ABSTRACT
The past, as presently lived, is full of occlusions. These range from omissions in personal narratives to ideologically motivated silences. This chapter investigates these occlusions under the guise of haunting: as phenomena that have an historical effect precisely through their absence. I argue that a proper grasp of haunting demands a reconceptualization of human memory and temporality, that the concepts for this revision are available to us in philosophical hermeneutics, and that the current cross-disciplinary memory crisis demands a turn to precisely these concepts. To help substantiate this conceptual direction, I draw on two works of literature that exemplify both the experience of haunting and our possible responses to it: W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Finally, drawing on contemporary psychotherapeutic theory, I develop a parallel between collective history and personal trauma. In this respect, the chapter is a contribution to both the psychology and the politics of remembrance.
