Ghosts, spectres, revenants : Hauntology as a means to think and feel future

Abstract

Abstract

en Hauntology, as as theoretical perspective, opens a field to discuss presence and absence, visibility and invisibility also beyond Literary, Religious or Visual Studies. It relates the lingering of presumably ‘failed’ ideas to the concept of ‘ghosts’ and specters as the haunting presence of past or simultaneously present futures. The scholars and artists contributing to this volume dis-cussed these conceptual outlines in a series of transdisciplinary events, hosted by the editors. The concept proved particularly fruitful in the context of the discourse on global migration, European border politics and the re-emergences of nationalism and right-wing and straight men politics. Hauntology in this context enables to see that the so-called crises lie somewhere very different: Not in the movement of people but in the dispensation of wealth and access throughout the world. The present we live is embedded in the presence of ghosts and specters, and the traces of imag-inations of different times and spaces may become visible and doable. Art in its various forms is the integral part of the hauntological discussion. As such, the contributions by Kitso Lynn Lelliott (Johannesburg), Simon Vincent (London), Silhouette Tapes (Bayreuth/Berlin), Danilo Barata (Cachoeira), Spoek Mathambo (Johannesburg), Henriette Gunkel (London), Esther Peeren (Amsterdam), Renzo Baas (London), Ute Fendler (Bayreuth), Kathrin Rothe-mund (Bayreuth), Jörg Skiebeleit (Berlin/Flossenbürg), Ibrahim Mahamat Zene (Bayreuth/ N’Djamena) and others sound the field of hauntology for the future. Stipulating hauntological thinking may help to see, feel and listen to worlds radically different from the “capitalist realism” (Fisher) of the contemporary.