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Hauntology

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Hauntology

By: Merlin Coverley
Narrated by: Alan Turton
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About this listen

Ghosts and spectres, the eerie and the occult. Why is contemporary culture so preoccupied by the supernatural, so captivated by the revenants of an earlier age, so haunted? The concept of Hauntology has evolved since first emerging in the 1990s and has now entered the cultural mainstream as a shorthand for our new-found obsession with the recent past. But where does this term come from, and what exactly does it mean?

This book seeks to answer these questions by examining the history of our fascination with the uncanny from the golden age of the Victorian ghost story to the present day. From Dickens to Derrida, MR James to Mark Fisher; from the rise of Spiritualism to the folk horror revival, Hauntology traces our continuing engagement with these esoteric ideas. Moving between the literary and the theoretical, the visual and the political, Hauntology explores our nostalgia for the cultural artefacts of a past from which we seem unable to break free.

©2020 Merlin Coverley (P)2020 W F Howes Haunted Paranormal Fantasy Ghost

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All stars
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i somehow both felt like it had some interesting things and was not really engaging enough...especially for a subject which is supposed to be very captivating.
it was a bit of a halloween month disappointment...
i was somehow expecting more from it.

it was ok

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A great book! a fascinating theme that is enlightening and inspiring.

BUT as others say why opt for random accents, this is non-fiction it doesn't need to sound like a Hercule Poirot plot. Also as others say, why use accents that have no similarity to the person quoted, it is easy to ascertain what Colin Wilson sounds like so why make him sound like a Yorkshire miner??? also the 'Allo Allo' accents are difficult to understand which defeats the purpose surely.

Accents!!!!

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The books a pretty good assessment of Hauntology but it gets mixed in with a lot of other ideas, becoming quite jumbled by the end.

Good ideas in a jumbled presentation

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but not the author. As stated in other reviews the 'comedy' accents ascribed to the authors and intellectuals by the narrator are so bad they border on offensive. Derrida was a Jewish Algerian so Audible may want to rethink the BBC sitcom style French accent. I nearly didn't get past the introduction but I'm glad I stuck with it because this book is actually a very good introduction to Hauntology, covering the academic side as well as it's cultural incarnations. if you're looking to study or apply Fisher or Derrida this is a good grounding before you approach their work. The author acknowledges the omission of music as a lacuna in this text but Fisher, who didn't sound anything like the accent he's ascribed, more than adequately covers it in his writings so if you have enjoyed this work I'd urge you to read him next (his works on audible too )

Shoot the reader...

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I agree with those who have complained about the narration. However, it is very good work with solid research and information on the subject. In the absence of the actual book I value this tremendously.

still worth ploughing through

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I have to point out how much I wanted to like this but in the end I had to return it due to the awful narrator. His pronunciation had a staccato quality that meant I was more aware of the reader than the words he was saying. Worst still was his impressions of famous philosphers, breaking into french accents that I couldn't take seriously. I'm going to buy the book.

Poor reading

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I found the book itself interesting (I didn’t always agree with its arguments, but it was food for thought nonetheless), and appreciated having such a book — academic/scholarly examination of a theoretical subject — as an audiobook really useful as it allowed me to explore the subject while multitasking.

However, the person reading the book rather let it down at times. He would put on foreign accents when the book quoted writers who aren’t English (and for the record, some of the accents were atrocious), which was laughable at best and irritating always, and there were a number of words he mispronounced scattered throughout the reading). It wasn’t so bad that it made it unlistenable, but it was annoying.

Despite the reader’s iffy performance, I’d still recommend this to those interested in a scholarly discussion of Hauntology. Coverley’s arguments are generally good (I’d take issue with some, particularly his argument that Hauntology is somehow uniquely British, even though some of his arguments contradict this), but otherwise he makes some interesting points.

Interesting Discussion, Iffy Reader

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Over my head. Could not grasp what the hell this book was going on about.

whooooooosh

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The accents the reader uses are stupid, inaccurate “joke” impressions. Derrida did not speak with a “comedy” Allo Allo French accent. China Mieville is NOT French. Freud didn’t speak like a Hollywood Nazi. The Irish accent will make want to eat your headphones. Mark Fisher and Reynolds don’t speak like that (?!) he could have done a tiny bit of checking up. Or just (please God) NOT have done random terrible accents !?

I’m not exaggerating when I say the reading makes this unlistenable.

Accents ruin this reading. Srsly RUIN it.

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The book may well be good but I just couldn't get through it given how bad the performance was. The narrator feels the need to constantly whip out comedy accents each time someone is quoted, which happens very frequently. It's unbelievably grating and completely takes you out of understanding what he's talking about; did nobody tell him he was narrating a non-fiction book not playing a bit-part in a panto?

Awful Narration

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