Description
Book SynopsisMaría 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.
Trade ReviewFrom 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 María 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 Møllegaard, University of Hawai’i at Hilo, USA * Folklore *
The Spectralities Reader is a welcoming invitation to the recent séance 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, UK
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Permissions María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities
I. The Spectral Turn María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectral Turn / Introduction Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Spectrographies Colin Davis, État Présent: 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 María 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 María 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 María 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 Renée L. Bergland, from Indian Ghosts and American Subjects
V. Possessions: Spectral Places María 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 María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Haunted Historiographies / Introduction Judith Richardson, A History of Unrest Jesse 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 History Index
