The Technological Uncanny: The Role of Memory Prosthetics in Hauntological Practice

Hauntology is a neologism that has come to mean different things to different people, since the term was first coined by Jacques Derrida in the early 1990s. In popular music, for example, hauntology has shifted from something that once described a particular philosophical approach and uncanny atmosphere, to the name of a very specific genre, defined by the reimagination of certain anachronistic tropes. We see this in the changing outputs from Ghost Box records, which has slowly moved from its more enigmatic and experimental origins, to something closer to a pastiche of 1970s cultural modernism.

Reflecting on a body of practice research by the author, encompassing experimental film, photography and electronic music (including an album that sampled television programmes vaguely remembered from the artist’s childhood), this paper explores Mark Fisher’s notion of the “technological uncanny”, returning to the original theory and first principals of hauntology. The roles played by childhood nostalgia, aging technology and so-called ‘prosthetic memory’, are all explored in this context, asking why if all media is spectral, as Derrida asserted, do only certain media artefacts present as uncanny? The author aims to continue the work of the late Mark Fisher, asking what hauntology means today, and whether or not certain formative concerns have been forgotten. How can new hauntological practice continue his investigations and return the machine to the ghost?