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aimiller 's review for:
Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
by Avery F. Gordon
A really moving and important look at haunting as methodology, and for exploring haunting as a mode of identifying how systems of power and sociality coexist in the current day. I'll note that I read "A Glossary of Haunting" by Eve Tuck and C. Ree before I read this book, so my reading was pretty heavily colored by that essay (which I strongly recommend to everyone ever all the time.) I particularly enjoyed chapters three and four, as I thought they lent themselves most strongly to what I do as a historian, so obviously ymmv on that point. Her weird obsession with haunting being fixed by justice, and as a means towards a solution (or a signpost towards that solution) was very odd to me given what "Glossary" has to say, and I'm still teasing out how I feel about that (can we give ghosts justice? Will ghosts just go away?)
The book is very beautifully written, though, and I will no doubt mine it heavily for quotations in the future! I'd definitely recommend this to anyone thinking about haunting as a theoretical concept for their work.
The book is very beautifully written, though, and I will no doubt mine it heavily for quotations in the future! I'd definitely recommend this to anyone thinking about haunting as a theoretical concept for their work.