#patrick mcnally

MF:

I think Memoradelia only captures part of it. The spectral dimension is a very important part of Hauntology. This idea of lost futures isn’t about memory, not straightforwardly anyway, it’s about anticipation, it’s about… For me a key aspect of Hauntology is the age of the virtual, as I call it. The capacity of the virtual to effect things. A lot of what we call spectral, ghostly, can be classified under that term. The reason why the concept of haunting seems so apposite in the 21st century, was the sense of we live in the ruins of lost futures, really, the future failed to arrive, in the 21st century. Not a specific detrimental future with had in mind failed to arrive, but the sense of futurity had disappeared from 21st century life. It’s that pang, that longing, for a future that failed to arrive, seems to me one of the curial dimensions.

RJLH:

A sense of having lost-out, a sense of loss.

MF:

Yes, a paradoxical loss, the loss of something that never was, that you never had.

RJLH:

As I’m sure you’re aware, the word/term Hauntology finds its origins in (Jacques) Derrida’s 1993 document Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale (Éditions Galilée). Published in English the following year as Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International (Routledge).

”To haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with the concepts of being and time. That is what we would be calling here a Hauntology. Ontology opposes it only in a movement of exorcism. Ontology is a conjuration”

In Spectres of Marx, the word/term Hauntology is just kind of thrown up, but I wonder if you’ve ever seen Ken McMullen’s 1983 film Ghost Dance?

MF:

I have the DVD you know.

RJLH:

Derrida appears as himself in the film and expands a little on his thinking regarding haunting, mourning, etc. I feel I must make it clear at this point, that, despite the fact that Jacques’ is responsible for coming up with the word/term Hauntology, I am not a great fan of him or his work. Nonetheless, he’s someone who throws up ideas and ideas are always good.

“…instead of diminishing the realm of ghosts, as does any scientific or technical thought, is leaving behind the age of ghosts as part of the feudal age, which is somewhat primitive technology, as a certain perinatal age. Whereas I believe that ghosts are part of the future and that the modern technology … like cinematography and telecommunications enhances the power of ghosts and their ability to haunt us…”

“You know, ghosts don’t just appear… they come back. In french we talk about them “returning”. Now that presupposes a memory of the past that has never taken the form of the present…“

MF:

The opacity, the intentional opacity, ‘nothing is what it’s supposed to be’, etc. The whole underlying sentiment of pious indeterminacy, as I’ve described it before, that kind of priestly dimension to it, which I also don’t find too appealing.

It’s also interesting for me where the encounter with Derrida came from, which for me was not initially through philosophy, but through music journalism anyway. It was via people like Ian Penman, Mark Sinker, who would frequently evoked Derrida’s concepts in the pages of the New Musical Express, in the 80s. Which now seems slightly crazy that that could ever have been the case.

RJLH:

As a young man buying Sounds every week, one thing leads to another. You take an interest in a band, a musician, maybe musician isn’t quite the right word. Take Throbbing Gristle for example. You get into Throbbing Gristle, you read an article, or an interview and before you know it you’re taking an interest in William S. Burroughs or Aleister Crowley. Do you think this process is still going on today?

MF:

I don’t think so. What I would call popular modernism, from the late 50s through to the end of the 90s, it was a particular kind of hub, perhaps a threshold which linked, opened up lots of other spaces. So yes, you would find out about literature, theory, philosophy, through music. Music wasn’t just music. For that period anyway, there was a music culture, rather than music as such, that could operate that way, I’m not sure it does in quite the same way now.

RJLH:

All is not lost though. Your interview with Burial comes to mind, where he mentions M.R. James.

MF:

It was pure luck that Burial mentioned that, right at the end of the interview. I was just about to wrap it up and he started talking about M.R. James, which was really interesting, yeah.

MF:

I should send you my piece on Alan Garner.

RJLH:

Some of Alan’s work, The Owl Service in particular, ticks a lots of boxes for me. If one sees any of this as a box ticking exercise. Pre-Hauntology, the way I saw the world, with its interconnections, as I still see it now, I would try to explain this phenomenon, this phenomenology, as a kind of Otherness.

Back in 2011, as part of its Literary Walks specials, the long running BBC Radio 4 program Ramblings went on a walk with Alan around his beloved Alderley Edge. And as he walked, in conversation with the shows host Claire Balding, Alan made numerous references to this Otherness.

MF: