X-Men: Ghosts of Genomes Past – Part Two
Haunting the Present — politics, surveillance and control. The paradoxes of mutant time are embodied in the recurring figure of the future mutant who returns to warn of a catastrophe … Continue reading
The Psychology of Slow Time (Part One)
Slow time is not the absence of activity. This is usually where people start, and it’s where things immediately go wrong. Slow time is not what happens when nothing is … Continue reading
X-Men: Ghosts of Genomes Past – Part One
The Haunted Genome — biology and identity. The X-Men represent a particular brand of spectrality, defined less by biological deviation than by the persistent presence of a future that … Continue reading
The Psychology of Slow Time (Part Two)
This pressure is often framed as rumination, but rumination implies choice, or at least agency. Under slow time, memory behaves more like background radiation. It fills the space left by … Continue reading
Coming Soon
Three new books coming out over the next year. All finished. There is a forth, but I’m keeping that one back for a while. Naturally, its the one I am … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part Four)
The intersection of Kneale’s work with the mechanics of the phantom limb becomes most visible through his preoccupation with systems that persist in running on invalid assumptions. This phenomenon is … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part Three)
In Quatermass and the Pit, Kneale’s ‘Hobbs End’ is London’s wound reopening. Agoraphobia is the private version of that reopening; the moment the body realises its access to the world … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part Two)
Now, this is the point where I started to suspect something I had not quite said out loud before. Agoraphobia is not just compatible with hauntology. It is one of … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part One)
Amputation gets described as removal, which is technically accurate in the way a spreadsheet can be accurate. Yes, the limb is not there. Well done, everyone. The problem is that … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part Two)
If Hiroshima haunts through absence, the Titanic haunts through overexposure. The Titanic has been replayed, retold, reconstructed, and reanimated so many times that it barely qualifies as an event anymore. It … Continue reading
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