Introduction

Abstract

Starting from fundamental, and fundamentally unanswerable, questions concerning the nature of what it might mean to be haunted, to feel oneself or to feel somewhere to be haunted, the introduction moves through considerations of the selfhood and consciousness in relation to place, and finding oneself in a given locus that gives to the subject a reflective apperception of the condition of existence as a haunted state. Addressing matters of the ethics of reading, expropriation, and the haunting concept of loss, the introduction considers a number of key issues in Derridean thinking as the premises for the readings that comprise the volume, illustrating these with examples from literature. Implicit in the introduction is a defence of reading’s singularity and a refusal to define a frame or thematics of reading, a model of critical practice, on the post-Derridean understanding that all reading is, on the one hand, the chance of a singular experience or event and, on the other hand, a response to the call of the other (in the form of a particular literary text). In moving through these largely Derridean considerations, the introduction acknowledges the significance of particular strands of phenomenology.