ABSTRACT
At the outset, it’s perhaps worth noting that, to some extent, there is a confluence here with certain aspects of Jacques Derrida’s thinking regarding ‘hauntology’. Of course, he was articulating ideas quite distinct from those discussed in this chapter, in that, irrespective of the terminology used, Derridean hauntology has little to do with belief in the paranormal per se (see Derrida 1999). As Fredric Jameson has commented, hauntology ‘does not involve the conviction that ghosts exist or that the past (and maybe even the future they offer to prophesy) is still very much alive and at work,
within the living present: all it says, if it can be thought to speak, is that the living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us’ (1999: 39). That said, I want to suggest that this last point relates directly to the persistence of belief in the paranormal.
