ABSTRACT
The ghostly traces leak through, even as bodies or bones may be displayed for political purposes. The 9/11 case illustrates excision as a means of construction of a political community in the way in which it has excised specific forms of subjectivity from the political and memorial imaginary. As Joanne Lipson Freed characterises, 'for Derrida, the ghost or specter becomes a figure for all that disrupts, interrupts, or deconstructs, and possesses all the productive potential that such interventions promise'. In this sense, looking for ghosts is not simply a way to explore the logic of haunting at play in contemporary forms of statecraft, but also a way of conceiving hauntological resistances to many of the closures imposed by the state in these ordering mechanisms. It is important then, as the author concludes to emphasise the importance of dead bodies. They offer an alternative perspective on international politics.
