Applied Hauntologies: Spectral Crossings and Interdisciplinary Deconstructions

Abstract

This issue of AVANT is dedicated to hauntology, an approach originally defined by Jacques Derrida as a "logic of haunting" that is "larger and more powerful than an ontology or a thinking of Being," and that "harbor[s] within itself, but like circumscribed places or particular effects, eschatology and teleology themselves" (Derrida, 1994, p. 10). At a most general level, hauntology is a study of spectrality and spectres-that is, entities and processes that exceed any definite categorization; accordingly, it inevitably questions the established notions of being, thereby transforming the status of the objects and subjects of knowledge, and contesting the possibility of objectivity. The very idea of spectres-positioned as they are between worlds and times-disrupts the conventional means of measuring time and space, as well as all kinds of dichotomous conceptualizations, including "the sharp distinction between the real and the unreal, the actual and the inactual, the living and the non-living, being and non-being" (Derrida, 1994, p. 11). Significantly for the articles collected in this issue, the figure of the spectre questions the divisions between texts, and the separation between the individual and the social/communal, thus palpably demonstrating the impossibility of examining any concept or text independently of others. Ac cordingly, instead of looking for certainties, the scholar of spectres looks for sites of crossings, borrowings, and contaminations, re-discovering traces of other times, places, and beings in the seemingly solid here and now, and producing somewhat melancholic accounts of a culture that is both already haunted and potentially haunting.The publication of Derrida's Spectres de Marx in 1993-itself an interdisciplinary study embracing philosophy and its various sub-disciplines, ontology and ethics in particular, political science, history, literary theory and criticism, and psychoanalysis-brought about a number of other interdisciplinary publications, uses and appropriations, reaching beyond the scope of the original book and crossing into the fields already partly occupied by the

Mommy brain in the United States

“…Rather than a singular phenomenon perceived differently by each mother, the multiple realities of mommy brain dovetail in surprising ways, illuminating commonalities within stories. These similarities highlight culturally salient aspects of mommy brain and amplify the need for knowing mommy brain differently and otherwise (Lorek‐Jezińska and Więckowska, 2017).…”

“…The experiencer (mother) is often blind to an outsider's vantage and vice versa. A single study can never account for all sociocultural variables; however, deeply investigating the variables that mothers themselves deem most important allows for new potentialities of mommy brain research that reside between empirical certainties and cultural norms (Lorek‐Jezińska and Więckowska, 2017).…”