French Studies, Vol. LIX, No.

3, 373 379
doi:10.1093/fs/kni143

ETAT PRESENT
HAUNTOLOGY, SPECTRES AND PHANTOMS
COLIN DAVIS

Spectrality does not involve the conviction that ghosts exist or that the past (and maybe even
the future they offer to prophesy) is still very much alive and at work, within the living
present: all it says, if it can be thought to speak, is that the living present is scarcely as
self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and
solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us.3

The second, chronologically prior yet less acknowledged, source of

hauntology is the work of psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria
Torok, especially in some of the essays collected in LEcorce et le noyau

References are to Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Paris, Galilee, 1993).

Introduction, in Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derridas Spectres de Marx, ed. by
Michael Sprinker (LondonNew York, Verso, 1999), p. 2. For political responses to Derridas
Spectres de Marx, see the essays in this collection; see also Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ghostwriting,
Diacritics, 25 (1995), 65 84, and Ernesto Laclau, The Time is Out of Joint, Diacritics, 25 (1995), 86 96.
3
Marxs Purloined Letter, in Ghostly Demarcations, pp. 26 67 (p. 39).
2

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Hauntology, as a trend in recent critical and psychoanalytical work, has

two distinct, related, and to some extent incompatible sources. The word
itself, in its French form hantologie, was coined by Jacques Derrida in his
Spectres de Marx (1993), which has rapidly become one of the most controversial and influential works of his later period.1 Marxist and leftleaning readers have been less than enthusiastic about Derridas claim
that deconstruction was all along a radicalization of Marxs legacy, their
responses ranging, as Michael Sprinker puts it, from skepticism, to ire,
to outright contempt.2 But in literary critical circles, Derridas rehabilitation of ghosts as a respectable subject of enquiry has proved to be
extraordinarily fertile. Hauntology supplants its near-homonym ontology,
replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost
as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive.
Attending to the ghost is an ethical injunction insofar as it occupies the
place of the Levinasian Other: a wholly irrecuperable intrusion in our
world, which is not comprehensible within our available intellectual frameworks, but whose otherness we are responsible for preserving. Hauntology
is thus related to, and represents a new aspect of, the ethical turn of
deconstruction which has been palpable for at least two decades. It has
nothing to do with whether or not one believes in ghosts, as Fredric
Jameson explains:

374

COLIN DAVIS

4
References are to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, LEcorce et le noyau (Paris, Flammarion, 1987;
first published 1978). See also Abraham and Torok, Cryptonymie: le verbier de lhomme aux loups (Paris,
Flammarion, 1976).
5
Fors: les mots angle s de Nicolas Abraham et Maria Torok, in Abraham and Torok, Cryptonymie: le
verbier de lhomme aux loups, pp. 7 73.
6
For a review of work in this area, see Claude Nachin, Les Fantomes de lame: a` propos des heritages
psychiques (Paris, LHarmattan, 1993), pp. 175 202. See also Nachin, Le Deuil damour (Paris, Editions
universitaires, 1989); Didier Dumas, LAnge et le fantome: introduction a` la clinique de limpense genealogique
(Paris, Minuit, 1985); Serge Tisseron, Secrets de famille: mode demploi (Paris, Editions Ramsay, 1996);
Serge Tisseron et al., Le Psychisme a` lepreuve des generations: clinique du fantome (Paris, Dunod, 1995,
2000).

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and Toroks work subsequent to the death of Abraham.4 In fact, Derrida

played a key role in getting the work of Abraham and Torok known to a
wider audience. In 1976, the year after Abrahams death, their radical
re-working of Freuds Wolfman case study, Le Verbier de lhomme aux
loups, appeared in the Flammarion Philosophie en effet series of which
Derrida was one of the co-directors, and it was preceded by a long and influential essay by Derrida entitled Fors.5 Derridas essay suggests some of the
similarities between his thought and that of Abraham and Torok, but he has
next to nothing to say about their work on phantoms and the marked differences between their conception and his. Abraham and Torok had become
interested in transgenerational communication, particularly the way in
which the undisclosed traumas of previous generations might disturb the
lives of their descendants even and especially if they know nothing about their
distant causes. What they call a phantom is the presence of a dead ancestor
in the living Ego, still intent on preventing its traumatic and usually
shameful secrets from coming to light. One crucial consequence of this is
that the phantom does not, as it does in some versions of the ghost story,
return from the dead in order to reveal something hidden or forgotten,
to right a wrong or to deliver a message that might otherwise have
gone unheeded. On the contrary, the phantom is a liar; its effects are
designed to mislead the haunted subject and to ensure that its secret
remains shrouded in mystery. In this account, phantoms are not the
spirits of the dead, but les lacunes laissees en nous par les secrets des
autres (LEcorce et le noyau, p. 427). This insight offers a new explanation
for ghost stories, which are described as the mediation in fiction of the
encrypted, unspeakable secrets of past generations: Le fantome des
croyances populaires ne fait donc quobjectiver une metaphore qui
travaille dans linconscient: lenterrement dans lobjet dun fait inavouable
(LEcorce et le noyau, p. 427).
The ideas of Abraham and Torok have renewed psychoanalytic theory
and therapeutic practice dealing with transgenerational trauma and family
secrets.6 They have also appealed to some critics working on literature

ETAT PRESENT: HAUNTOLOGY, SPECTRES AND PHANTOMS

375

7
For criticism drawing on the work of Abraham and Torok, see, for example, Esther Rashkin, Family
Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative (Princeton University Press, 1992); Nicholas Rand, Invention
poetique et psychanalyse du secret dans Le Fantome dHamlet de Nicolas Abraham, in Le Psychisme
a` lepreuve des generations, pp. 79 96; Nicholas Rand, Le Cryptage et la vie des uvres: etude du secret dans les
textes de Flaubert, Stendhal, Benjamin, Stefan George, Edgar Poe, Francis Ponge, Heidegger et Freud (Paris,
Aubier, 1989); Serge Tisseron, Tintin chez le psychanalyste: essai sur la creation graphique et la mise en sce`ne
de ses enjeux dans luvre dHerge (Paris, Aubier Montaigne, 1985), and Tintin et le secret dHerge
(Paris, Hors Collection Presses de la Cite, 1993); Colin Davis, Charlotte Delbos Ghosts, FS, LIX
(2005), 9 15.
8
See in particular Maria Torok and Nicholas Rand, Questions a` Freud: du devenir de la psychanalyse (Paris,
Les Belles Lettres, 1995).

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and popular culture. A notable success in this domain was scored by the
psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron in his book Tintin chez le psychanalyste
(1985). Analysing a sequence of Tintin albums in which Captain Haddock
is haunted by the ghost of an ancestor, Tisseron speculated about a
possible connection between the ghosts illegitimate origins and a drama
of legitimacy in the family history of Tintins creator Herge. Subsequent
biographical research undertaken after Herges death showed that Herges
father was indeed the illegitimate child of an unknown father; and in subsequent publications Tisseron took credit for deducing this secret purely
from the analysis of the fictional albums, even though he had in fact been
mistaken in suggesting that the illegitimacy was most probably on
Herges mothers side of the family.
Literary critical work drawing on the thought of Abraham and Torok
most frequently revolves around the problem of secrets, even if it
generally neither achieves nor seeks the biographical confirmation found
by Tisseron. The work of Nicholas Rand, especially his book Le Cryptage
et la vie des uvres (1989), deserves particular mention here. Rand was instrumental in demonstrating the relevance of Abraham and Torok for literary
criticism, and he also helped extend their work through his later direct collaborations with Maria Torok.8 The other major study that should be
mentioned in this context is Esther Rashkins Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative (1992). This book offers what is still the best short
account of Abraham and Toroks concept of the phantom and an attempt
to develop a critical approach on the basis of it through readings of
Conrad, Villiers de lIsle Adam, Balzac, James and Poe. Rashkin is keen
not to set up a prescriptive model for interpretation, but to attend to the
specificity of each individual text. The works she studies are in distress,
harbouring secrets of which they are unaware, but which the reader or
critic may be able to elicit. Her readings track down secrets and bring
them to light. In her chapter on Balzacs Facino Cane, for example, she
endeavours to make intelligible Canes perplexing obsession with gold
(Family Secrets, p. 82). She finds a possible solution in what she suggests
is the secret drama of his Jewish origins, and this in turn is reflected in
the narrators unconscious desire to know the story of his own origins.

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COLIN DAVIS

Cest quelque chose quon ne sait pas, justement, et on ne sait pas si precisement cela est, si ca
existe, si ca repond a` un nom et correspond a` une essence. On ne le sait pas: non par ignorance,
mais parce que ce non-objet, ce present non-present, cet etre-la` dun absent ou dun disparu ne
rele`ve pas du savoir. Du moins plus de ce quon croit savoir sous le nom de savoir. On ne sait
pas si cest vivant ou si cest mort. (Spectres de Marx, pp. 2526; emphasis in original)

Derrida calls on us to endeavour to speak and listen to the spectre, despite

the reluctance inherited from our intellectual traditions and because of the
9
See, for example, Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History, ed. by Peter Buse and Andrew Stott
(Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999); Jodey Castricano, Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derridas Ghost
Writing (MontrealKingstonLondonIthaca, McGill-Queens University Press, 2001); Nancy
Holland, The Death of the Other/Father: A Feminist Reading of Derridas Hauntology, Hypatia, 16
(2001), 64 71; Jean-Michel Rabate, The Ghosts of Modernity (Gainesville, University Press of Florida,
1996); Nicholas Royle, Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991),
The Uncanny (Manchester University Press, 2003), and This is Not a Book Review: Esther Rashkin,
Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative, Angelaki, 2 (1995), 31 35; Emily Tomlinson, Assia
Djebar: Speaking to the Living Dead, Paragraph 26:3 (2003), 34 50; Julian Wolfreys, Victorian
Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002). For critical discussion of Derridas hauntology, see Slavoj Zizek, Introduction: The Spectre of Ideology, in Mapping
Ideology, ed. by Slavoj Zizek (London and New York, Verso, 1994), pp. 1 33. It should be stressed
that interesting work is being done on ghosts which does not draw explicitly or significantly on the
work of Derrida or Abraham and Torok; see, for example, Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters:
Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (MinneapolisLondon, University of Minnesota Press, 1997),
and Kathleen Brogan, Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature
(CharlottesvilleLondon, University Press of Virginia, 1998).
10
Nicholas Royle also comments on Derridas surprising lack of reference in Spectres de Marx to
Abraham and Torok; see Phantom Text, in The Uncanny, pp. 279 80 and, on differences between
Derridas and Abraham and Toroks conception of the ghost, see pp. 281 83.

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Facino Cane is not explicitly a ghost story, but in Rashkins reading it

revolves around the transmission of phantoms and family secrets in the
sense of Abraham and Torok.
Despite the intellectual vigour of works by Rand, Rashkin and others,
the direct impact of Abraham and Torok on literary studies has in fact
been limited, perhaps because the endeavour to find undisclosed secrets is
likely to succeed in only a small number of cases. By contrast, Derridas
Spectres de Marx has spawned a minor academic industry.9 His hauntology
has virtually removed Abraham and Torok from the agenda of literary
ghost studies; or, to be more precise, when Abraham and Torok are now
discussed by deconstructive-minded critics, their work is most frequently
given a distinctly Derridean inflection. It is to say the least striking that
the only mention of Abraham and Torok in Spectres de Marx is in a footnote
which refers the reader to Derridas essay on them, Fors (Spectres de Marx,
p. 24). In fact, Derridas spectres should be carefully distinguished from
Abrahams and Toroks phantoms (which is why the title of the present
article maintains the distinction between them, even if the authors themselves are not always consistent).10 Derridas spectre is a deconstructive
figure hovering between life and death, presence and absence, and
making established certainties vacillate. It does not belong to the order of
knowledge:

ETAT PRESENT: HAUNTOLOGY, SPECTRES AND PHANTOMS

377

La litterature garde un secret qui nexiste pas, en quelque sorte. Derrie`re un roman, ou un
poe`me, derrie`re ce qui est en effet la richesse dun sens a` interpreter, il ny a pas de sens
secret a` chercher. Le secret dun personnage, par exemple, nexiste pas, il na aucune
epaisseur en dehors du phenome`ne litteraire. Tout est secret dans la litterature et il ny a
pas de secret cache derrie`re elle, voila` le secret de cette etrange institution au sujet de
laquelle, et dans laquelle je ne cesse de (me) debattre. [. . .] Linstitution de la litterature
reconna t, en principe ou par essence le droit de tout dire ou de ne pas dire en disant,
donc le droit au secret affiche.11

The attraction of hauntology for deconstructive-minded critics arises

from the link between a theme (haunting, ghosts, the supernatural) and the
processes of literature and textuality in general. In consequence, much of
the most committed work in this area combines close reading with daring
speculation. The significant difference between the approach inspired by
Abraham and Torok and poststructuralist hauntology can already be seen
in Nicholas Royles response to Rashkins Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis
of Narrative. In her conclusion, Rashkin conceded that uncovering textual
secrets always brings to the fore other enigmas which might demand, but
not be susceptible to, solution (Family Secrets, pp. 16162). Royle marks
the key difference between critics inspired by Abraham and Torok and
those of a more Derridean and poststructuralist bent: in principle, he
suggests, Rashkin argues that the process of meaning may be open-ended
and infinite, but in practice she closes down that process by assigning determinate meanings to identifiable secrets. Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of
Narrative is thus a more disruptive, housebreaking book than it seems
prepared to admit (This is Not a Review, p. 34). Whereas Rashkin
insists that Not all texts have phantoms (Family Secrets, p. 12), Royle
wonders whether every text, including a book review, has phantoms
11

Papier machine (Paris, Galile e, 2001), p. 398; emphasis in original.

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challenge it may pose to them: Or ce qui para t presque impossible, cest

toujours de parler du spectre, de parler au spectre, de parler avec lui, donc
surtout de faire ou de laisser parler un esprit (Spectres de Marx, p. 32;
emphasis in original). Conversing with spectres is not undertaken in the
expectation that they will reveal some secret, shameful or otherwise.
Rather, it may open us up to the experience of secrecy as such: an
essential unknowing which underlies and may undermine what we think
we know. For Abraham and Torok, the phantoms secret can and should
be revealed in order to achieve une petite victoire de lAmour sur la
Mort (LEcorce et le noyau, p. 452); for Derrida, on the contrary, the
spectres secret is a productive opening of meaning rather than a determinate content to be uncovered. Elsewhere, in a move of key importance
for literary hauntology, Derrida associates this kind of essential secret
with literature in general:

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COLIN DAVIS

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(This is Not a Review, p. 35). Jodey Castricano makes a similar point in

her Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derridas Ghost Writing (2001): I
find [Rashkins] assertion that not all texts have phantoms to be problematic because her assertion marks a division between texts which reveal
secrets and those that do not (presumably those that do not harbour an
unspeakable secret are transparent) (Cryptomimesis, p. 142).
Royles musing and Castricanos observation provide a clue to the theoretical ambitions of literary hauntologists. Ghosts are a privileged theme
because they allow an insight into texts and textuality as such. Rashkin
deliberately restricts the scope of her approach in the name of attentiveness
to the secrets of individual texts. Whilst remaining eager to respect specificity, the hauntologists also aspire to extend the validity of their enquiry
to embrace a greater level of generality. As Buse and Stott put it in the introduction to the essays collected in Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis,
History, modern theory owes a debt to ghosts (p. 6). Some critics have
repaid this debt by dramatically escalating the claims made for the
spectral, and by association for their own work. Julian Wolfreys
Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature (2002),
for example, opens with a series of increasingly bold assertions about the
importance of literary ghosts. Ghosts exceed any narrative modality,
genre or textual manifestation; the spectral makes possible reproduction
even as it also fragments reproduction and ruins the very possibility of
reproductions apparent guarantee to represent that which is no longer
there fully; in consequence all forms of narrative are spectral to some
extent, and the spectral is at the heart of any narrative of the modern;
moreover, to tell a story is always to invoke ghosts, to open a space
through which something other returns, so that all stories are, more or
less, ghost stories (Victorian Hauntings, pp. 13). In this breathtaking
display, ghosts progress rapidly from being one theme amongst others to
being the ungrounded grounding of representation and a key to all forms
of storytelling. They are both unthinkable and the only thing worth
thinking about.
The crucial difference between the two strands of hauntology, deriving
from Abraham and Torok and from Derrida respectively, is to be found
in the status of the secret. The secrets of Abrahams and Toroks lying
phantoms are unspeakable in the restricted sense of being a subject of
shame and prohibition. It is not at all that they cannot be spoken; on the
contrary, they can and should be put into words so that the phantom and
its noxious effects on the living can be exorcized. For Derrida, the ghost
and its secrets are unspeakable in a quite different sense. Abraham and
Torok seek to return the ghost to the order of knowledge; Derrida wants
to avoid any such restoration and to encounter what is strange, unheard,
other, about the ghost. For Derrida, the ghosts secret is not a puzzle to

ETAT PRESENT: HAUNTOLOGY, SPECTRES AND PHANTOMS

379

ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

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be solved; it is the structural openness or address directed towards the living

by the voices of the past or the not yet formulated possibilities of the future.
The secret is not unspeakable because it is taboo, but because it cannot not
(yet) be articulated in the languages available to us. The ghost pushes at the
boundaries of language and thought. The interest here, then, is not in
secrets, understood as puzzles to be resolved, but in secrecy, now elevated
to what Castricano calls the structural enigma which inaugurates the scene
of writing (Cryptomimesis, p. 30).
Hauntology is part of an endeavour to keep raising the stakes of literary
study, to make it a place where we can interrogate our relation to the dead,
examine the elusive identities of the living, and explore the boundaries
between the thought and the unthought. The ghost becomes a focus for
competing epistemological and ethical positions. For Abraham and Torok,
the phantom and its secrets should be uncovered so that it can be dispelled.
For Derrida and those impressed by his work, the spectres ethical injunction consists on the contrary in not reducing it prematurely to an object of
knowledge. Derridas reading of Abraham and Torok in Fors emphasizes
how their work involves attentiveness to disturbances of meaning, the
hieroglyphs and secrets which engage the interpreter in a restless labour
of deciphering. In the process, Derrida underplays the extent to which
Abraham and Torok attempt to bring interpretation to an end by recovering
occluded meanings, and his reading has had a significant impact on the more
general understanding of their work. Their phantoms and his spectres,
though, have little in common. Phantoms lie about the past whilst spectres
gesture towards a still unformulated future. The difference between them
poses in a new form the tension between the desire to understand and the
openness to what exceeds knowledge; and the resulting critical practices
vary between the endeavour to attend patiently to particular texts and exhilarating speculation. As far as I know, the ghost of a resolution is not yet
haunting Europe, or anywhere else.