GHOSTLY MATTERS Haunting and the Sociological Imagin Avery F. Gordon With a New Introduction Foreword by Janice Radway Minnesota PressPublished with assistance from the Margaret S. Harding Memorial Endowmen honoring the firs director ofthe University of Minnesota ren s ™owment shed in Social Problems 37, y of California Pres on the 1 Problems copyright 1990 by the Society forthe Sat vere me, and I were you,” and "Migrant Mother” for Old Kentucky Home-Life i the South by East. ‘Fugtve Slaves on the Underground Railroad by Charles 1 i Pierce Fund, Museum of Fine Arts, reserved. No pat of this publi ‘etieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means c shucocopying, esting, or other, thos the ror wen perm of he hed by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avene: Minneapolis, MN 55 hhupstonwwipress.mneda brary of Congress Ctalogingin-Pl ing and the sociological imagination / Avery F. Go odtion; foreword hy Janice Radway. ~ New University of Minnesota Presse losophy. 3. Ma Hisy49.G67 2008 sormcas 2007049308 Printed inthe United Sates of America on acid-free paper ‘The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. | as 1987654 i Foreword Janice Radway vii Introduction to the New Edition xv 4 her shape and his hand 3 2 distractions 31 3. the other door, it’s floods of tears with consolation enclosed 63 4 not only the footprints but the warer too and what is down there 137 5 there are crossroads 193 Notes 209 Bibliography 225 Index 243Introduction to the New Edition Ie has been enormously rewarding an Matters has found enough readers to wa book has meant to those who have gai to you coming to wrong if presumed. Ie’ dffc aecount for why something they have made touches or spires or goads its readers. I remain, nonetheless, honored by the and attention the book has received, because while there are indeed Some books that are independent of readers, works of great beauty or Ghostly Matters is not one of thos ¢ who woul larity against toread anew or again. And themes addressed 1e opportunity to extend an im do 50, more than any other reason, becau in Ghostly Matters remain unfortunatel In writing the| xvi Introduction nonetheless has had to part company with the orthodoxie the way the present, and the futur These specters or hos appear when the trouble they represent ad . rte being contained or repressed or blocked from view. The‘ gh dessin, cus warns gh haa eal presence and demands its du, your attention, Haun ‘he appearance of spacers or ghosts is one wo igned plac ren the people who are S Introduction xvi ching lay. To see the something: con the one hand, no doubs Gay of focusing on the c vent and change—individual, uderstand the soc from what we convent challenge that remains si vocabulary that cegistered and evoked the thei histor the aggrieved person when consciousness forcing a confrontation, forking the furu iE point, I thought we might locate a profound and durable inking and being and acting toward elisin cor Marcuse’s argument that “the become facts when they are translated into reality by... by my desire to find a method thar could represent rernatives and thus yeen presence tre, be- the damage and the haunting of the bi conjure, describe, narrate, and exp mediacy and worldly significance. and intellectuals knew a great deal abs and repressive states and yet insist and object of knowledge, between and absence, between past and prese tween knowing and not-knowing—whose te tion seemed precise! need of comprehension being themselves mod: end, found my gre* that produced in Ghostly Matters the invitati Introduction but sympathe “To some, Ghostly Matters and the problems it raised ab edge production appeared as a localized disci ‘ogy: This was never entieely my intention, despite the fact that inary location from which profession a way to reveal and to learn from subjugated {As Michel Foucault famously explained, su ‘onthe one hand, what off institutions, ed,” marginalized, fugitive knowledge from b institutions of official knowledge production. bration and equality of these two types of subjugated knowledge on the grounds that the emergence, whether we cedge by subjugated peopl sible, Bue sociology, ike proved capable of grasping and welcoming as equal the two forms of subjugated knowledge. When Ghostly Matters was conceived and writen, there was an op ies and social studies that the older institutional timism in the hum: production were possible, and that these would be led and crafted the people who had long been excluded from the citadels ofthe sity. It was this specific context, which has yet to achieve its pr ology t0 better purpose. Needless to say, a5 a wi lines, sociology is mostly distracted by #6 airs and doomed to irrelevance ent collabora route, access to that which is margin. to represen one could say—wlich among other things to be some than a local knowledge governed or bya a mained then, as now a mater of and debumani saan ‘a Zora lity or generalizal ld by ¢ religion ring her travels and research trips and recorded! Introduction xi 1 Sanctified Church was that “Ghos in The Ag reavon why is because ghosts ate charact Tess, things, and places that produced th re haunt ure they 3 ‘ ly because once removed thet (3 restricted. When t sip when stared iting ity 5 ivy, tae repression va the rule of ita re in the Fst W seein evement—these tices that required a Spee sy ess a8 urgent socal problems co be addressed. Justi; fh int ane ye" 7 my atte ing is sand 7 the JM ye means for ges for the excluded ar and gai engaged repressed: to develop ish cultures of ‘can be rendered adequate 10 1 “To help define the means by whiax Introduction who detoured here offer it again in the hopes that you find a wel hospitality. ghostly matters “Exercised,” in Keeping Good Time: Knowledge, Power, and P Paradigm Press 2004). 2. Chuck Morse, "Capitalism, Mara the Black Ra ‘An Inervew with Cedric Robinson,” Perspectives on Anarchist 1 (Spring 1999).1 her shape and his hand is complicated may seem a banal expression nonetheless a profound theo ions of sociologists and other social analysts, statement has not been grasped in its widest least two dimensions to such a theoretical the power relations that characterize any historical ace never as transparently clear as the names we give Power can be invis 1s, but 30 to0 we need to remember that power a1 ite supremacy and state 34 her shape and his hand from explicit externally imposed and internalized vite suppn, standards of vale, the natre of white man’s work, and th gn of ilence and hatred o disappointments 0 folding up inside put outdoors to the weather, 0 deformed feet and lost teeth ot" ays attention, to it's too late, to total damage, to furniture so? ‘memories, 0 the unyielding soil, and to what Morrison someting calls the thing, the sedimented conditions that constitue whe place in the fst place. This turns out to be nota random list 4 way of conceptualizing the complicated workings of rac, ches fender the names we give tothe ensemble of socal lation thats es, situated interpretive codes, particular kinds of sugoet and the possible and impossible themselves. Such a concep asks that we constantly move within and between fiumtrewathan ‘memories and Racism and Capitalism. It asks us to move analy between that sad and sunken couch that sags in just that place whee unrememerable past and an unimaginable future force us to ap after day and the conceptual abstractions because everything of wens, cance happens there among the inet furniture and the monumental cial architecture. But his ist also reminds us that even those wh circumstances posses a complex and oft man ity and subjectivity that is never adequately glimpsed by viewing then as vietms or,on the other handy as superhuman agents. I ha aways balfled me why those most interested in understanding and chang the barbaric domination that characterizes our modernity oft alwvays—withhold from the very people they are most concerned w the tight ro complex personhood. Complex personhood isthe second dimension of the theoretical statement that life is complicate. Com plex personhood means that all people (alli in specif f specifiy is sometimes everything) remember and forget, ae bese by contradiction, and recognize and mis omplex personhoo raciously and selfishly ‘too, get stuck in the symptoms of their troubles, and also transform themselves. Complex personhood means that even are never never that. Complex personhood means that the stores people tell abour themselves, about their troubl worlds, and about their society’s problems are entan ‘ween what is immedi tons are reaching toward. her shape and hishand 5 svt some aze jst pain 12. Complex personhood meso thar teed and opt wil act together, that they ae ote semaines harm cach other, and a with athe and expect the rest of us to Bgure it out for ounces, nee withdrawing asthe situation requires, Comper pone ver tos that even those who haunt ovr domi aed Their eystems of value are haunted too by things they sometimes h al apd inset he yD ee bo fod is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presum dng that life and people’ lives are simultaneously saightiorward and ing rnormously subtle meaning ‘That life is complicated is a theoretical statement that guides efforts to meat rce, elas, and gender dynamics and consi wet dallas than thoce categorical terms ohn em dea statement that might gudeacriiqueof pia eee of eatiogr forms of blindness and santoned d sa en aeg wa coe odes iva ts al of Sinden sed by the nevus of market exchange. tina theortal sateen that jnvites us to see with portentous clarity into the heart and soul of Ameri: fe oad eakure, to tack even, store, anonpmons aod o hora Storment We ned to Know where we le inorder o imine ving hewhere. We need imagine ving whee before we cnn there The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Pata Willams (19 book tht eaprred my attention Beaute, among ote hi ttwoman whe does not know ihe is crany or ot; whose polar bears and has conversions vith bet ster bout hued {nd writes all oft down for us while she siting in het bath Gieveled bai, Patricia Willams isa commer lawyer and a profes ta of contact and propery law He ave, pope ren was66 hershape and his hand and opinions—and those tf finding the shape described by her absence her shape and his hand in the vast networking of ur soci the evils and oversights that plague our lives and laws. The con had over her body. The force he was in her lay, Te power he exercised inthe choice 10 to breed slaves in his image, to choose her mate drtempe to own what no man can own, the ha sence of her choice. iook for er shape and his hand. (19) ‘of his power and the ab ook for her shape and his hand; this is a massive project, very treacherous, very fragile. This i a project in which haunting and pha. toms play a central part. This i a project where finding the shape de scribed by her absence captures perfectly the parrdorof tracking through time and across all dhose Forces that which males mark by through time and across all thoweTorees that WHT nae 5a ibeing there and not there atthe same time. Cajoling ws t0 reconsider only to get some peace), and because cajoling is in the nature of the host, the very distinctions between there and not there past and pre sent, force and shape. From force to hand to her ghostly presence in the register of history and back again, this is a particular kind of soi alchemy that eludes us as often as it makes us look for i. Patric Williams is not alone in the search for the shape of force and lost hands there is company for the keeping, Wahneema Lubiano (1992, 199 to0, is looking for the haunting presence of the state in the ul zones where it seemingly excuses itself. Kimberlé Crenshaw (199) trying to raise the specter of the ghostly violence of law's regime o jects its objectivity. Catherine Clément has for some time been tying the “zone” that re has for what it excludes” (Cixous and Clément_1986). Norma Alar (1990) is following the barely visible tracks of the Native across the US.-Mexico border, as she shadows ngof the citizen-subject, Hortense Spillers (1987a) is reconstructing the 4 ‘can grammatology that lost some st ssage and found others in a phantasmatic fa Maxine Hong Ki (1977) is mapping the trans thostly ancestors and their incessant demands on Spivak (1987, 1989a, 1995) keeps vi “remember today’ her shape and his hand 7 sip tote sbalten women “over there." ook for her shape 7 o his bared. el ‘about haunting, a paradigmatic way in which lif is Matters is Cd sre than those of us who study i have usally gras vonstituent clement of modern is a com re Ghostly snore complic a ‘or individual psychos Ne sec soso rmodetrenon of grea import, T sul so confront the eS sntation requires (or produce hos aspects of i rat ehanee le mn. Ghostly Matters is a tt rates the utter significance o rss and conveys the relevance of g york ad in 8 e res and needs. But it is in fact is willing to Te enough to choose a ‘subject’ (athe in creating 2 new Marcus 1986: 1). Nor owned by the! which does tence. Ghostly Matters tnd for writing with the e ‘Ghosts are a somewhat unts Annuch less a degreed soci final to the field that com Feld we observe, measure, and interprets Joks for a language for iden hosts any haunting inevitably ual topic of inquiry for as st). It may seem foreign and al ing social reality the that takes the mea- sare of us as much as we ta thar are b relevant ‘which is even perhaps «colleague Harvey M se 1 was interested itthe occult or in parapsychology, bur because ghostly things ping up and messing up other tasks I was trying to accor rounded theory: in one feld another emerged attention and become the field work. The per ‘people who inhabit these worl sm. The available critical vocab cate the depth, density, and intric rocabulaty a soc and a practice were ing how jons and people are haunted, for capturing enchantment ina disenchanted world, [If haunting describes how that which appears to be not there is often you a haunting is taking place ply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and invest «an lead to that dense ste where history and subject in its own way, of course. The way ofthe ghosts haunting, and haunting is a very particular way of knowing what has happened or is happening. Being haunted draws re ‘our will and alvays a bit magically «old knowledge, but as a transformative recognition, ok 25.8 transformative recognit How I came to write a book about ghostly matters is some of that story ise. In 1992 the presden-elet of forthe Study of Social Problems called the members tothe — exe 8 hershape and his hand / é aH we uy 3 #10 her shape and hishand on our traditional notions of the human subject, meanin guage, writing, difference, power, and experience ha, recently “been placed in a larger context, or ‘condition, have been seen equally asa symptom and as a deter ity of modernism and its technological commitment to find in every sphere of social and cultural life” (Ross 1988: x), postmodernism thus locates what is often construed a: ferrain. As the invitation elaborated, and as Ros eis a real medium in which we no matter how unevenly its effects a re tO some exter, across the jagged their impact felt most strongly in the resurgence of “the ancient prob Jem of the relationship between what in everyday language we call’ perience’ of ‘reality’ and what we then decide to the attendant dilemmas created for an soxial science (see Agger 19892, 1989b, 1990, 1991, 1992 1993; Bauman 1992, 1993; R. Brown 1987, 1989; Clough 1993; Den 2in 1986, 1991; Lemert 1990; Pol rg92as J. W. Scott 1992; Seman 994b). At the core of the postmodern field or scene, isin representation, a fracture in the epistem regime of modernity, a regime th in there of social cence. Such predicament ha edt, among ober cone ‘quences, an understanding that the practices of writing, analysis, and 1, Whether of soci a Paste projet than acuta practice that lead to a differ ing how power operates. Such an agenda could del ‘essary improvements, on the u her shape and ishand 11 surgent sociological ge for Social Research [1956] 1973) re structuring, constructedn r an unproblematic window onto a m¢ bos desirable tional dings of represen an ely constructed still require an eng ering practices that have fon. been the province of sos these that draw our attention to the multiple determina net jower in which narratives of and about our c id disseminated. ;oward postmodernism and and i " part of the widespread ambivalence « postmodernity stems from the c its modes of production, are jon of exclusions and invisibi pestmoderity resolve this relationship by any means. (And, indeed, the Prmmon tendency to distinguish between postmodernism as a kind of scluntary idealism—a style or choice of approach—and postmodernity ‘encompassing materialism doe 1eorists back to the drawing board ‘on retaining is precisely a dou! the epistemological and the social (see Flax 1992 sims presumed ( modernism rests on its participation transnational generalization, and so does not solve the problem of the continuing cris coercive and consensual—unless itis linked ity, broadly understood (see Hennessy 19933 problems with representa with representa42. her shape and his hand ‘ogy to be propery situated in the ensemble of socal relat in which such epistemologies ae ensconced. To say that sociology oscil analysis more broadly mus double structure of thought that links the epistemological and gan? sia, os in other words, to say that sociology has to respond mon ological and nor only as if from an asronomous distance hy question of what exactly the novel postmodern social # wich we ought to respond are, Difcult diagnostic iases area here exacerbated by “the effort to take the temperature othe at without instruments and in a situation in which we are not evens there isso coherent a thing as an “age, or zeitgeist oF ‘system oa rent situation” any longer” (Jameson 1991: Ie is no doube some of the centeal characteristics ofthe modem systems of capcalig state and subjet formation, and knowledge production ae underzny significant modifications, and many are working to desc changes and their implications (see Bauman [1988] 199 1985; Harvey 1989; Jameson 19x; Lash 1990). An equally power argument could be made, as Derrick Bell (1992) does in one of the more moving examples of Antonio Gramscis maxim--optimism of te will, pessimism of the intllect—thar things have hardly changed ata {am simply not in a position to adjudicate the degree of continuity cr discontinuity at such a grand scale and am inclined to consider most conclusions premature at this point, and pethaps at any point. In my ‘own limited view, therefore, we are not “post” modern yet, although it is arguably the case that the fundamental contradictions at the heart of modernity are more exposed and much is up for grabs in the way we conceive the possibilities for knowledge, for freedom, and for subject hhood in the wake of this exposure. It is also arguably the case thatthe ‘strong sense of living in “a strange new landscape . . . the sense that ‘something has changed, that things are different, that we have ‘gone through a transformation of the life world which is some buti Aostrialiation” Jameson 1991: xxi) so pervasive in many quarters i an influential and itself motivating social and cultural fact4 Of one thing am sure: it's not thatthe ghosts don exist. The post 10S of ong Hd represses and projects its ies, if not entirely in the same sas the older world did. Indeed, the concentration on haunting and ghosts is a way of maintaining the salience of social analysis a8 hershape and his hand 13 «social context, as in history, which is anything but Jed by its ile avoiding simple reflectionism, Yet, in one pa. ‘nent framing of postmodernism, an overweening and Ihasis on new electronic technologies of communica and on the spectacular world of commodities bound dead and ove ticularly promi cverscaed em?! ‘on consumerism, rnd of cradle tc rhetoric of exposing the new machinery, replaced co ivism with a postmodernist version that promotes the sibility of all codings and decodings. Cruely t everything is on view, that every: jeans... « [becom w described, that all “tacitly present m i as oie of self-perfectio 1988] 1994: 188), i in antighost side that resembles modernity’ po h cedes. than it con cin vt me give you an example. : dhe Noise isa paradigmatic postmodemn text. Noting 7 Zi Jack Gladney, profesor and inventon a 9 ruminates on American popular culture and tion, has, despite the ‘ventional posit felecommunicative Vi ‘ohen postmodernism means pens in it reall Her sais, ruminaes 0” while trying to learn German, ; time keeping his tongue in place, but does keep hi tefsng co really help hs frend Murray set up a simi ram to promote Elvis studies. Jack loves his extended fami aired of childeen from various macriages, all of whom display’a le Pray Jack and Bal fk er whith a fear of dying, and all cheir shopping doesn’ se he although it does “expand” her husband. nee sah ry cae sex fr drugs, which alls fine uti Jac and he children nd Ire Ar pi, Babee cones est Jak plo covert dogs i wife’ sexual propre and hin mano He ner learns to speak German and xe disaster that confuses the tow months. It is of no e% speak, He has a hard sompetitve edge by14 her shape and his hand of everyday lif, the absence of meaning and the omniprese, less information, the relentess fascination with catastrophes circulating advertisements for the death of author, referent, tive realty se within image upon image of the electns nS among lite death, and sex. se Notwithstanding my docudrama rendering of the plo, the and familial noise of White Noite, a fiction, reads map of white postmodern America, nifcanly, € an ethnography of 5, this reading effect is precisely elated to those sacs} tons thatthe text ite identifies as challenging the distnion tween the fictive and che factual, and between the imaginary real. This is White Noise's grea stength asa socal sienec atin tempts to link the sociological and the epistemological dimension postmodernism. At the level of everyday language and proceius DeLillo caprures the optimistic cynicism of imploded meani ‘memory banks, and televisual screenings. He is neither bratory. Abandoning the terrain of p t and lover power, he opts instead for a kind of market media effect whee everything was on television last night. White Noise is, however, a ghost-busting text that refuses ‘what has been rendered spectral by the ewin hands ofthe so. writer. At the close of White Noise, the language of enthusiasm for 2n American culture mediated and saturated by commodities whose hieo- elyphics and secret codes fascinate and offer entrance into a word fill of abandoned meanings and momentary ecstatic experiences gives way to a “sense of wandering ... an aimless and haunted mood.” Smeared print, ghost images. The members of DeLillo's television public fnd that the “supermarket shelves have been re-arranged out warning": fone day with: ‘The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have le making out the words. Smeated print, ghost images. In the the ambient roa, in the plain and heartless fact of thie decline, 'yt0 work their way through confusion. But inthe end it doesnt ee what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped lograpbic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every ly. This isthe language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak tothe living. (325-26) Acthe end of DeLillo’s novel, his story of contemporary white subut ban everyday life (which in this is the virtual history of pos her shape and hishand 15 sican culture) is figured by the rearrangement ofthe Wor eae ie This ban apt metaphor forthe socal world White superman shelves TOE hes around its protagonist, Jack Gladney: a Nose arceulaes a0¢ hima landscape of late (night) capitalism wheve oni Pes gem” Up unl his point Jack, who everthing was sand theorizes (in perfectly encapsulated spetac cons ts] the popular cute that fascinates im, has sn The nt being bo right thee our an 00m Tne uot rc: they believed something lived in the basem sake ot pore Toe Event (cksith’s Bho. net ded means 03 wile Fart for Bet fietons ca she the smoot switching of ch : Fen a Sng Lights). At the end all chat reais i conf Family Tis tana out the word, and the post sen sre $i a cynical and pessimistic, Dello’ conclusion eerily encans: Se eat mate sa hy se or thik thy see. The Hn endecoe te secret of every item. NO st, HO as 0 cena ies only passive scene of waiting and watching, From se ie, and spl pus But the end test mate what saree or think they sees the language of waves 3 fooge in which the ghostly (or the Stim edges, But the end dost mater what they se or ancy ees the postmodern positive language of power and indif- ce that is nothing more than the "second nature” of commodiica- fovspeaking as our common culture (Jameson 1991: 314) Ifthe ghostly haunt gives notice that someth channels that gives us ion, alan ing for that matter) cannot get a js missing—that what n the shadows is announcing itself, however loise there are no ghostly haunts, oF lity of fetishized comm lance and that which masquerades as its absence. Indeed, one could argue that White Noise enacts a detour around just those issues of power it aggressively renders ex} sistent emphas symptomatically—thet shadows, only the insistent vi ence and abse blindness (Kipnis 1988: 158)46 _hershape and his hand proti 0 Sha ingly ruled by technologies of wwe are led to believe not only that everything can be sen, everything is available and accessible for our consumption, ss gq seemingly ruled by technologies of hype: | fat nes represion north ren ofthe repressed 3 35 either improperly bus difference, occurs any meaningful result The representation of value or difference is in standing the cleavages that powers divisive work acc extent that DeLillo's text performs some ofthe new w: ference, rather than simply being excluded or marginalized, \\._ Staged or simulated, i tells an important \ Noise clearly puts the reader on notice that {and then cannot) \ apprehension, the story of Jack’s pan indicator ofthe way in which can be accessed, Such a narrative makes ws other than a kind there. In other words, not much le other than the fact that her absent life world can nowbe -dged, advertised, and consumed as background white noi Dell's text may very well echo Jean Baudrillard’s point that post ‘modern culture can increasingly bring within view (for consumption) that which previos the same features it descr to challenge the ubiqui in which di reproduces matter, re are confronted wi cence as a symp ’s phantoms. Kept busy i ig supermarket of exchanges, traces of production—appears, ‘one hopes for. James hhershape and hishand 17 fora while.” To dead B18 cial formation is posodet a ‘and exclusions. A differer feded to even begin the work of writing a te: ng mre ation & ble Mam, Ralph infican-American man| persistent ali darkness . . . 10% a Balaie feet for us owas twas fr Elion when he 2 which the mediums of Sly wedded ro the co cola eabiy 252 complex ol rely by appartions and Ptr acre opt a ec ekam je can actually be a type of invisi To18 hershape and his hand ey. sity of reckoning with the instrumentality of hau it does not invite us to make contact with haunt sense of the gho Questions have guided my desire to a a crucible for pol y has no other choice than to re How do we reckon with what modern history has rendered gh How do we develop a critical language to describe and and its social and p mediation and bi signate the precise contours xf of accepting or re) , and, academic commot ock on this concept (Gor- lar media isto des ts do not have of exploring here the parti eee) an taped har working a toy proce andthe eerie ve that aa of subjectivism and positivism? mote tidy world, but one that might be less dan over and over agai the correct relationship20 her shape and his hand Vi ie he victims of the same condition and the s ame disappcig ‘One wonders what a completed theory of ghee have looked like had Horkheimer and Adorno act than the note.” [have not written the Theory of Ghos lar proposal for my purposes, but Ghostly 1¢ reduction of individuals ™ ‘xpeiones WHEN TEaVE no race, Sather whee nee ional, superfluous, and ‘overtaken” And a problem it remains des, stad in the wake of w tecture, confounding some of the distin. reand science, the factual and the arti 1g new ‘These are major accomplishm change slowly and which, despite thei i ruth nonetheless: the capa shifting ent evidentiary ru Such a mode of producti servation per se, but migh prised” by soc worlds, thereby giving22 hershape and his hand sown reckoning with how we are in these stories, with how they chang tus, with our own ghosts. Doing so is not easy because, seten fen shows up not a8 professional success, but as failure: the og ingnot writing only came together as she came togei the reality of fictions and the unrealitis of among other things, kn: oft room with ws, through wonder and vexation. But itis also true that ghosts are nee rnocent: the unhallowed dead of the modern project drag inthe patos their loss and the violence of the force that made them, their shes produces its own insights and blindnesses. Following the gh ‘making a contact that changes you and refashions the social relationsia which you are located. It is about pi fe back in where only & vague memory or a bare trace was visible to those who bothered 0 ok. I is sometimes about writing ghos thar not only pair representational mistakes, but also st ‘but also strive to understand the a ounteememory, for the future. duced in the first place, sad in particular, has an extraordinary mandate as far as cad ines go: to conjure up social life. Conjuring is a particular forces that make things what they troubling situation, As a mode of 2, conjuring merges the anal and the effervescent. But we have mote fe that aspect of do this not o “the pieces of a world... (D. Smith 1987: 99) things, nor are saree and objective ways ou "!€0 portray them. The counterpart to reification, the con) her shape andhishand 23 ing wick, might be better caprred by Walter Bejamin’s srination of Marx’ sensuous knowledge. Of cours, that scholars too are subject to these same dynam getin our martes ust a8 eans that we wil .o and listen to ghos establishing our scientific or humanistic knowlege “Ghostly Matters is thus, on the one hand, a modest book and, on he other hand, quite ambitious. Its mod part of soci reckon ‘out doubs often painful, Ties in asserting th swe have been doing things. follow, I have tried to explore theee broad questions alternative stories we ought cand can wate aout the £2 ‘among power, knowledge, and experience? I have beet troubled by the contrast between conceptual OF24 hershape and his hand systems and their far more diffused and delicate eff ing occurs on the terrain situated between our ability to con describe the logic of Capitalism or State Terror, for example, an as experiences ofthis logic, experiences that are more ofr soded, symptomatic, contradictory, ambiguous, Wi , haunting and follow its trajectory? Second, ifthe gh Ys rival notifies us of a haunting, how does the ghost interrupt or pu NN | crisis the demand for ethnographic authenticity—what Jacq NES Syste 12) has called the “unequivocal acc Hae, sciences and makes ne wonder, What does the ghost say as it speaks, barely, inthe inesine rd, we are pat of the stony fe ‘me in some way someting similar to, sometimes distinct from how it may be speaking to the oh ers. How then can our critical language display a reflexive concern nit only with the objects of our investigations but also with the ones who investigate? What methods and forms of writing can foreground the conditions under which the facts and the real story are produced? ‘What is my method for ans is everything and nothing mu (The question of method bas also gotten me into some trouble, as chapter 2 shows.) I do not devise Ke procedures 3 of theories because one major gol of \ ty as - is fo get us to consider a different w: wat critique, one that is more WONG sterpearanceso Vi seeing is not a rule book 4 way of negotiating the what we see and what we know Ives prod indicating their consequences, W is a case of haunting, a stor gS * [te (Berger 1972: ce explanatory the ship between could say that rc her shape and is das what we never even of “what... it {is} to learn, these for a case of dead oF missing p Tris often a case af figure. sociale Tn present that haunt what can re We and the rem: ren ee sfessionalized social science, and thus hat we need to know but cannot qui les of method and modes of appreh rorins of a pro bs, through imaginative design, recess to with our given rl Sion. Where else do we learn of the svithout memories, learning about drawn in, hearts in hand, t0 sociology is conerned with stories of social and cultural oe rere eatery Se ptutonal mandate Ps ine bound uf sume. Not onl theoretical assumptions e¢ fictive I mean not simply26 ershape and his hand thing akin to the urdical strict scrutiny testis predicated upon ag, disineson between what is (socially) real and what is fiction 4 Michel de Ceteau puts it, “At the level of analytic proceduts,.. gy the level of interpretations ... the technical discourse capable of dee mining the errors characteristic of fiction has come to be authorigy speak in the name ofthe ‘rea.’ By distinguishing between the two ds courses—the one scientific, the other fictive—according to its own rig. ria, [sociology] credits itself with having a special relationship to iy ‘real’ because its contrary is posited as... [fictive] (1983: 128). To th ‘extent that sociology is wedded to facticty as its special truth it mag continually police and expel its margin—the margin of error—whichis the fictive. But these facts are always in imminent danger of being con taminated by what is seemingly on the other side of their boundaries, by fictions, Like a taboo that is always being approached in the act of avoidance, when sociology insists on Finding only the facts, it has no other choice but to pursue the fictive, the mistake it seeks to eliminate. ‘A marginal discourse, the story of how the real story has emerged, com sistently shadows and threatens to subvert the very authority that c= tablishes disciplinary order. If “the margins ofthe story mark a border between the remembered ind the forgotten” (Haug et al. 1987: 68), my use of fiction to designate border intends to call attention to both the broader issues of i and exclusion, and also to the “twistfs] and tur reinterpret[ations} and falsifilcations], forget{tings] and repress|ings] (ofl evens” (ibid: 40) that are part of the research and writing process These are characterstcally the elements an objective account attempts tomminimize, But these are precisely what interest me. So, I have tied f0 ‘make the fictional, the theoretical, and the factual speak to one another In that conversation, if we can calli that, I have hoped to acknowledse and foreground as real and operative just those twists and turns, forget- st those ghostly haunts that a normal sot sezount routinely attempts to minimize. I have hoped to find as such lessons for a mode of insri>~ its of institutional discourse. importantly, I have hoped to draw attention to a whole realm of ‘experiences and social practices that can barely be approached without method attentive to what is elusive, fantastic contingent, and often Se leging Literature, Literature has its her shape and hishand 27 wn problems of athe it has is own busines, Khas hisory anda ec that implicates it inthe production of highly ideological ene. part of its economy of literacy states it within now ultras, whee Jes over value and aces take precedence. My concen with sci ih Lier he neat ofcourse, riddled withthe complications of he soi era bj ofnguiy—i repens andsoncns in. range wea sta on the other side of he ft fetons an scheme, and so they have helped 0h Mancha and chronological famewodk" andthe simpy of ie, they have helped o show what “ras though rei sa fe oslo] semble ads” Bab 31435 ec ean cent eb adinni versa haunting tbat concerns mead is et the a are not ends in themslies, howe. They open the oor tnd iiss grasping te mat f rs en Sociale, especial when oh wit os dose here Bind the fos ofthis dling nes ribly frightening. particular stuge js unequivocal es ht sad ew a ‘wish. In chapter 2, forced (© a an, atin Spe vin 50 1g loking apposed be fd er re ‘science that has taken haunting se ee A a fo sk tree co 51 of ech hoy Mates cons Pen be readin any ode take a detour, analysis, the only human object of analysis. But psychoan: hstoal events, Caper 3» ween Como en la GuerralHle Who Searches, tocknown as disappearance in Argentina. Chapt 4» 30% 2g Morrison's novel Befoved, is about Reconsistion pow inheritance of US aca slavery. These bape Sy cane ing atention to ghosts cao, among, other EINES 74 ry ath oa red on Toni128 hershape and his hand and the legacy of American freedom that derives from it. Chap ane Judes by way ofa summary of the book's principal theme lessons. specter ar still haunting, not only in Europe and not only of conn, ram. Our contemporary society is still a “society that has conju toch gigantic means of production and of exchange .. like the ceret, whois no longer abl 1 the powers of the ned whom he has called up by his spells” (Marx and Engel 72). The ask then remains to follow the ghosts and spells of power order to tame this sorcerer and conjure otherwise.