The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility

227 Pages·2014·2.67 MB·English

by  Esther Peeren (auth.)

The Spectral Metaphor
Also by Esther Peeren
INTERSUBJECTIVITIES AND POPULAR CULTURE: Bakhtin and Beyond
POPULAR GHOSTS: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture (co-edited with María
del Pilar Blanco)
REPRESENTATION MATTERS: (Re)Articulating Collective Identities in a
Postcolonial World (co-edited with Anette Hoffmann)
THE SHOCK OF THE OTHER: Situating Alterities (co-edited with Silke Horstkotte)
THE SPECTRALITIES READER: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural
Theory (co-edited with María del Pilar Blanco)
The Spectral Metaphor
Living Ghosts and the Agency
of Invisibility
Esther Peeren
Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
© Esther Peeren 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-37584-1
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First published 2014 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-47748-7 ISBN 978-1-137-37585-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137375858
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To my brother Jeroen – for knowing how to live to the end
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Contents
List of Figures viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Spectral Metaphor 1
1 Forms of Invisibility: Undocumented Migrant Workers
as Living Ghosts in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things and
Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts 33
2 Spectral Servants and Haunting Hospitalities: Upstairs,
Downstairs, Gosford Park and Babel 76
3 Spooky Mediums and the Redistribution of the Sensible:
Sarah Waters’s Affinity and Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black 110
4 Ghosts of the Missing: Multidirectional Haunting
and Self-Spectralization in Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time
and Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park 144
Afterword: How to Survive as a Living Ghost? 180
Notes 185
Bibliography 198
Index 208
vii
Figures
1.1 Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things (2002), screenshot
(cropped) 38
1.2 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 54
1.3 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 56
1.4 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 57
1.5 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 58
1.6 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 58
1.7 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 59
1.8 Nick Broomfield, Ghosts (2006), screenshot 64
2.1 Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel (2006): Amelia and
Mike in the desert 106
2.2 Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel (2006): Long shot of
Amelia (top left) lost in the desert 106
viii
Acknowledgments
This book is inhabited by many absent presences, as citations and
footnotes are by no means adequate to trace all of the influences that
factored in its completion.
My thoughts on the spectral metaphor were focused and sharpened
in the context of a series of thought-provoking ghostly gatherings:
the Ghosts, Gender, History panel at the 2006 American Compara-
tive Literature Association conference in Princeton, convened by Sladja
Blazan; the 2006 Space, Haunting, Discourse conference in Karlstad,
organized by Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wennö; the 2007
Postcolonial Ghosts conference in Montpellier, organized by Judith
Misrahi-Barak; the 2009 Specters, Haunting and Archive graduate con-
ference at the University of Amsterdam, organized by Anthie Argyriou,
Tanja Baudoin, Moosje Goosen, Patricia de Vries and Arnisa Zeqo;
the Uncanny Cosmopolitans panel at the 2009 ACLA conference in
Cambridge, MA, convened by Roy Kamada and Erica Johnson; the 2012
Ghosts workshop in Bern, organized by Virginia Richter and Marijke
Denger-Kähler; and the 2013 Representations of Ghosts in Media and
Popular Culture panel at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies con-
ference in Chicago, convened by Murray Leeder and Simone Natale.
I am also indebted to all the students who participated in my courses
on Re-Reading the Ghost and Death and Mourning as well as the
Spectralities tutorial for stimulating discussions and thought-provoking
papers.
Mieke Bal kept reminding me that this book needed to be written
and provided essential comments on the manuscript, greatly enhancing
its coherence and clarity. María del Pilar Blanco, my fellow traveler in
all matters spectral, helped me think through many of the central ideas
and prevented the final chapter from veering off course. Murat Aydemir,
Marie-Aude Baronian, Stephan Besser, Carolyn Birdsall, Joost de Bloois,
Laura Copier, Rudolph Glitz, Cornelia Gräbner, Peter Hitchcock, Anette
Hoffmann, Silke Horstkotte, David James, Jeroen de Kloet, Christoph
Lindner, Mireille Rosello, Eliza Steinbock, Hanneke Stuit and Astrid Van
Weyenberg provided valuable advice and support, in different forms, all
much appreciated.
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