| 02-07-2014 | The Alex Cafe Bar & Brasserie | 123 Undercliff Road West | Felixstowe | IP11 2AF | Suffolk | England | United Kingdom
RJLH: How did you happen upon the term Hauntology? MF: I don’t know… I was aware of it, via theory, via Derrida, since the 90’s, as a term, it wasn’t something I’d really thought about until 2006 when this confluence of things occurred which later became, very quickly became labelled Hauntology. It was around then that I reached back for the term and started to see the connections, primarily in music, music was the potentiator rather than something which can contain the whole meaning, the scope of Hauntology. Around that time there was some discussion, on blogs, primarily I suppose, as to whether or not it was the right term to use. I felt it was ripe for repurposing. RJLH: In relation to music, specifically, Simon Reynolds, who arrived at the term around the same time, says he has come to prefer Memoradelia, as proposed by Patrick McNally. MF: I think Memoradelia only captures part of it. The spectral dimension is a very important part of Hauntology. This idea of lost futures isn’t about memory, not straightforwardly anyway, it’s about anticipation, it’s about… For me a key aspect of Hauntology is the age of the virtual, as I call it. The capacity of the virtual to affect things. A lot of what we call spectral, ghostly, can be classified under that term. The reason why the concept of haunting seems so apposite in the 21st century, is that sense of we live in the ruins of lost futures, really, the future failed to arrive, in the 21st century. Not that a specific, detrimental future had failed to arrive, but the sense that futurity h as disappeared from 21st century life. It’s that pang, that longing, for a future that failed to arrive, seems to me one of the curial dimensions. RJLH: A sense of having lost-out, a sense of loss. MF: Yes, a paradoxical loss, the loss of something that never was, that you never had. RJLH: As I’m sure you’re aware, the term Hauntology finds its origins in (Jacques) Derrida’s 1993 document Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale (Éditions Galilée). Published in English the following year as Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International (Routledge). ”To haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with the concepts of being and time. That is what we would be calling here a Hauntology. Ontology opposes it only in a movement of exorcism. Ontology is a conjuration” In Spectres of Marx, the term Hauntology is just kind of thrown up, but I wonder if you’ve ever seen Ken McMullen’s 1983 film Ghost Dance? MF: I have the DVD you know. RJLH: Derrida appears as himself in the film and expands a little on his thinking regarding haunting, mourning, etc. I feel I must make it clear at this point, that, despite the fact that Jacques is responsible for coming up with the aforementioned, I am not a great fan of him or his work. Nonetheless, he’s someone who throws up ideas and ideas are always good. “…instead of diminishing the realm of ghosts, as does any scientific or technical thought, is leaving behind the age of ghosts as part of the feudal age, which is somewhat primitive technology, as a certain perinatal age. Whereas I believe that ghosts are part of the future and that the modern technology … like cinematography and telecommunications enhances the power of ghosts and their ability to haunt us…” “You know, ghosts don’t just appear… they come back. In french we talk about them “returning”. Now that presupposes a memory of the past that has never taken the form of the present…“ MF: The opacity, the intentional opacity, ‘nothing is what it’s supposed to be’, etc. The whole underlying sentiment of pious indeterminacy, as I’ve described it before, that kind of priestly dimension to it, which I also don’t find too appealing. It’s also interesting for me where the encounter with Derrida came from, which for me was not initially through philosophy, but through music journalism anyway. It was via people like Ian Penman, Mark Sinker, who would frequently evoked Derrida’s concepts in the pages of the New Musical Express, in the 80s. Which now seems slightly crazy that that could ever have been the case. RJLH: As a young man buying Sounds every week, one thing leads to another. You take an interest in a band, a musician, maybe musician isn’t quite the right word. Take Throbbing Gristle for example. You get into Throbbing Gristle, you read an article, or an interview and before you know it you’re taking an interest in William S. Burroughs or Aleister Crowley. Do you think this process is still going on today? MF: I don’t think so. What I would call popular modernism, from the late 50s through to the end of the 90s, it was a particular kind of hub, perhaps a threshold which linked, opened up lots of other spaces. So yes, you would find out about literature, theory, philosophy, through music. Music wasn’t just music. For that period anyway, there was a music culture, rather than music as such, that could operate that way, I’m not sure it does in quite the same way now. RJLH: All is not lost though. Your interview with Burial comes to mind, where he mentions M.R. James. MF: It was pure luck that Burial mentioned that, right at the end of the interview. I was just about to wrap it up and he started talking about M.R. James, which was really interesting, yeah. MF: I should send you my piece on Alan Garner. RJLH: Pre-Hauntology, the way I saw the world, with its interconnections, as I still see it now, I would try to explain this phenomenon, this phenomenology, as a kind of Otherness. Back in 2011, as part of its series of Literary Walks, the long running BBC Radio 4 program Ramblings went on a walk with Alan around Alderley Edge. And as he walked, in conversation, Alan made numerous references to this Otherness. MF: Yeah, I think that one of the 21st century pangs, longing, is that comparative lack of otherness I think. That nostalgic dimension of hauntological culture, is a lot to do with a moment when otherness was much more integrated into the popular culture. And the popular culture was a feeling of connecting doors to otherness in a way, I think it’s almost entirely extirpated now. Full of references of parapsychology and the like, these would be part of the substance of mass culture in many ways… destranging is my term, I think. What’s happened in the 21st century, in other ways, is the collapse of the sense of otherness.
