What is "hauntology"

n. In Derridan philosophy, the paradoxical state of the spectre, which is neither being nor nonbeing.

Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology) refers to a state of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction in which presence is replaced by a deferred non-origin, represented by "the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive." The term was coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. The concept of hauntology is closely related to Derrida's deconstruction of Western philosophy's logocentrism, which results in the claim that being does not entail presence, and thus that "haunting [is] the state proper to being as such."

In recent years, the term has been taken up by critics in reference to paradoxes found in postmodern society, particularly contemporary culture's persistent recycling of retro aesthetics and old social forms. Critics such as Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds have utilized the term to describe art preoccupied with articulating and exploring this temporal disjunction.