hauntology

Noun

hauntology (uncountable)

1. A concept involving the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past.
   • So immersed is Marx's rhetoric in the Gothic that Derrida in Specters of Marx creates a neologism for Marx's ontology, transforming it into “hauntology.” Marx argues that in a market economy a ghostly web of simulacra of relationships, exchanges, and circulation hovers over the whole system...[2005, Gail Turley Houston, From Dickens to Dracula: Gothic, Economics, and Victorian Fiction, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 85
   • The suspicion is inescapable: part of the reason why hauntology should appeal to us so much now is that, unconsciously, and increasing consciously, we suspect that something has died.2018, Mark Fisher, “is pop undead?”, in Darren Ambrose, editor, K-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), London: Repeater Books, →ISBN