Talk:Hauntology

Major problems
The article would benefit by including Mark Fisher's exploration of 'hauntology' in his book, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, published by Zero Press in 2014. Mark Fisher is the author of the book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative in 2009. As Fisher explains, "hauntology" refers a sense of the present being "haunted" by 'lost futures,' stemming from a shift into a "Post-Fordist" economy in the late 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism. This notion of the popular culture being "haunted" by utopian or politically progressive future that never came to pass has altered the "texture of everyday experience," exemplified by endless recycled trends and nostalgia. As Fisher writes, "Despite all its rhetoric of novelty and innovation, neoliberal capitalism has gradually and sytematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new." Fisher argues for the appropriateness of Derrida's "puncept" hauntology as an extension of the theorist's concepts of the "trace" and "difference" in his critical writings. Hauntology is thus the idea that "Everything exists ...only on the basis of a whole series of absences" and is, Fisher notes, the "agency of the virtual." Fisher points to the current revival and fascination with older, obsolete music listening technologies like vinyl records and tape, particularly the imperfections of "hiss" and "crackle" sounds, as an example of the way "technology materialised memory." More than just nostalgia itself, hauntology acquires a collective, political dimension as an expression of a "refusal to give up on the desire for the future" in the "closed horizons of capitalist realism." Molague (talk) 02:08, 24 March 2015 (UTC) The stuff on derrida is really hopeless, no offense to the socialist. The connection to a style of music is interesting, suprising, really. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.205.103.212 (talk) 04:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually the article hardly mentions the musical genre that includes things like the Ghost Box label, which is rather surprising. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.30.111.221 (talk) 23:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Call to experts
What I've written is based on about 24 hours of research and my pre-existing knowledge of Derrida, Fukuyama, and cyberpunk. It's bound to be amateurish and incomplete, I know, but it's hard to find any information about this on the internet that isn't analysis and discussion. I plan to improve it over the next few days, but if any Derrida scholar or philosopher comes along, they are more than welcome to delete everything I've written and start again at the beginning. -- The_socialist talk? 05:19, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure where you get the idea that cyberpunk was interested in the "rustic, bizarre, or old-timey." The Clash still had their original lineup when Gibson wrote "Burning Chrome," and there's nothing rustic about Neuromancer. Maybe you could make a case for bizarre, but I think the Cheap Truth-era Sterling would argue that the only bizarre thing was the way mainstream society (and mainstream science fiction, more to the point) closed its eyes to the world as it really was. --Chronodm (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

"The word, a portmanteau of haunt and Ontology and homophone to the latter in Derrida's native French"

Hantologie and ontologie are not French homophones, the initial vowel sound is different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.120.228.80 (talk) 13:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Hauntological
In the "The Spectres of Marx", Derrida introduces the idea of a hauntological reading of Marx. Or a hauntological reading of anything for that matter.

Marx can be re-read as as if the text was an apparition - a ghostly version of Marx.

But instead of thinking of ghosts as a kind of echo of some former reality, Derrida's hauntology, to be consistent with deconstruction and the internality of texts, would be asking us to think of hauntological ghosts as apparitions but without a former self. The text can haunt us, as if it were speaking to us from the past, but the past to which we think the text owes it's existence does not need to play any role - it doesn't need to be understood as having existed as such. Or more critically, what "past" can act as an external reference point to the text when all pasts are textual in the first place.

Now rather than imagining the past as an ontological reality (or former ontological reality?) the past can be re-framed as a function of the text. In this re-framing the ontological is given another name: the hauntological. It is the text (as a haunting) that determines it's otherwise apparent ontological origin. The text functions hauntologically.

Now without further clarification this might suggest that hauntology can only serve to distance us from what is otherwise known as "historical reality". But that is only if one is suggesting that apparitions should be exorcised - as critics of Derrida, such as Terry Eagleton, somewhat inadvertently end up encouraging, due to their distaste for apparitions.

But rather than exorcising ghosts with triumphant missionary zeal, we instead look at Derrida's approach, we see he allows/encourages us to engage with the ghosts - to become haunted by such. To be haunted by, for example, (the spectres of) Marx.

The differance between hauntology and ontology is that a hauntology gets our adrenalin pumping - we become more alert - more critical - better able to appreciate the details.

It should go without saying that the above is a cursory, fragmentary, and particularly narrow mis/interpretation of Derrida's hauntology. But I'll say it (just said it) anyway.

Carl Looper —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.109.46.35 (talk) 20:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Relevance of Derrida.
1. Didn't Derrida (in Spectres of Marx) suggest the removal of the spectre was desirable so as to allow the actuality to take its place?

2. Although the word "Hauntology" was coined by Derrida, its 21st century meaning (especially in terms of culture & critical theory) is somewhat removed from that original, passing usage. See K-Punk and associated writers for a more acute delineation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.101.245.36 (talk) 05:54, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Wha??
Re the phrase: " the West's separation from the ignorance of the suffering still present in the world". Please unwrap this avocado so that mere mortals might comprehend. "Separation from ignorance of suffering" suggests awareness of suffering ... don't think that's what you mean. Twang (talk) 10:07, 14 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I just came here to say the same thing. Can anyone fix it? 86.130.40.127 (talk) 00:19, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Hauntology as a music genre
Shouldn't there be a bit more discussion about the music genre such as that of the record label Ghost Box that is described as hauntological? A separate page might be better as although it's related to the philosophy they're not the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.197.61.187 (talk) 11:03, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Scarfolk
Metafictional cultural satire? Suburban horror fantasy? A romance of paranoia? Call it what you will: surely the mass hallucination that is Scarfolk deserves inclusion in any overview of Hauntology: pursued, as if by Furies, by the undying 1970s aesthetic in design and public informationism; inhabiting a phantom post-urban hinterland on a neverending Möbius panoramic ribbon; where the future is always a progressively even-grubbier re-loop of the previous decade.

And the Scarfolk article even references Hauntology! Nuttyskin (talk) 02:14, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Clear as mud
"The term refers to the situation of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction in which the apparent presence of being is replaced by a deferred non-origin, represented by "the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive"." This makes no sense at all. Anna (talk) 09:48, 13 July 2019 (UTC)