Meaning of hauntology | Babel Free

Definitions

A concept involving the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past.

uncountable

Examples

“So immersed is Marx's rhetoric in the Gothic that Derrida in Specters of Marx creates a neologism for Marx's ontology, transforming it into “hauntology.” Marx argues that in a market economy a ghostly web of simulacra of relationships, exchanges, and circulation hovers over the whole system, indicating that people have had their humanity drained out of them by capitalism and that they are left as ghostly shells.”

“The suspicion is inescapable: part of the reason why hauntology should appeal to us so much now is that, unconsciously, and increasing consciously, we suspect that something has died.”

CEFR level