The Spectralities Reader
Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory
Published on 10. October 2013
Book
Hardback
584 pages
978-1-4411-3860-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Spectralities Reader is the first volume to collect the rich scholarship produced in the wake of the "spectral turn" of the early 1990s, which saw ghosts and haunting conjured as compelling analytical and methodological tools across the humanities and social sciences. Surveying the past twenty years from an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective, the Reader displays the wide range of concerns spectrality, in its diverse elaborations, has been called upon to elucidate. The disjunctions produced by globalization, the ungraspable quality of modern media, the convolutions of subject formation (in terms of gender, race, and sexuality), the elusiveness of spaces and places, and the lingering presences and absences of memory and history have all been reconceived by way of the spectral. A primer for the wide readership engaged with cultural interpretations of ghosts and haunting that go beyond the confines of the fictional and supernatural, The Spectralities Reader includes twenty-five groundbreaking texts by prominent contemporary thinkers, from Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak to Avery Gordon and Arjun Appadurai, as well as a general introduction and six section introductions by the editors.
Reviews / Votes
From Freud's and Adorno's rejection of the occult, to Derrida's rehabilitation of the spectral turn, this volume presents a compelling argument for a continued interest in the noisy ghosts of our culture. Not content to limit their remit, the editors have chosen brilliant extracts that explore trauma, memory and history, tracing the spectral through literary theory and criticism, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and economics. It is a book which is strong enough to include an auto-critique of its structuring concept, while showing why that concept still remains vital today. An invaluable collection on the uncanny and the ghostly which should haunt its readers for years to come. * Dr. Pamela Thurschwell, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Sussex, UK * In this compelling anthology, editors Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren bring together core texts on the study of ghosts, spectres, and haunting as cultural manifestations ... A dynamic corpus of perspectives that challenges, and delights, with its range and depth -- Kirsten Mollegaard, University of Hawai'i at Hilo, USA * Folklore * The Spectralities Reader is a welcoming invitation to the recent seance with our unfinished past. Its editors prove to be perfect spirit guides, providing steely clarity to a realm that often befuddles and bewitches. -- Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, UKMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
985 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4411-3860-6 (9781441138606)
DOI
CBID168877
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Maria del Pilar Blanco is University Lecturer in Spanish American Literature and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination (2012).
Esther Peeren is Assistant Professor in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has published articles on Mikhail Bakhtin, queer television, translation theory and the chronotopic dimension of diaspora. Her first book, entitled Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture: Bakhtin and Beyond appeared in 2007 with Stanford University Press and she also co-edited a collection of essays entitled The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities (2007). Currently, she is developing a project on spectrality in contemporary literature, television and film.
Esther Peeren is Assistant Professor in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has published articles on Mikhail Bakhtin, queer television, translation theory and the chronotopic dimension of diaspora. Her first book, entitled Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture: Bakhtin and Beyond appeared in 2007 with Stanford University Press and she also co-edited a collection of essays entitled The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities (2007). Currently, she is developing a project on spectrality in contemporary literature, television and film.
Content
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities
I. The Spectral Turn
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectral Turn / Introduction
Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Spectrographies
Colin Davis, Etat Present: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, from Introduction: The Spectral Turn
Julian Wolfreys, Preface: On Textual Haunting
Roger Luckhurst, from The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the "Spectral Turn"
II. Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / Introduction
Avery F. Gordon, from her shape and his hand
Achille Mbembe, from Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola
Arjun Appadurai, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai
Peter Hitchcock, from ( ) of Ghosts
III. The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media / Introduction
Tom Gunning, To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision
Jeffrey Sconce, from Introduction to Haunted Media
Akira Mizuta Lippit, from Modes of Avisuality: Psychoanalysis - X-ray - Cinema
David Toop, from Chair creaks, but no one sits there
Allen S. Weiss, Preface: Radio Phantasms, Phantasmic Radio
IV. Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race / Introduction
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from Ghostwriting
Carla Freccero, Queer Spectrality: Haunting the Past
Sharon Patricia Holland, from Introduction: Raising the Dead
Renee L. Bergland, from Indian Ghosts and American Subjects
V. Possessions: Spectral Places
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Possessions: Spectral Places / Introduction
Anthony Vidler, Buried Alive
Ulrich Baer, To Give Memory a Place: Contemporary Holocaust Photography and the Landscape Tradition
David Matless, A Geography of Ghosts: The Spectral Landscapes of Mary Butts
Giorgio Agamben, On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters
VI. Haunted Historiographies
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Haunted Historiographies / Introduction
Judith Richardson, A History of Unrest
Jesse Aleman, The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest
Alexander Nemerov, Seeing Ghosts: The Turn of the Screw and Art History
Index
Permissions
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities
I. The Spectral Turn
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectral Turn / Introduction
Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Spectrographies
Colin Davis, Etat Present: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, from Introduction: The Spectral Turn
Julian Wolfreys, Preface: On Textual Haunting
Roger Luckhurst, from The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the "Spectral Turn"
II. Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / Introduction
Avery F. Gordon, from her shape and his hand
Achille Mbembe, from Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola
Arjun Appadurai, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai
Peter Hitchcock, from ( ) of Ghosts
III. The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media / Introduction
Tom Gunning, To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision
Jeffrey Sconce, from Introduction to Haunted Media
Akira Mizuta Lippit, from Modes of Avisuality: Psychoanalysis - X-ray - Cinema
David Toop, from Chair creaks, but no one sits there
Allen S. Weiss, Preface: Radio Phantasms, Phantasmic Radio
IV. Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race / Introduction
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from Ghostwriting
Carla Freccero, Queer Spectrality: Haunting the Past
Sharon Patricia Holland, from Introduction: Raising the Dead
Renee L. Bergland, from Indian Ghosts and American Subjects
V. Possessions: Spectral Places
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Possessions: Spectral Places / Introduction
Anthony Vidler, Buried Alive
Ulrich Baer, To Give Memory a Place: Contemporary Holocaust Photography and the Landscape Tradition
David Matless, A Geography of Ghosts: The Spectral Landscapes of Mary Butts
Giorgio Agamben, On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters
VI. Haunted Historiographies
Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Haunted Historiographies / Introduction
Judith Richardson, A History of Unrest
Jesse Aleman, The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest
Alexander Nemerov, Seeing Ghosts: The Turn of the Screw and Art History
Index