Hauntology

• In Event: 28.037 - *CANCELLED* Timespacemattering: An Invitation to Create a Manifesto for Justice in Higher Education

Abstract

Hauntology, a concept initially developed by Derrida (1994) as a pun on ontology, argues that in all aspects of human life we pursue things and ideas that are neither present, absent, alive, nor dead. As a way to collapse linear life, ghosts are regarded as existing across time, where ghosts of the past are always present, and in our future. Both Derrida (1994) and Barad (2010; 2017a, 2017b) suggest that we construct the world in different ways based on spacetimemattering. Hauntings are not just memories of a time past, but as Barad elaborates a dynamism of time-being/being-time in its materiality (Barad, 2017a) Hauntings then cannot be considered as immaterial, or recollections of a time past, but rather as an integral part of existing material conditions (Barad, 2017). Much like the ghost of apartheid past, or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, immortalised in time, entangled in the present, and part of the field of spacetimemattering. What creates the privilege within this environment which elevates the power of one and the silencing of the other? Burke (2018) challenges us to reimagine a new landscapes in higher education. She encourages us to explore the spatio-temporal relationalities through our intra-actions.

Author

• Xena Michelle Cupido, Cape Peninsula University of Technology