Event overview
James Nixon (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Since the turn of the century the figure of the ghost - a being neither fully present nor absent, but rather a presence compiled of absences – and the Derridean concept of hauntology have experienced a renaissance due to their employment by critics to loosely define art practices suffused with melancholy and fixating on ghostly mediations, revenant voices and spectral forms.
Mark Fisher popularised the use of the term hauntology to interpret certain artistic practices conducted in the twenty-first century, and along with theorists such as Franco Berardi and Frederic Jameson, argues that the contemporary disabling of political alternatives to capitalism has exhausted the idea of the future, that cultural sterility pervades in a time ‘dominated by pastiche and revivalism.’ In such a cultural atmosphere, when conformist perspectives limit the ideation of ‘the new,’ the ‘critical practice of hauntology turns to the past in order to make sense of the present, to understand how we got to this place and how to build a better future.’ Hauntological praxis places emphasis on analogue modes of communication, foregrounds failure and degrees of silence as operative features, and generally navigates presence by exploring mourning as a key frame of reference.
Hauntology has rarely been used as a tool in the reading of poetry and the elaboration of an approach to literature. In a manner which highlights the etymological connection between speculation and spectres, I aim in this paper to formulate questions concerning the definition of a hauntological poetics.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Nov 2018 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
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