234 - Suburban Transpondency

Hauntology: The Future Belongs To Ghosts


Developed in his 1993 work Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida
coined hauntology as a philosophical means of understanding
history concerned with the nature of being, existence, reality,
and time. The concept of hauntology stems out of postmodern
ideology, particularly Derrida's deconstructionism. In simple
terms, it is a means of understanding that the present exists in
respect to the past, and that the modernist conception of time
moving in a linear direction is false. In this sense, the
hauntological analysis plays upon an enigmatic form of fragmented
and anachronistic memory, in a dreamlike and often subtly
dreadful manner. Remnants of the past are re-applied to the
present; the past exists within the present, constantly haunting
humanity. Although initially utilized to describe the lingering
traces of Marxism upon society, hauntology has since branched out
in a variety of ways, including the realm of art. Whether by
applying ideas to art as a postmodern critique of culture, or by
simply studying the philosophy, hauntology may duly be used to
explain time in a non-linear fashion and what our position within
culture may actually be.


See: Derrida In 'Ghost Dance', 1999 AD House of Tomorrow,
Mark Fisher aka K-Punk on Hauntology and Capitalist Realism,
1930s vision of futuristic vending machines


Hear: Rouge's Foam - Hauntology: The Past Inside the
Present, Suburban Poltergeists, Ghost Box Records, Joe
Meek & The Blue Boys - I Hear a New World