Traumatic Haunting in the Neocolonial World: “His House” in the Context of the Spectral Turn
Natasza Korczarowska
natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.plUniversity of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Abstract
The article analyses Remi Weekes’s film His House (2020) in the context of Jaques Derrida’s hauntology, refugee discourse, and Achille Mbembe’s nanoracism. The author treats the arrival of refugees from South Sudan to the former Empire (Great Britain) in terms of a traumatic haunting and places the entire film in the paradigm of the turn closely related to hauntological reflection. Weekes’s film can be regarded as a form of exorcism, the aim of which is to work through the experience of colonial and neocolonial trauma. In the author’s approach, hauntology is connected with Freud’s theory of trauma: the work of mourning and the concept of das Unheimliche, which refers to both what is “uncanny” and “un-home-ly.” Spectres – as in Avery Gordon’s work – are not seen here as a pre-modern superstition or a symptom of individual psychosis but as a social phenomenon of great importance in the neocolonial world. Hauntology – emphasizing the issue of collective responsibility for the Other – includes ethics in the project of postcolonial historiography.
Keywords:
neocolonialism, refugee discourse, hauntology, Remi Weekes, South SudanReferences
Agamben, G. (2010). My, uchodźcy (tłum. K. Gawlicz). W: Agamben. Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej (ss. 25-34). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.
Google Scholar
Bal, M. (2007). A gdyby tak? Język afektu (tłum. M. Maryl). Teksty Drugie, (1-2), ss.165-188.
Google Scholar
Benhabib, S. (2015). Prawa Innych. Przybysze, rezydenci i obywatele (tłum. M. Filipczuk). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.
Google Scholar
Bergland, R. (2013). Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. W: M. del Pilar Blanco, E. Peeren (red.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (ss. 371-392). New York: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
del Pilar Blanco, M., Peeren E. (2013). Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities. W: M. del Pilar Blanco, E. Peeren (red.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (ss. 1-27). New York: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (2016). Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka (tłum. T. Załuski). Warszawa: PWN.
Google Scholar
Gordon, A. (2013). Her Shape and His Hand. W: M. del Pilar Blanco, E. Peeren (red.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (ss. 103-129). New York: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
Hirsch, J. (2015). Postmodernizm, drugie pokolenie i międzykulturowe kino posttraumatyczne (tłum. T. Bilczewski, A. Kowalcze-Pawlik). W: T. Łysak (red.), Antologia studiów nad traumą (ss. 253-284). Kraków: Universitas.
Google Scholar
Kot, D. (2020). Tratwa Odysa. Esej o uchodźcach. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria.
Google Scholar
Kurtz, R. (2021). Trauma and Transformation in African Literature. New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315467535
Google Scholar
LaCapra, D. (2009). Historia w okresie przejściowym. Doświadczenie, tożsamość, teoria krytyczna (tłum. K. Bojarska). Kraków: Universitas.
Google Scholar
Marks, L. U. (2000). The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381372
Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2001). On Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2013). Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola. W: M. del Pilar Blanco, E. Peeren (red.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (ss. 131-149). New York: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2018). Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka (tłum. U. Kropiwiec, K. Bojarska). Kraków: Wydawnictwo Karakter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.17.658
Google Scholar
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2013). Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: Condersia.
Google Scholar
Peeren, E. (2014). The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375858
Google Scholar
Punter, D. (2003). Arundhati Roy and the House of History W: A. Smith, W. Hughes (red.), Empire and the Gothic: The Politics of Genre (ss. 192-207). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919342_12
Google Scholar
Spivak, G. (2011). Negocjacje ze strukturami przemocy (tłum. A. Górny). W: S. Harasym (red.), Strategie postkolonialne (ss.180-197). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.
Google Scholar
Warmiński, A. (1997). Koncepcja „cienia” w psychologii analitycznej C. G. Junga. Rocznik Naukowo-Dydaktyczny WSP w Krakowie, (190), ss. 33-46.
Google Scholar
Welz, M. (2021). Africa Since Decolonization: The History and Politics of a Diverse Continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108599566
Google Scholar
Authors
Natasza Korczarowskanatasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz. She specializes in the history of Polish film, contemporary European cinema, and the problems of historiophoty. She published the books Ojczyzny prywatne [Private Homelands] (2007) and Inne spojrzenie [Another Way] (2013) – the latter devoted to the images of history in the Polish feature film after 1965. Since 2008, she has cooperated with the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute on the educational project Academy of Polish Film.
Statistics
Abstract views: 34PDF downloads: 34
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Natasza Korczarowska
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Natasza Korczarowska, The Abject and Historical Trauma in Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 114 (2021): Contamination, Dirt, Flaw
- Natasza Korczarowska, “Heritage is dead! Long live heritage!” British Cinema in the Face of a Political Crisis , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 105-106 (2019): Cinema and Political Transformation
- Natasza Korczarowska, Kidults, Consumed Nostalgia, and American Teen Movies of the 1980s (and Their Contemporary Simulacra) , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 121 (2023): Cinema and Young Audience
- Natasza Korczarowska, American True Crime Streaming Shows about Serial Killers , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 124 (2023): Streaming
- Natasza Korczarowska, Museum is Mourning. Alexandr Sokurov’s Architectural Elegies , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 109 (2020): Architectural Space in Film
- Natasza Korczarowska, The “Significant Shot” and Its Functions in the Popular Variant of Puzzle Films , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 118 (2022): One Take
- Natasza Korczarowska, Defending Kolski , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 117 (2022): Unknown/Hidden Cinema
- Natasza Korczarowska, Body Doubles and Trauma: The Figure of the Doppelgänger in the Science Fiction Genre , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 126 (2024): Fantasy and Phantasm
- Natasza Korczarowska, Heroic Men and Absent Women , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 124 (2023): Streaming
- Natasza Korczarowska, Memory in Cinema/Memory after Cinema , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 125 (2024): Cinema as a Memory Machine