'A Definition of Hauntology'

The website, blog, publisher and shop A Year in the Country explains that it ‘began in 2014 and at its core is an exploration of the interconnected rise of interest in the wyrd, eerie and re-enchanted landscape, folk horror, the further reaches of folk music and the parallel worlds of hauntology.’

Stephen Prince, the editor and principal author, offers ‘A Definition of Hauntology, its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk and the Exploration of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape (Revised and Extended)’. This is a wide-ranging discussion of a term in frequent use but often deployed somewhat hazily. It is a much-needed analysis that tries to convey the key elements that seem to comprise what the idea involves. Note that this is evidently a work in progress, so the content may shift and change from what I discuss here.

The essay proposes six broad themes that  characterise the concept of ‘hauntology’, including:  ‘Music and culture that draws from and examines a sense of loss, yearning or nostalgia for a post-war utopian, progressive, modernist future’; ominous themes in children’s television and public information films; graphic design and electronic music with a particular futuristic style for its time; a sense of haunting by the culture of the fairly recent past; the use of the imperfections inherent in past technology, such as record crackle and tape hiss; and, overall, a sense of a parallel imaginary world, a ‘Midwichian’ Britain. (I am, of course, just summarising here a much fuller discussion).

These seem to me to be highly observant points, though they are quite hard to draw together in an overall understanding. Some are descriptive, usefully specific about individual ingredients, so we can see what sort of thing we are discussing, but others are more conceptual and impressionistic. Perhaps that is in the very nature of what is being evoked.

The piece then goes on to discuss examples of hauntology among current practitioners, including the Ghost Box record label, the blog The Haunted Generation, and the emergence of zines working in this field, including Hellebore, Weird Walk and Undefined Boundary. I would add other musicians whose work has a hauntology element, including those producing ambient and drone music, or using analogue synthesizers to compose and perform retro-electronica, such as Polypores, The Twelve Hour Foundation, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan and The Heartwood Institute.

It is understandable that only so much can be covered in a survey of this kind, and it is already generous and inclusive in its inspirations. However, it will be seen that much of this discussion is media-driven: it focuses on film, television, music, design and technology and largely omits literature, except for the allusion to John Wyndham in the term ‘Midwichian’.

This leaves open the question of the relationship between ‘hauntology’ and the field of fantastic and supernatural fiction generally. But I think there are some clear signs of overlap. For example, the revived interest in young adult supernatural fiction of the same Sixties/Seventies period evoked by hauntology, such as the novels of Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, John Gordon, seems to fit quite well here.

The same might be said of the enthusiasm for vintage horror and supernatural paperbacks of this period, published by, for example, Pan and Corgi, including work by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Aickman, and the various series of ghostly and macabre anthologies. We might also add the renewed and wistful enthusiasm for ancient mysteries books of the time, such as those by Janet & Colin Bord and John Michell.

Clearly, any expansion of the scope of the term ‘hauntology’ risks it becoming too diffuse, yet these literary elements do seem to stem from the same milieu as that explored in the article’s description, and indeed some of them are specifically referenced by avowed hauntology practitioners. For example, Ghost Box included in its releases titles and themes drawn from Machen and Blackwood, and the zines mentioned also regard these and similar authors as presiding spirits.

I would also suggest that the independent presses publishing classic and contemporary supernatural fiction, such as Tartarus, Swan River, Sarob, Egaeus, Zagava, and imprints such as the British Library Tales of the Weird series, might be seen as the equivalent in literature of the Ghost Box milieu in music. 

Certainly, not all of the titles issued by these presses are consistent with the hauntology themes the essay identifies, particularly those to do with modernism and mid 20^th century technology, but even some of those do have a presence, and other themes, particularly the sense of loss and of the ominous, and the idea of a missing, sideways, world, are often reflected in the work of these presses.

I have to confess I like the term better than others that have emerged or been revived in recent years, such as ‘the weird’,‘folk horror’ and, at a further reach, 'psychogeography'. This is partly because it is more evocative and because its elusive quality reflects what it tries to describe. It also, to acknowledge a clear interest, relates to the late Sixties and Seventies period when I was myself discovering the strange and supernatural, and so has a particular personal resonance. Even so, I think that hauntology may well have relevance as a term to help us perceive the current phase in the writing and readership of the literature of the fantastic.

(Mark Valentine)

Image; Beach Ghost, Weybourne, Norfolk