Maria Del Pilar Blanco

The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory Maria Del Pilar Blanco

Brief Description: "Ghosts, spirits, and specters have played important roles in narratives throughout history and across nations and cultures. A watershed moment for this area of study was the publication of Derrida's Specters of Marx in 1993, marking the inauguration of a "spectral turn" in cultural criticism. Gathering together the most compelling texts of the past twenty years, the editors transform the field of spectral studies with this first ever reader, employing the ghost as an analytical and methodological tool. The Spectralities Reader takes ghosts and haunting on their own terms, as wide-ranging phenomena that are not conscripted to a single aesthetic genre or style. Divided into six thematically discreet sections, the reader covers issues of philosophy, politics, media, spatiality, subject formation (gender, race and sexuality), and historiography. It anthologizes the previously published work of theoretical heavyweights from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, such as Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Giorgio Agamben, alongside work by literary and cultural historians such as Jeffrey Sconce and Roger Luckhurst"--Biographical Note: Maria del Pilar Blanco is University Lecturer in Spanish American Literature and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. She is the author of" Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination" (2012). Esther Peeren is Assistant Professor in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has published articles on Mikhail Bakhtin, queer television, translation theory and the chronotopic dimension of diaspora. Her first book, entitled "Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture: Bakhtin and Beyond" appeared in 2007 with Stanford University Press and she also co-edited a collection of essays entitled "The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities" (2007). Currently, she is developing a project on spectrality in contemporary literature, television and film."Brief Description: The first text to plot the fascinating interdisciplinary history of how haunting, as a mode of analysis and interpretation, has evolved since the early 1990s. Table of Contents: AcknowledgmentsPermissionsMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Introduction: Conceptualizing SpectralitiesI. The Spectral TurnMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Spectral Turn / Introduction Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Spectrographies Colin Davis, Etat Present: Hauntology, Spectres and PhantomsJeffrey Andrew Weinstock, from Introduction: The Spectral TurnJulian Wolfreys, Preface: On Textual HauntingRoger Luckhurst, from The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the "Spectral Turn"II. Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global ContemporaryMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / IntroductionAvery F. Gordon, from her shape and his handAchille Mbembe, from Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos TutuolaArjun Appadurai, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial MumbaiPeter Hitchcock, from ( ) of GhostsIII. The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral MediaMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, The Ghost in the Machine: Spectral Media / IntroductionTom Gunning, To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision Jeffrey Sconce, from Introduction to Haunted Media Akira Mizuta Lippit, from Modes of Avisuality: Psychoanalysis - X-ray - CinemaDavid Toop, from Chair creaks, but no one sits there Allen S. Weiss, Preface: Radio Phantasms, Phantasmic RadioIV. Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Spectral Subjectivities: Gender, Sexuality, and Race / IntroductionGayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from GhostwritingCarla Freccero, Queer Spectrality: Haunting the PastSharon Patricia Holland, from Introduction: Raising the DeadRenee L. Bergland, from Indian Ghosts and American SubjectsV. Possessions: Spectral PlacesMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Possessions: Spectral Places / IntroductionAnthony Vidler, Buried AliveUlrich Baer, To Give Memory a Place: Contemporary Holocaust Photography and the Landscape TraditionDavid Matless, A Geography of Ghosts: The Spectral Landscapes of Mary ButtsGiorgio Agamben, On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among SpectersVI. Haunted HistoriographiesMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Haunted Historiographies / IntroductionJudith Richardson, A History of UnrestJesse Aleman, The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest Alexander Nemerov, Seeing Ghosts: The Turn of the Screw and Art HistoryIndex"Marc Notes: Ghosts, spirits, and specters have played important roles in narratives throughout history and across nations and cultures. A watershed moment for this area of study was the publication of Derrida's Specters of Marx in 1993, marking the inauguration of a spectral turn in cultural criticism. Gathering together the most compelling texts of the past twenty years, the editors transform the field of spectral studies with this first ever reader, employing the ghost as an analytical and methodological tool. The Spectralities Reader takes ghosts and haunting on their own terms, as wide-ranging phenomena that are not conscripted to a single aesthetic genre or style. Divided into six thematically discreet sections, the reader covers issues of philosophy, politics, media, spatiality, subject formation (gender, race and sexuality), and historiography. It anthologizes the previously published work of theoretical heavyweights from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, such as Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Giorgio Agamben, alongside work by literary and cultural historians such as Jeffrey Sconce and Roger Luckhurst--; Provided by publisher.

Contributor Bio:  Peeren, Esther Esther Peeren is Lecturer in Comparative and (Trans-) Cultural Analysis in the Department of Languages and Literatures at the University of Amsterdam. She completed her Ph. D. at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and has published articles on queer television, the chronotopic dimension of diaspora, and the translation theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Jean Laplanche. Her current research explores the spectral dimension of gender and race identities in contemporary literature, film, and television.