Spectrality

Abstract

Spectrality appears a straightforward term, the normative sense of which has to do with ghosts. Along with ghosts come phantoms, phantasms, spooks, poltergeists, apparitions, and, less commonly, revenants. There is an entire “family,” as it were, of specters, various species belonging to the genus haunting (see apparition ). Hardly a concept, the notion of spectrality employed in critical discourse has developed from the work of Jacques Derrida, most prominently his Specters of Marx (1994). To consign the specter, as trope and analytical figure, to this work alone though, is to miss the persistence of the spectral, and of quasi‐related figures such as ghosts, phantoms, phantasms, revenants, arrivants , the Other, and the idea of a “hauntology” in general throughout Derrida's writing, at least since Dissemination , published much earlier than Specters (see postructuralism and the gothic ; theory ).

What lies beneath? Spectrality as a focal phenomenon and a focal theory for strengthening engagement with philanthropic foundations

“…Spectrality covers an entire family of spectres, various terms belonging to the genus ‘haunting’ (Wolfreys, 2016). Other members of that family include apparition, ghost, liminality, phantoms and the uncanny.…”

“…Resonating with Calvino's (1997, p. 19) statement that ‘the more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts’, Davies (2007, p. 101) observes that such spectres ‘flitted through some of the most profound developments in intellectual thought over the last 500 years, and so to discover how they were conceived in the past is to understand how society itself has changed’. Trying to conceive, define or conceptualize spectrality, however, presents a major problem: it is anything but straightforward (Wolfreys, 2016).…”

“…Looking across these scholarly contributions, the challenges of and tensions inherent in trying to conceptualize spectrality are apparent. Neither present nor absent, spectrality criss‐crosses binary loci and foci: it embodies and disembodies visibility and invisibility, past and present, the here and there (Wolfreys, 2016). As such, spectrality eludes conventional attempts at conceptualization; it demands a different approach to thinking (Wolfreys, 2016).…”

Spectrality in Dermot Bolger’s The Townlands of Brazil and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly: A Comparative Approach

“…The idea of the specter, not to say spectrality itself, escapes being defined, even as one believes that one has borne witness to its apparitional instance. (Wolfreys 2013) The quotation points to the elusiveness of spectrality, which may refer to the experience of being haunted in the processes of deciphering literary works. Spectrality corresponds to the subtlety and ephemeral meanings and interpretations which are influenced by various haunting factors pertaining to the characters, the text, the reader and the author.…”

“…And the three last-mentioned concepts have been attributed with various degrees of significance in the creation and comprehension of the meaning of a literary work (see Eco 1990: 182). The Encyclopaedia of the Gothic traces the origin of spectrality to the book Specters of Marx by Derrida (Wolfreys 2013), and the book is referred to by Katarzyna Więckowska in her study Spectres of Men (2014), in which she gives the following account of Derrida's stance: "Derrida describes the spectre as the element disturbing the linearity of time and history, but also making their movement possible since it is only by recognising the spectre as an effective component of the present that the new, always harboured 1 The plays are listed in "The Polish Diaspora in the UK and Ireland: Migration in Literature and Culture since 2004," the website devoted to "the theme of Polish post-accession migration to the British Isles," as reflected in drama (http://archiwum-emigracja.uni.lodz.pl/ en/?page_id=481; see also Ojrzyńska 2016: 50-66). In the section devoted to Ireland, it lists one more play, Mushroom by Paul Meade, and it could be completed with yet another recent work, Shibboleth by Stacey Gregg. in the old, may begin" (Więckowska 2014: 12).…”