Note: This post is part of my on-going “hauntology project” series. You can find all posts in this series using the category “hauntology.”

Hauntology is a seemingly straightforward concept, yet it can be fraught with complexity and misunderstanding. As mentioned previously, French philosopher and deconstructinist Jacques Derrida first coined the term in relation to the fall of Communism in the early 1990s. In a piece for The Guardian, Andrew Gallix wrote that, “Derrida argued that Marxism would haunt Western society from beyond the grave.” The word itself is a play on the word ontology, which is simply the philosophical study of being and existence, and Colin Davis argues that, “[h]auntology supplants [ontology by]…replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive.” Hauntology is literally that: the haunting of our present by that which came before, the past lingering on after it has passed. A ghostly apparition right behind us, in the corner of our mind’s eye.

While I generally hate the word nostalgia, especially in our current cultural age wherein I feel it is overused in reference to our wave of ‘80s themed/tinged shows, I think my favorite brief definition of hauntology, also coming from the Gallix piece, is that it is a “nostalgia for all our lost futures.” To me, this nicely sums up how hauntology works for me on both a personal and global level. When I reflect on the past, on choices, forks in the road, and what I had hoped my life to be and what I wished for the future of our world, my haunted sense comes from those “lost futures.”

For me, a haunted film might make me reflect on my own possible lost futures, or maybe those of humanity, much like my reaction to The Tree of Life I described in part one of this chapter. It came as I was deep in my PhD work and questioning and comparing myself to my grandfather. Would I ever start a family, or does my personality preclude that in an age so obsessed with outward performances of self. Regardless of the film, something about it rips me out of the moment and thrusts me into a ghostly otherworld of the specters of the past and future, like some sort of trippy Christmas Carol. Continue reading “chapter_0: haunted cinemas {part ii – hauntological foundations}” →

Note: This post is part of my on-going “hauntology project” series. You can find all posts in this series using the category “hauntology.”

There is a feeling I get after watching some movies. It is a simultaneous desire to not only immediately rewatch the film, but also to never see it again. It is hard to describe, but it stems from how the movie has so thoroughly torn me down to my bare essence, laid bare all my thoughts and emotions, and caused me to examine that which I work so hard to cover up and ignore just to get through life on a daily basis. My reaction is one of raw feeling. I want to see these movies again because I long to better understand my reaction, and, in the process, understand myself. But at the same time, I never want to see them again because I am afraid of my reaction to them. I am afraid of what the film exposes, and I am afraid of what it might say about me.

These are films that linger in my mind long after I exit the theatre or hit stop on my remote. These are films that haunt me.

And it is time for me to go back to them and examine why I am haunted by them. Continue reading “chapter_0: haunted cinemas {part i – specters of futures passed}” →

Note: This post is part of my on-going “hauntology project” series. You can find all posts in this series using the category “hauntology.”

Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner theorized about what is called the “ritual process,” broken into three phases: separation, liminal, and reincorporation. Turner was building upon the work of many before him but did most of his work in expanding upon the idea of the liminal phase. For him, when one is in the liminal period of the ritual, they are in-between, in the process of becoming something entirely new. If we think of a ritual like the rite of passage into adulthood (such as a bar or bat mitzvah), when one is performing the prescribed rituals they are neither a child nor an adult. They do not belong to the society that they were formerly in, but neither do they belong to the new community that they are entering into. They are in a limbo state, or, put another way, they are “out of joint” with normal temporality and being.

In one of my early papers on film music written for a doctoral seminar on ethnomusicology, I used this three-fold ritual model to describe the process of seeing a movie, with the actual viewing as the liminal phase. You have been separated from society proper when you enter into the movie theatre (indeed, these days you have to be reminded to actually separate yourself from the outside and “silence your cellphone”), then you experience the ritual viewing a film, and when it is over you are reincorporated into society a changed person. You are different. You are now part of the group that has seen that film.

While most films we see do not leave a lasting impression, nor do they truly change how we see the world, a good film will have such an effect. A thoughtful film. A film that lingers and haunts you in the days and weeks that follow. Continue reading “prologue < /life_out_of_joint> {part two}” →