ABSTRACT
Despite its commitment to a broader and more inclusive agenda, critical terrorism studies (CTS) is still largely under a Western gaze, although remarkable exceptions exist. However, this chapter argues, CTS needs to gather more postcolonial scholars and theories to further decolonise its agenda and concepts. Assuming the irreplaceable role of spectres in questioning, challenging and retelling the past, in particular when it comes to moments representing potentially traumatic ruptures, the author proposes to test the value of a concept of Western origin – haunting – in the construction of postcolonial policies and practices of memory in relation to politically violent events. Drawing on the literary, cultural and political possibilities of haunting as an analytical and conceptual framework, this chapter intends to demonstrate the emancipatory potential of the figure of the ghost in unveiling the legacies of a colonial violent episode in São Tomé and Príncipe: the 1953 Massacre. It argues for three distinct readings of hauntings: as spectral entities – or literal ghosts – that, by transcending fixed boundaries of time and space, can disrupt dominant narratives of the past; as metaphors for addressing colonial violence and its persistent legacies in the present; and as active processes of ghosting concrete subjects that, in turn, can resort to invisibility as a strategy of resistance.
