Haunted Subjects

Why do the dead return? Do they remain part of the world of the living? This book examines these questions as they emerge in areas as diverse as film, Holocaust testimony, and the works of Jacques Derrida, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The book suggests it may be as difficult for the living to get rid of the dead as it is to live without them.

'Colin Davis' Haunted Subjects is a remarkable achievement. On the one hand, Davis writes with an eye to the way in which criticism must intricately involve itself in the necessary theoretical reflection on what it means to read with ghosts. Simultaneously, he opens the textual crypt so as to access the cultural histories of his subject in tracing a trajectory of the dead and the spectral, which is at the heart of Western culture, from Augustine to the present. Significant in this project is Davis' recognition of the close, if fraught, relationship between the text of Derrida and particular strands in psychoanalytic thought. He thus brings to light in this fascinating work a form of haunting repression that is at the heart of much recent critical practice, giving it the most sustained analysis yet.' - Professor Julian Wolfreys, Department of English, University of Florida, USA

'...essential reading for anyone researching ghosts literaral, metaphorical, theoretical, and literary. It also holds a broader interest for scholars of theory, identity, and twentieth-century culture in general. It is intricate, innovative, compelling and will, I suspect, rapidly become seminal.' - Kate Griffiths, Modern Language Review

'This is both a clever, self-aware book and an eminently readable one which will undoubtedly prove extremely useful for both academics and students alike.' - French Studies

Auteur
COLIN DAVIS is Professor of French at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He has previously held posts at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick. His principal research interests lie in the areas of modern French thought, literature and film.

Contenu
Acknowledgements Introduction: The Return of the Dead Vampires, Death Drives, and Silent Film Sartre's Living Dead Lying Ghosts in Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis The Ghosts of Auschwitz: Charlotte Delbo Speaking with the Dead: De Man, Levinas, Agamben Derrida's Haunted Subjects Burying the Dead Bibliography Index