Villains, Ghosts, and Roses, or, How to Speak with the Dead

In César Aira's novel Ghosts (Los Fantasmas, 1990) a wife of a workman washes clothes in a bathroom of a semi-finished building when she senses the presence of ghosts:

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021

This eclectic collection presents seventeen contributions, with an introduction and comprehensive indices. The essays encompass a wide range of topics related to ghostly manifestations in world literature, with a special emphasis on the classical tradition-to whose study are devoted the efforts of the editors-as well as literary works in Italian, Spanish, English and French. The editors' aim is to explore "from a polyhedral perspective […] how ghosts have been translated and transformed over the years" (12), and the volume definitely accomplishes this intention, its scope not being limited to the strictly literary, but also including philosophical, religious and ethnographic perspectives. Consuelo Ruiz-Montero's "Ghosts [sic] Stories in the Greek Novel: a Typology Attempt" inquires into the origins of ghosts in Hellenic literature, classifying and evaluating nine stories from Ephesiaca, Callirhoe and Babyloniaca, and concluding with a reflection on Latin literature's encounters with and receptions of Greek texts. Dámaris Romero-González picks up the baton with "The Function of Dream-Stories in Plutarch's Lives,"

This article focuses on the popular representation of the afterlife, or our belief in such, as embodied in the idea of a ghost, a revenant, or a spectre, or in other words, the spirit of the deceased, contrasted with the more animistic spiritual beings epitomising the powers of the natural world. At the time when inter-cultural communication is seen as standard, even the dead are expected to resolve their cultural differences. One way to bring harmony to the culturally diverse world of contemporary spirits, as this paper suggests, is to see them as subject to the same process of globalisation and informatization as the living. Today’s ghosts do not linger aimlessly in deserted castles, nor do they hover impatiently over burial places. More and more often we see them invade virtual worlds of the new media, haunting computers and telecommunication devices, feeling very much at home within the immaterial realms of modern technology we have come to take for granted. If the ghosts were created in our image, ironically, living in the age of information and hyper-reality pushes us to embrace the unseen (now legitimised by science). While the rationality of the industrial age denied the existence of the supernatural, such a simple claim is no longer easy to uphold in the times when we are expected to believe in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and online banking involving invisible funds. No wonder then that in our contemporary world of ghosts, ghosts have become more real than ever.

Historian, 1999

Australian Feminist Studies, 2020

I offer a philosophical examination and feminist queering of the social imaginaries of the dead – with specific reference to recent public disclosures about death in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes – by looking at the issue of spectrality through the work of Jacques Derrida and others. What does it mean to respond to the dead, who, though temporarily forgotten, return to haunt us not as remembered human beings but as remnants or remainders? The normative distinctions between past and present; past, present and future; between living and non-living; absence and presence; and self and other are all made indistinct when displaced by a non-linear temporality. What differential is in play with respect to those who are grievable (in Judith Butler’s terms) and the others who constitute what Giorgio Agamben calls bare life? The strategy of memorialising the re/discovered dead seems inadequate, and I outline an alternative hauntological ethics, as suggested by Derrida, and ask if there are queer social imaginaries that allow us to live well with the dead not because we give respect, but because death itself has been rethought. I close with some speculations arising from Deleuzian vitalism and Rosi Braidotti’s optimistic claim that ‘death frees us into life’. Keywords: Death, social imaginaries, hauntology, temporality, Ireland

Cultura, lenguaje y representación, 2022

Descant, 2011

Journal of American Studies, 2015

Scholars of literary mourning find themselves in an odd position, often taking part in elegy even as they critique it. In her new book Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy, Diana Fuss fully embraces both roles. She offers readers the opportunity to see elegy in action – she notes, “The book itself is as performative as it is purposeful, perhaps comprising its own distinctive form of elegy” (3) – even as she raises new questions about the role of an ancient poetic form in an era of mass media that is, of course, written in prose.

Pharos Journal of Theology, 2021

Since pre-history, humankind has relied on archetypes and myths to describe the ineffable and has made use of fictional and mythological narratives to understand the meaning of life and death. Dying and death are topics reluctantly discussed in open society. Yet, the global COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the process of dying and death, and hence the survival of humankind. By embracing their finitude, humans attempt to create meaningful experiences in life and, therefore, attain “freedom towards death” (Heidegger, 1962: 311). This paper investigates how South African artist Diane Victor uses universally known myths and symbols of Christian iconography within a South African context to create meaning, as well as how she uses medium and exhibition sites to evoke intense emotions within viewers urging them to consider their finitude. By recognising how fragile and vulnerable life is, the artist captures the ephemeral in a poignant way. In this paper, I argue that Victor embrac...

Hans-Georg Gadamer and Georges Florovsky. Two thinkers with two concepts: a fusion of horizons, and neo-patristic synthesis; which seek to disrupt modernity’s strong presence over the past. I would like to look at how in an era of upheaval these two thinkers returned to history—to a rediscovery of history that anchored them through these times. Not only that, but in reclaiming tradition they also found a creativity, a force for innovation through communion.