Spectralities Reader

María 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.

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.

• AcknowledgmentsPermissionsMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Introduction: Conceptualizing SpectralitiesI. The Spectral TurnMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectral Turn / Introduction Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Spectrographies Colin Davis, État Présent: Hauntology, Spectres and PhantomsJeffrey Andrew Weinstock, from Introduction: The Spectral TurnJulian Wolfreys, Preface: On Textual HauntingRoger Luckhurst, from The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the “Spectral Turn”II. Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global ContemporaryMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / IntroductionAvery F. Gordon, from her shape and his handAchille Mbembe, from Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos TutuolaArjun Appadurai, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial MumbaiPeter Hitchcock, from ( ) of GhostsIII. The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral MediaMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media / IntroductionTom 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 – CinemaDavid Toop, from Chair creaks, but no one sits there Allen S. Weiss, Preface: Radio Phantasms, Phantasmic RadioIV. Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race / IntroductionGayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from GhostwritingCarla Freccero, Queer Spectrality: Haunting the PastSharon Patricia Holland, from Introduction: Raising the DeadRenée L. Bergland, from Indian Ghosts and American SubjectsV. Possessions: Spectral PlacesMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Possessions: Spectral Places / IntroductionAnthony Vidler, Buried AliveUlrich Baer, To Give Memory a Place: Contemporary Holocaust Photography and the Landscape TraditionDavid Matless, A Geography of Ghosts: The Spectral Landscapes of Mary ButtsGiorgio Agamben, On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among SpectersVI. Haunted HistoriographiesMaría del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Haunted Historiographies / IntroductionJudith Richardson, A History of UnrestJesse Alemán, The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest Alexander Nemerov, Seeing Ghosts: The Turn of the Screw and Art HistoryIndex