Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead

by Colin Davis

Why do the dead return? Do they remain part of the world of the living? This book examines these questions as they emerge in areas as diverse as film, Holocaust testimony, and the works of Jacques Derrida, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The book suggests it may be as difficult for the living to get rid of the dead as it is to live without them.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Ghosts

187 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2007

Reviews

[Ted J. Gibbs]

Davis writes with great historical understanding of the placement of the dead, undead, and living in culture and theory. Good vibes.

[Yağmur]

More terrifying than the return of ghosts may be the prospect that there is nothing to return, no survival, no resurrection, and no commanding voice from beyond the grave; as Zizek puts it, ‘it is not sufficient to say that we fear the spectre – the spectre itself already emerges out of a fear, out of our escape from something even more horrifying: freedom.