Ghosts of postmodernity

spectral epistemology and haunting in Hilary Mantel's Fludd and beyond black

Wolfgang Funk

pp. 147-161

in: Siân Adiseshiah, Rupert Hildyard (eds), Twenty-first century fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

[n]ot long ago, we used to exist in space and time. Physical presence was a condition of being. In any given place, we were the features and attitudes we showed the world; at any specific moment, we were the things we did and said among our fellow humans. Today instead we are a conjured-up phantom on a solitary screen, a pseudonymous and unharboured email address, a disembodied voice that can be summoned by anyone, day and night, like a spirit at a séance. We have solved Hamlet’s question: we are and are not simultaneously. We have become ghosts. (2010, p. 10)

Cited authors

Mantel Hilary