Media, Cultural Memory and Hauntology

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will explore the ways in which media artefacts (film, television, literature, music, etc.) are ‘haunted’ by spectres of prior events and artistic manifestations. As William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’. We wish to consider this statement in relation to an array of media forms.

We call upon authors to raise questions specific to the analysis of cultural memory and cultural hauntings, to consider the ways in which art and media are tethered to the past, and to consider, as Mark Fisher noted, the ‘failure of the future’ and the ‘compulsion to repeat’.

Possible questions to be addressed include the following:

• How far do contemporary ‘media’ texts discuss/represent a ‘failure of the future’ and cultural stasis?
• How does the philosophical concept of hauntology provide a framework for analysis of the contemporary media landscape?
• How are contemporary media artefacts representing and/or reconstructing recent cultural history?
• In controlling representations of the past, do contemporary texts construct an idealised or doomed future rooted in the past?
• Does the ‘compulsion to repeat’ problematise notions of originality?

Scholars and practitioners of all forms of media are invited to submit proposals for this Special Issue. Theoretical, empirical, and practice-based are all welcome.

Dr. Keith McDonald
Prof. Dr. Robert Edgar
Guest Editors

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