Most people know the plot outline of A Christmas Carol; in it, a greedy businessman is visited by three ghosts and taught the error of his ways so he can change himself and make amends. It's an understatement to say it's a popular story, and one enjoyed by generations. So on this Christmas Eve, I figured it would be fitting to talk about ghosts since ghosts are a central conceit of A Christmas Carol. However, this isn't the story of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present or Future. Rather, this is a story about the Ghost of Christmas-That-Never-Was, and how despite never existing, they affect the modern world anyway.
Hauntology
Let's start by defining terms. Hauntology is a neologism that combines two words: haunting and ontology. Jacques Derrida coined it in his 1993 book, Specters of Marx. In that book, Derrida offers up a slippery definition but it can generally be defined as:
"The concept of an idea projected from a past that never existed."
More specifically, it's when there's a disjunction between temporal and ontological concepts of presence and the metaphysics of presence winds up replaced with a differed non-origin. If you read that and thought "yep, those are words alright," don't worry. A detailed understanding of the concept as Derrida intended requires understanding deconstruction theory, and that won't be necessary here, I promise. We aren't going to be looking at the ontology so much as we are the effects of these concepts of ideas from a "Past-That-Never-Was" and exactly what this "Past-That-Never-Was" is.
There's some clever wordplay at work, for those who are curious. In French, hantologie [ɑ̃tɔlɔʒi] and ontologie [ɔ̃tɔlɔʒi] are near-homophones.
This term, hauntology, is employed mostly in cultural critique. There's an entire genre of music called vaporwave that's often invoked in these discussions; vaporwave samples older and employes retro-style instruments like synthesizers and the like. The result is a 1980s-style aesthetic, but the 1980s that it references isn't the real 1980s.
To illustrate how it is the concept of an idea rather than a simple reflection of the past, let's keep focused on music genres. Sure, synthesizers were popular in the 1980s, but they were far from the only genre of music and they didn't even feature prominently. Rap music was coming into its own in the 1980s, and no other decade save for the 1990s could ever match the 1980s in terms of pop music output. Not only that, heavy metal and hair-metal were also popular as well: Metallica released the Black album at the tail end of that period (1990), and that was the culmination of all their earlier work throughout the 1980s and 1970s. Guns N' Roses was formed in 1985; Bon Jovi in 1983; Motley Crue in 1981; and some bands from the 1970s dominated the charts, including Queen, AC/DC, Van Halen, Def Leopard, Aerosmith, REO Speedwagon, and many others. And while we often associate disco with the 1970s, it was widespread early in the 1980s, as well.
So the use of analog synthesizers, library music, and recording surface noise to highlight the decaying nature of the medium itself is part of the nostalgia for a future that never came to past, fed by the concept of a past that never existed.
And that's our segue into our main point.
GOP: Ghosts of the Past(-That-Never-Was)
During my extended 6 year hiatus, a lot happened in the United States. One of those things was the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.
What's particularly interesting within the context of this conversation about hauntology is his motto: "Make America Great Again." A lot has been made of this, and most people are at least vaguely aware that Reagan used this motto during his 1980s bid against Jimmy Carter. And has been pointed out before, there was never a time when America was great; the best time to be American is today (well, maybe not today; life expectancy is falling nationwide, the number of uninsured has increased for the first time in several years, corporations that make literal billions have negative income tax rates thanks to Trump's plan while Trump's administration is cutting food stamps to hundreds of thousands of needy people, our maternal mortality rate is one of the highest among the developed world, 20% of Americans drink water that isn't safe, and 500,000 kids could needlessly lose free lunch at school because "pro-lifers" care more about judge appointments than actual morality. And let's not even talk about global warming and Greenlandic ice melt; that's going to be a problem for later, mark my words). And yet, despite this, right now is still the best time to ever be alive.
So what, precisely is there to "make great again," if right now is the best that human history has ever been? And even if things suck in the United States because a significant amount of population decided to roll the dice on Pumpkin Spice Berlusconi, things are objectively the best they've ever been at a global level.
There's a specter haunting the United States, and it's the specter of a future that never manifested projected by a past that never existed, stalking the fevered dreams and palingenetic ultranationalist mythmaking grandeurisms that shape the rhetoric of modern right-wing politics. One thing to remember about Reagan is that Reagan wasn't just offering the promise of a past, his revolution was the promise of a future, too; a Mephistophelian bargain that by joining his revolution, you could have the future, the American dream, promised to you, present in an idealized past that never existed. Reagan's promise of a better future that never manifested is enhanced by his appropriation of a past that never existed, and in appropriating his 1980s promise and image, we're also appropriating his projected image of the 1950s and 1960s, and the future that failed to manifest, as a result[1].
Really, the "better" (for this crowd, anyway) was a time when blacks and women knew their place when white Christian men were at the top of the social food chain, and when they didn't have to share power with anyone other than other white Christian men who they could assume agreed with them (or, at least, wouldn't disagree with them). And if you think about it, their projected image of the past betrays this, since their concept of the past is often one free from minorities or women in power, which they then justify with historiography that can be considered specious at best. It's no coincidence that this movement found its footing in the shadow of a moderately right-of-center black president they paint as a "socialist" for using the Republican healthcare plan as his centerpiece legislation. There's a reason why their image of the 1980s and 1960s doesn't discuss the race politics that shaped those two decades as deeply as they did, and it's because they're on the opposite side of those politics from men like Dr. Martin Lurther King Jr. and Malcolm X; the latter not being as extreme as they pretend him to be, and the former being more. Why when they discuss the South, they avoid talking about slavery or attempt to whitewash it. Why they can pretend to be the party of Teddy Roosevelt, despite Roosevelt being the first president in US history to suggest a universal healthcare plan and an 8-hour day, among other things that would be derided as "socialist" today by the very same people.
But then, a past that never was being viewed as extant is what shapes the very idea of hauntology. Without it, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
The Past That Isn't
Now, a lot of this is anchored in nostalgia. That's just natural as far as humans go; we've always pined for a simpler time when we were children before we had adult responsibilities. Especially when society seems to go out of its way to make fulfilling those responsibilities difficult at times and outright impossible at others. But we're sitting at the junction of projecting idealized pasts that never were and their futures that failed to manifest into a strong nostalgia for a time when things were "better", and on one side of this juncture are reactionary dominionist Christian nationalists who want to usurp the United States with their own twisted idea of Gilead, and on the other are white nationalists and fascists who admire Donald Trump for refusing to hide behind dog whistles anymore. And the only way out is forward. And if we fight hard we might make things "better than they were", as opposed to "better again," then I think killing the Past-That-Never-Was is a worthwhile sacrifice to make for the Future-That-Might-Still-Be.
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
- Carl Sagan, A Demon-Haunted World
Post Script
Hard to believe it's been more than 6 years since I last posted. Not very professional on my part, but life is that thing that gets in the way when you have plans. That said, I do have plans to post more, if not regularly. Things are going to undergo a bit of an overhaul now that I'm back, but I don't really have a direction in mind, so it'll be a wait and see approach.
Anyway, it feels good to be back.
[1] as an interesting sidebar, I wonder if this is why right-wingers insist violent crime rates haven't fallen when they clearly have; it's part of that specter of the 1980s, a decade shaped by violent crime.
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