ABSTRACT
The metaphor of the ghost demonstrates how traces of the past can appear unexpectedly in the present. In everyday language, we speak of a ghostly presence that haunts us or one that is suddenly evoked and conjured up. Given their unpredictable and ephemeral presence, what kind of temporality do ghosts have? From ancient Greece, there are three different understandings of time: Chronos, Kairos and Aion corresponding to chronology, rupture and eternity. And yet, past experience may haunt us in ways that are not necessarily chronological, transformational or eternal. Where, if at all, do ghosts such as that of Patrocles fit into the Greek tripartite understanding of time? After examining Greek conceptions of time, with particular emphasis on Kairos as a time of crisis and change, I suggest that Reinhart Koselleck’s sedimented layers of time and atemporality of dreams in tandem with Jacques Derrida’s hauntology illuminate how the ghost of Patrocles is linked to unresolved events in the past. Although Patrocles’ ghost may have appeared in ancient Greece, his visitation during a dream and in-between status of being stranded between different temporalities is still with us today.
