their ideas.
Seminar 2 will focus on reading hauntological texts and media, including short stories, novels, films and music.
Texts will be provided on Moodle. In addition, we will read the following novels:
Andrew Michael Hurley. Starve Acre. John Murray, 2019.
Sarah Moss. Ghost Wall. Granta, 2019.
Zadie Smith. NW. Penguin, 2013.
Introductory reading:
Mark Fisher. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Hauntology, Depression and Lost Futures. Zero, 2014.
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (eds.). The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Bloomsbury, 2013.
Katy Shaw. Hauntology: The Presence of the Past in Twenty-First Century English Literature. Palgrave, 2018. |
