Meanings
- uncountablebroadcastingA concept involving the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past.
The suspicion is inescapable: part of the reason why hauntology should appeal to us so much now is that, unconsciously, and increasing consciously, we suspect that something has died.
2018, Mark Fisher, “is pop undead?”, in Darren Ambrose, editor, K-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), London: Repeater Books, →ISBN1 more example
So immersed is Marx's rhetoric in the Gothic that Derrida in Specters of Marx creates a neologism for Marx's ontology, transforming it into “hauntology.” Marx argues that in a market economy a ghostly web of simulacra of relationships, exchanges, and circulation hovers over the whole system, indicating that people have had their humanity drained out of them by capitalism and that they are left as ghostly shells.
[2005, Gail Turley Houston, From Dickens to Dracula: Gothic, Economics, and Victorian Fiction, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 85
Origin
- Frenchhantologie
- Englishhauntology
Borrowed from French hantologie: equivalent to haunt + -ology, and a near-homophone to ontologie (“ontology”); apparently coined by Jacques Derrida in Spectres of Marx (1993).
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Japanese 憑在論
- 憑在論concept involving the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past
Cite this entry
hauntology. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hauntology
“hauntology.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hauntology. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hauntology,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hauntology.
Source: hauntology on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.