2022/07/27 by Byron J. Good, Andrea Chiovenda, Sadeq Rahimi · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
paper · doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-101819-110224
openalex publication_date 2022/07/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Since the appearance of Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International in 1994, there has been an outpouring of writing in cultural studies around the themes of hauntology and spectralities. This article asks broadly whether a form of hauntology has emerged within anthropology; if so, when and how it has appeared; and what constitutes such a field as distinctive. This article asks what comprises being haunted as a specific affective state within anthropological writing, what theory of the subject is assumed by such writings, and what distinguishes ethnographic analyses that do not dismiss the presence of ghosts as simply cultural beliefs or literary fictions, as is common in cultural studies. It reviews the literature on the haunting remains of traumatic violence, examines writing that juxtaposes hauntological and ontological theorizing, describes the appearance of an incipient hauntological voice within ethnographic writing, and concludes with a discussion of the emergence of a hauntological ethics.