- Author
- Not stated (Wikipedia contributors)
- Published
- Last edited 26 August 2026
- Kind
- Encyclopedia article, collaboratively written
- Original
- en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology
- Subject
- Art movements and theory
- Themes
- What lasts, How forms evolve
What it is
Wikipedia contributors wrote this reference article. It defines hauntology and traces it to Derrida's 1993 book Spectres of Marx. It lists later fields that adopted the term.
What it says
- The term joins haunting and ontology. Derrida introduced it in 1993.
- The word appears only three times in that book, and writers define it inconsistently.
- Derrida built the idea on deconstruction, which denies any pure point of origin.
- In the 2000s, Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds applied it to music about lost futures.
- Anthropologists use hauntology as a method, including Justin Armstrong's proposed "spectral ethnography".
- Martha and Bruce Lincoln split literal primary hauntings from secondary ones standing for trauma.
What evidence it gives
The article cites journals, books and press pieces for many claims. It quotes Derrida's commentators Buse and Scott in one block. It runs no tests. It carries a tag marking one citation as failing verification.
Interests and limits
Wikipedia is open to editing, so the text reflects its contributors at one date. The article notes that the concept is hard to pin down. It treats the philosophy only briefly and gives music its own separate article.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Vorticism. Fisher and Reynolds apply hauntology to music about lost futures. Vorticism offers a case from an earlier century. It announced a future in July 1914, and war began weeks later. Richard Cork counts 38 of its 49 shown works as later missing.