This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The spooky is a hugely popular phenomenon in British culture, demonstrated in what now seems like a month-long Halloween celebration, a rich tradition of horror cinema and a growing interest in the uncanny. But there are other manifestations of haunting.
At York St John University, the Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group explores the ways in which the past continues to shape literature, film and all other aspects of contemporary culture and everyday life. Drawing upon philosophy, cultural theory, media studies, literature, health care and sociology, our group examines how traces of what we might think has disappeared often remain present in subtle and unexpected ways. Our work is concerned with ghosts, not in the conventional supernatural sense, but rather with the broader question of how absence can nevertheless exert a powerful presence.
Central to our research is the concept of hauntology, a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx (1993). Hauntology challenges the assumption that the past can ever be fully left behind. Instead, it suggests that histories, memories, ideas and unrealized possibilities linger within the present, shaping contemporary experience.
Closely related is the concept of spectrality, which examines the ways in which absent people, places, cultures and futures continue to make themselves felt—what sociologist Avery Gordon described as Ghostly Matters (1997). Specters, in this sense, are not necessarily paranormal entities, but the traces of things that refuse to disappear completely. It is what the highly influential critic Mark Fisher describes as "a failure of absence or a failure of presence" in his book The Weird and the Eerie (2016).
Over the past two decades, hauntology and spectrality have continued to become increasingly influential within both academic and popular culture. Scholars apply these concepts to subjects as diverse as literature, architecture, politics, heritage, technology, criminology, landscape, photography and media. At the same time, wider public interest in themes of nostalgia, memory, folklore and cultural loss has grown significantly, as is clear from the number of events around the country, including public talks on the history of folk horror and our own York Society of Hauntologists reading group.
From the resurgence of interest in folk horror and forgotten histories to contemporary discussions of nostalgia and heritage, many cultural phenomena can be understood as responses to the persistence of the past within the present. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly. The research group investigates how these hauntological dynamics operate across a range of cultural contexts.
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