Hauntology

Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology) is a concept coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. The term refers to the situation of temporal and ontological disjunction in which presence 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'. The concept is derived from Derrida's deconstructive method, in which any attempt to locate the origin of identity or history must inevitably find itself dependent on an always-already existing set of linguistic conditions—thus making 'haunting the state proper to being as such'.Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past. . . . Does then the ‘historical’ person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from death fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality. The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, at once they ‘return’ and make their apparitional debut. Derrida has been pleased to call this dual movement of return and inauguration a ‘hauntology’, a coinage that suggests a spectrally deferred non-origin within grounding metaphysical terms such as history and identity. . . . Such an idea also informs the well-known discussion of the origin of language in Of Grammatology, where . . . any attempt to isolate the origin of language will find its inaugural moment already dependent upon a system of linguistic differences that have been installed prior to the ‘originary’ moment (11). Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology) is a concept coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. The term refers to the situation of temporal and ontological disjunction in which presence 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'. The concept is derived from Derrida's deconstructive method, in which any attempt to locate the origin of identity or history must inevitably find itself dependent on an always-already existing set of linguistic conditions—thus making 'haunting the state proper to being as such'. In the 2000s, the term was taken up by critics in reference to paradoxes found in late modernity, particularly contemporary culture's persistent recycling of retro aesthetics and incapacity to escape old social forms. Critics such as Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds used the term to describe art preoccupied with this temporal disjunction and defined by a 'nostalgia for lost futures'. The concept has its roots in Derrida's discussion of Karl Marx in Spectres of Marx, specifically Marx's proclamation that 'a spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism' in The Communist Manifesto. Derrida also calls on Shakespeare's Hamlet, particularly a phrase spoken by the titular character: 'the time is out of joint'. Derrida's prior work in deconstruction, on concepts of trace and différance in particular, serves as the foundation of his formulation of hauntology, fundamentally asserting that there is no temporal point of pure origin but only an 'always-already absent present'. The word functions as a deliberate near-homophone to 'ontology' in Derrida's native French (cf. 'Hantologie', and 'ontologie', ). Peter Buse and Andrew Scott, discussing Derrida's notion of hauntology, explain: Derrida's writing in Spectres is marked by a preoccupation with the 'death' of communism after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, in particular after theorists such as Francis Fukuyama asserted that capitalism had conclusively triumphed over other political-economic systems and reached the 'end of history'. Taking inspiration from the pervasive ghost imagery in Marx's writing, Spectres has been said to concern itself with the question, 'if communism was always spectral, what does it mean to say it is now dead?' Contemporary writers such as theorist Mark Fisher specifically used the concept of hauntology to describe a sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by the 'lost futures' of modernity which were purportedly cancelled in postmodernity and neoliberalism. Hauntology has been described as a 'pining for a future that never arrived;' in contrast to the nostalgia and revivalism which dominate postmodernity, hauntological art and culture is typified by a critical foregrounding of the historical and metaphysical disjunctions of contemporary capitalist culture as well as a 'refusal to give up on the desire for the future'. Fisher and others drew attention to the shift into post-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which Fisher argues has 'gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new'. Hauntology has been used as a critical lens in various forms of media and theory, including music, political theory, architecture, Afrofuturism, and psychoanalysis. Derrida's concept of hauntology is most prominently applied to a segment of 21st-century musicians exploring ideas related to temporal disjunction, retrofuturism, cultural memory, and the persistence of the past. Common reference points in hauntological music include vintage analog synthesisers and cassette tapes, library music, old science-fiction and pulp horror programmes (including the soundtracks of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop), musique concrète and found sounds, dub and English psychedelia, and 1970s public informational films. A common element is the foregrounding of the recording surface noise, including the crackle and hiss of vinyl and tape, calling attention to the decaying medium itself. Artists associated with hauntology include members of the UK label Ghost Box (such as Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, and the Advisory Circle), London dubstep producer Burial, Essex based musician Sam Haynes, avant-garde musicians such as the Caretaker, William Basinski, Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, Aseptic Void, Moon Wiring Club and Mordant Music. Early progenitors of the approach include Boards of Canada and Position Normal. Other British acts include The Real Tuesday Weld and Grasscut. According to Mark Fisher, the hauntology movement represents contemporary electronic music's 'confrontation with a cultural impasse: the failure of the future'. Hauntological music is identified with British culture, and was described as an attempt to evoke 'a nostalgia for a future that never came to pass, with a vision of a strange, alternate Britain, constituted from the reorder refuse of the postwar period'. Music journalist Simon Reynolds described it as an attempt to construct a 'lost utopianism' rooted in visions of a benevolent post-welfare state. A sense of loss and bereavement is central to the phenomenon, according to theologian Johan Eddebo. Hypnagogic pop is described as an American 'cousin' to hauntology and is also known to engage with notions of nostalgia and cultural memory. The two styles were likened to 'sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself'.