Like its close relative psychogeography, hauntology originated in France but struck a chord on this side of the Channel. In Spectres of Marx (1993), where it first appeared, Jacques Derrida argued that Marxism would haunt Western society from beyond the grave. In the original French, "hauntology" sounds almost identical to "ontology", a concept it haunts by replacing - in the words of Colin Davis - "the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive".
Today, hauntology inspires many fields of investigation, from the visual arts to philosophy through electronic music, politics, fiction and literary criticism. At its most basic level, it ties in with the popularity of faux-vintage photography, abandoned spaces and TV series like Life on Mars. Mark Fisher – whose forthcoming Ghosts of My Life (Zer0 Books) focuses primarily on hauntology as the manifestation of a specific "cultural moment" – acknowledges that "There's a hauntological dimension to many different aspects of culture; in fact, in Moses and Monotheism, Freud practically argues that society as such is founded on a hauntological basis: "the voice of the dead father". When you come to think of it, all forms of representation are ghostly.3quarksdaily: The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World
The main success of The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World is that it underlies the electrifying force and vitality of this movement and the profound effect that it had on the modernisation of the visual arts in this country. It was one of Britain’s most exciting and genuinely radical moments in art that swept away cosy Edwardian assumptions of drawing room prettiness. Yet by the time the first Vorticist exhibition took place in June 1915, the slaughter of the First World War was well under way and the idealisation of the machine simply looked, at best , naive; an apology for boy’s toys. Technology, it seemed, was not going to provide the western world with some bright Utopian future but leave millions of dead on the battlefields of Europe.
Publishers and the internet: a changing role | Cory Doctorow | Technology | guardian.co.uk
The internet has created a large number of new kinds of publishers who act to connect works and audiences. These essentially group intosearch engines, then bloggers, curators, and tweeters, and finally suggestion algorithms (such as Amazon's "people who bought this also bought…" recommendations; Reddit's human voting system; Netflix's suggestion system).
In their own way, each of these entities acts to toss works over the attention transoms of audiences. There's not always money involved, and when there is, the entity that gets the bulk of the money differs for each example. But generating and distributing money are no more essential to publishing than printing or distribution are. Collecting societies like the PRS gather lots of money on behalf of musical performers but do no "publishing" to speak of; meanwhile, the people who pay them may be doing rather a lot of publishing, as when a hot club plays an obscure track for its impossible-to-reach, rarefied customers.
Publishing – including film and music and game publishing – has always been first and foremost about connecting works and audiences, because without an audience, there's no reason to improve a work, to duplicate it, to distribute it, nor to sell it. But for the first time, it's possible to "publish" without engaging with any other part of the process, and that is a weird and wonderful thing. It changes the power relationship between publishers and creators and investors – think of the musician who storms out of her label deal, puts her own work online and relies on Amazon or Magnatune or an influential MP3 blogger to promote the work to her fans.
50 Impressive Literary Figures You Should Follow on Twitter | Accredited Online Colleges.com
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Mat Johnson: University of Houston professor and author of the acclaimed Pym tweets sophisticated, whip-smart and witty observations on everything from writing to politics to daily phenomena.
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Christopher Moore: Irreverent writer Christopher Moore, known for his Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal humorous takes on the horror genre, keeps a very funny feed.
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Maya Angelou: She may not update much (or have a verification seal), but this sterling former Poet Laureate and powerful activist, memoirist and educatory still commands a right fair amount of social media respect.
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Saul Williams: Saul Williams masterfully blends poetry and music (usually hip-hop) for amazing slam performances; his published works still contain the same punch. Follow his Twitter for writing snippets and information on upcoming projects.
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William Gibson: Of course one of cyberpunk’s progenitors would make his way to Twitter! William Gibson is generous with retweets and replies, but he does talk about his own work as well as things piquing his interest.
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James Lileks: The former journalist and front man of the Institute of Official Cheer delivers his signature mix of gleeful, campy kitsch and pop culture commentary in 140 characters or less.
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Chuck Palahniuk: Watch the acclaimed Fight Club author’s Twitter for the latest updates on appearances and projects, as well as some thoughts and fan interaction.
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Warren Ellis: Even tweeps who’ve never once scanned a Warren Ellis book, comic, essay, article or blog post still follow his feed; he’s just that hilariously absurd, intelligent and profane.
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Neil Gaiman: Neil Gaiman’s willingness to write for kids, young adults and adults alike nets him a massive fanbase; his prodigious talents keep them hanging on to his every tweet — and he certainly keeps an incredibly active space!
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Doug Coupland: Most of the Generation X and Hey, Nostradamus! writer’s feed is occupied with brief thoughts and the occasional link.
Paris Review – Will Self on ‘Walking to Hollywood’, Jonathan Gharraie
Were you drawing on a tradition of writing about the city which has been brought up to date by the psychogeographers—people like Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair?
There are all sorts of proto-psychogeographers, from Blake to De Quincey to Dickens even, people who’ve all been walkers in the city, so I think that there is a big tradition of walking and writing about it. For Ackroyd and Sinclair, it’s the city that has the psyche. It becomes kind of mystical; it becomes the idea of the city as a person. So psychogeography becomes a kind of psychoanalysis of the person that is the place.
What sort of influence does Jonathan Swift have on you?
I think he is absolutely fucking timeless. Whether it’s that he’s so deeply encoded in the culture, or whether it’s just that he got it all right. When the Irish banks collapsed, they’re still collapsed, I was thinking it would be quite amusing to write something for Ireland and I was looking at A Modest Proposal and thought about updating it. Rewrite it for the current Irish imbroglio. But then I read it again and realized it was completely up to date, there’s absolutely nothing to do to it for it to apply seamlessly to the current situation. Satire is always about assaulting hierarchies; it’s always about—adapting Mencken’s phrase about journalism—afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, and if it doesn’t do that, it’s not satire. And he got all the fundamental ways of doing that sorted out a long time ago. I think that satire is much more metrical than other literary forms. It’s quite precise. It’s no surprise in a way that it could be formulated in relation to hierarchy quite early on. I’m not constantly reading Swift, or constantly going back to him, but he’s the Shakespeare of satirists in that way.
