On Spectrality

Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon

By: David Ratmoko

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Hardcover | 8 December 2005

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Hardcover
163 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.8 x 23.6 x 1.5

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In this bold and highly original work, David Ratmoko offers an analysis of haunting in the history of European literature, law, and politics, in the wake of Derrida's notion of 'spectrality'. Interested in figures of redemption from guilt, he traces the rise of canonical literature through the history of an encryption or transcoding that has produced such fantastic compromises as Exodus, Greek tragedy, Dante's Comedia, and Shakespeare's Hamlet as well as the conversion into capitalism. Addressing the issue of ghosts through our modern crisis of legitimacy, as raised by Benjamin, Schmitt, and Kafka, Ratmoko explores Freud's idea of traumatic fantasy in its capacity of driving the progress of spirituality or spectrality in the Judeo-Christian world.

Industry Reviews

'On Spectrality' is a remarkable thesis that has captured my interest from the start. It deserves to be read carefully and I have benefited greatly. (Jacques Derrida, Former Director of Studies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) This bold and suggestive thesis has a wide range of implications for both literary and cultural studies. Among them are the myriad kinds of haunting in our history, which taken together remind us that the past does not die but rather returns in a spectral form. In that sense, its argument counters the discourse of belatedness by reminding the reader of the endangered but vital future that poetry shares with politics. 'On Spectrality' is an outstanding book, written with acuity and imagination, and deserves the highest praise. (Peter Hughes, University of Zurich)

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