Hauntology : The Presence of the Past in Twenty-First Century English Literature

"Post-millennial writings function as a useful prism through which we can understand contemporary English culture and its compulsion to revisit the immediate past. The critical practice of hauntology turns to the past in order to make sense of the present, to understand how we got to this place and how to build a better future. Since the Year 2000, popular culture has been inundated with representations of those who occupy a space between being and non-being and defy ontological criteria. This Pivot explores a range of contemporary English literatures - from the poetry of Simon Armitage and the drama of Jez Butterworth, to the fiction of Zadie Smith and the stories of David Peace - that collectively unite to represent a twenty-first century world full of specters, reminiscence and representations of spectral encounters. These specters become visible and significant as they interact with a range of social, political and economic discourses that continue to speak to the contemporary period. The enduring fascination with the spectral offers valuable insights into a contemporary English culture in which spectral manifestations signal towards larger social anxieties as well as to specific historical events and recurrent cultural preoccupations. The specter confronts the contemporary with the necessity of participation, encouraging the realisation that we must engage with it in order to create meaning. Narrative agency is the primary motivating force of its return, and the repetition of the specter functions to highlight new meanings and perspectives. Harnessing hauntology as a lens through which to consider the specters haunting twenty-first century English writings, this Pivot examines the emergence of a vein of hauntological literature that profiles the pervasive presence of the past in our new millennium."--Publisher's description Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 Introduction. Hauntology: Ghosts of Our Lives 9 Staging Specters 12 Temporal Disjunctures 15 Speak to the Specter 17 Spectral Agency 19 Now/Then/Now/Then 21 Ghost Writing 23 Chapter 1: The (Spectral) Turn of the Century in Simon Armitage’s ‘Killing Time’ (1999) 32 Y2K 33 About Time 36 No News Is Good News 38 One Word from War 41 Future Time 44 Chapter 2: Phantasmal Intertexts: Literary Spectrality in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (2009) 50 Green and Pleasant Land 51 Absent Presence 55 Progressive Patriot 58 Phantasmal Intertexts 62 Chapter 3: ‘Ghostpitality’: Specters of the Self in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) 66 Specters of the Self 68 Local Haunts 72 Double Agent 78 Visitation (Redux) 85 Chapter 4: Authorial Afterlives: Ghost-writing in David Peace’s PATIENT X (2018) 89 The Life and Death of the Author 90 ‘Everyone Is a Ghost Now’ 96 Second Self 100 The Afterlife of the Author 104 Conclusion. ‘In Return’: Towards a Hauntology of Twenty-First Century English Literature 110 Bibliography 116 Index 122 Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Introduction. Hauntology: Ghosts of Our Lives (Katy Shaw)....Pages 1-23 Chapter 1 The (Spectral) Turn of the Century in Simon Armitage’s ‘Killing Time’ (1999) (Katy Shaw)....Pages 25-42 Chapter 2 Phantasmal Intertexts: Literary Spectrality in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (2009) (Katy Shaw)....Pages 43-58 Chapter 3 ‘Ghostpitality’: Specters of the Self in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) (Katy Shaw)....Pages 59-81 Chapter 4 Authorial Afterlives: Ghost-writing in David Peace’s PATIENT X (2018) (Katy Shaw)....Pages 83-103 Conclusion. ‘In Return’: Towards a Hauntology of Twenty-First Century English Literature (Katy Shaw)....Pages 105-110 Back Matter ....Pages 111-119