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Oct 11, 2016

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 PresentSuburban Poltergeists, Ghost Box Records, Joe Meek & The Blue Boys - I Hear a New World