Mundane hauntings: commuting through the phantasmagoric working-class spaces of Manchester, England

Abstract

This paper explores the haunted realms of everyday mundane space. Based on the author's journey to work by car, a series of sites that evoke an absent-presence of working-class life are depicted. It is argued that these spaces, including housing estates, old railways, patches of derelict ground and old cinemas, are replete with ghostly effects. Drawing upon the examples provided, the article goes on to examine in more detail these hauntings, focusing upon the sensual, half-recognizable and imaginary qualities that are provoked by absences, vestiges and peculiar recontextualizations. It is contended that such sites are particularly haunted because unlike the more dynamic spaces of regenerated urban space, the past lingers in people, spaces, textures and things and is not so rapidly disposed. The paper concludes by investigating the ambiguities produced by the ghostly absent-presence of the working class, both in lived space and in academic discourse, and evaluates the advantages of spectral indeterminacy.

Homes and Paths: Notes on Finding Place in Consumer Anthropology

“…They may be haunted, in the sense of embodying intersections of memory, unfinished business, and stories of loss and desire, where the past infuses the present with unsettling presence (Edensor 2008). Movements between the home's more visible spaces and its more invisible ones also implicate remembering and forgetting (KorosecSerfaty 1984).…”

Walking as Method: Toward Methodological Forthrightness and Comparability in Urban Geographical Research

“…By walking we do not mean just the act of moving through the city on foot but also include related processes of standing, casual interaction, and observation. We draw on a well-established intellectual lineage in emphasizing walking in contrast to other means of moving in urban contexts (Anderson 2004;Blomley 2010;Edensor 2010;Middleton 2011). Certainly, facilitating pedestrianism is one of the core tasks of the built environment; although driving and biking are important modes of mobility, even late modern "car-centric" cities are working to include improved infrastructure that enables walking as a core mode of everyday circulation in areas of core density (Middleton 2011).…”

“…Walking has long contributed insights to qualitative urban research, helping us generate geographical questions informed by observation of the use of space over time that might not be easy to capture through other methods (Anderson 2004;Moles 2008;Edensor 2010). In particular, walking offers an opportunity for serendipitous discovery of unexpected contexts for social and spatial conjunction.…”

“…Geographers have increasingly focused attention on walking as an object of study because of its ubiquity and impact on urban experience (Edensor 2008(Edensor , 2010Middleton 2009;DeLyser and Sui 2013). Our aim is not to privilege walking but to call for more attention to (and reporting of) walking that urban researchers might already practice as both a precursor to and by-product of other ongoing research practices.…”

Looking Forward, Looking Back

“…As part of this work of reassessment archives, objects (belongings) and, architecture have important roles to play as Bryant (2014) has explored in contemporary Cyprus where civil war, partition and the partial lifting of the partition make memory and ownership (current and future) fragile, politically sensitive and disturbing (uncanny). Starting with familiar suburban landscapes in Northern England Edensor (2008) talks of "mundane hauntings" when discussing how evidence of other lives, past ways of occupying space, obtrude like palimpsests through the everyday. Thus architecture is a case of pasts affecting presents, and, like it or not, our buildings are full of ghosts (see Collins, 2015).…”