Spectral Spaces and Hauntings

This anthology explores the spatial dimension and politics of haunting. It considers how the ‘appearance’ of absence, emptiness and the imperceptible can indicate an overwhelming presence of something that once was, and still is, (t)here. At its core, the book asks: how and why do certain places haunt us? Drawing from a diversity of mediums, forms and disciplinary approaches, the contributors to Spectral Spaces and Hauntings illustrate the complicated ways absent presences can manifest and be registered. The case studies range from the memory sites of a terrorist attack, the lost home, a vanished mining town and abandoned airports, to the post-apocalyptic wastelands in literary fiction, the photographic and filmic surfaces where spectres materialise, and the body as a site for re-corporealising the disappeared and dead. In ruminating on the afteraffects of spectral spaces on human experience, the anthology importantly foregrounds the ethical and political imperative of engaging with ghosts and following their traces.

"How might contact with geographies of absence shift our taken-for-granted understandings of space and time? In this timely intervention, a range of scholars and artists explore how the memories, experiences and material environments of particular places have the power to haunt the social imaginary and our individual psyches. By reanimating the realities of abandoned places, ruins and the disappeared, the authors of Spectral Spaces and Hauntings call us to attend to the ‘work that needs to be done to prevent future injustices’." -- Karen E. Till, Maynooth University, Ireland"A timely and important collection of incisive and insightful essays which address some of the most urgent and important issues which concern scholars working in memory studies, and humanities more generally." -- Anindya Raychaudhuri, University of St Andrews, UK

Christina Lee is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University, Australia.