Spectral Spaces and Hauntings

This volume explores the spectral qualities of space, using the language of hauntings, to understand how absence, emptiness and the imperceptible can indicate an overwhelming presence of something (that once was, and still is) there. Contributors navigate affective spaces that have the potential to threaten, destabilise and sometimes even comfort; ranging from former sites of violence and ruin to the nostalgic home, from haunting impressions in literature to spectral presences in architecture and photography.

This anthology explores the spatial dimension and politics of haunting. It considers how the ‘appearance’ of absence, emptiness and the imperceptible can indicate an overwhelming presence of something that once was, and still is, (t)here. At its core, the book asks: how and why do certain places haunt us? Drawing from a diversity of mediums, forms and disciplinary approaches, the contributors to Spectral Spaces and Hauntings illustrate the complicated ways absent presences can manifest and be registered. The case studies range from the memory sites of a terrorist attack, the lost home, a vanished mining town and abandoned airports, to the post-apocalyptic wastelands in literary fiction, the photographic and filmic surfaces where spectres materialise, and the body as a site for re-corporealising the disappeared and dead. In ruminating on the afteraffects of spectral spaces on human experience, the anthology importantly foregrounds the ethical and political imperative of engaging with ghosts and following their traces.