Providence 5 – Lovecraft Out of Context
The contemporary cultural landscape is haunted by an entity that bears only a superficial resemblance to Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Decades after he died in poverty and obscurity, the Providence writer … Continue reading
Providence 3: Lovecraft Out of Space
If we apply the lens of psychogeography to Lovecraft’s Providence, we stop viewing the setting as mere backdrop for cosmic indifference and instead see the urban environment as an active … Continue reading
Providence: Introduction – The Haunter of the Drift
Providence is an series of essays that are nominally about HP Lovecraft. You find out why ‘nominally’ fits as the essays go on. This is the introduction essay. The rest … Continue reading
Estate Agents of Doom, or, Scooby Doo vs. the 1%
The cultural artefact known as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? represents a sustained and surprisingly rigorous interrogation of the late twentieth century landscape. To the casual observer, the first two … Continue reading
X-Men: Ghosts of Genomes Past – Part Three
Why the X-Men Never End — memory, seriality and myth. The mutant past is perpetually reimagined, transforming history into a shifting landscape of retroactive continuity. This instability of memory provides … Continue reading
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
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
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 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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