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Research Essay on Hauntology & other concepts of memory

Question 10: The concept of hauntology (see online required reading for Week 11) was first coined by Jacques Derrida as a philosophical concept. However, it has been subsequently used to describe a style and genre of music and sound art (including vaporwave) by theorists such as Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher. First describe the relevance of memory to the notion of hauntology both as a genre of music and as a philosophical concept, and then pick one or more sound works or music pieces that belong within the genre. How does the sound work(s) engage with the notion of memory and what could the work(s) be commenting on?

Hauntology’s inception as a philosophical concept was first conceived in the writings of Jacques Derridawhere he elucidates elements of the past as haunting the present through reconfigurations of dead ideas and figures. Derrida’s Hauntology concurs a logic that surpasses sanctioned logic, where there is a perturbed collusion between “actuality” and “ideality,” or most recently “virtuality.”[1]In Derrida’s denotation of Hauntology, virtuality largely consists of unconscious convulsions of embodied past traumas surfacing to actuality and confuting our understanding of the present. These ruptures of past subconscious repressions can be related to notionsof Freud’sInvoluntary memories which are crypted deep within us and materialise in an unmediated manner. Hauntology in the form of Involuntary memories is prevalent inGrimes’Oblivion, Blank Banshee’sTeenage Pregnancyand the Caretaker’sYou and the Nightas they each employ musicology to reconnoitre differing mnemonic theories. Constructing off Derrida’s definition of Hauntology, Mark Fisher, Simon Reynolds and other theorists have extended its meaning into modernity’s memory market. Fisher in particular ascribes the term to embody the concepts of Lost Futures and Capitalist Realism, interrogating the cyclic nature of our capitalist nostalgia and yearning for what could have been. The musical genre of Vaporwave proselytises this lust for the promises of capitalism in its most illustrious stages during the 80’s and 90’s. Grimes’Oblivion, Blank Banshee’sTeenage Pregnancyand the Caretaker’sYou and the Nighteach employ the characteristics of Vaporwave reconstruct the neo-liberalist vitality that once clad capitalist consumerism, appropriating audio techniques from the 80s/90s to invoke a thirst for past possibilities that never came to fruition.

Canadian born musician Clare Boucher (born March 17, 1988), professionally known by her stage alias Grimes[2], released pop phenomenonOblivionin 2012, alluding to Derrida’s Hauntology through distinctly layered developments and Vaporwave quintessence. Derrida portends Hauntology as a resurfacing of elements of the past which permeate into the present in an alternate, abstruse manner. The title of the song,Oblivion, denotes a state of incognizance where memory of a particular event or person has been effaced. This is conveyed in the introduction of the main riff as interjections of disjointedness via lagging and glitching project and air of inconsistency and disquietude. The song embodies a confused catharsis as the artist reinvokes the acutely traumatic experience of a past sexual assault and reconfigures it “as something really welcoming and nice.”[3]The melody bestows an anxious effervescence through major tonality and upbeat melodic mechanisms, exacerbated by the breathy, high pitched, ethereal vocals. Grimes speaks of this memory sporadically infiltrating her actuality, leaving her “terrified of men for a while.”[4]These reflexive outplays of mnemonic trauma are emblematic of Derrida’s “logic of the ghost”[5]as although the memory is an encapsulation of a past foreboding, it oscillates from virtuality to actuality and invokes physical repercussions out of fear. The bass line incessantly drives the song and is played by a heavily distorted and incredibly low synthesizer, allaying a murky yet omnipresent undercurrent of trauma. The bass line is so astonishingly low it is on the precipice of being inaudible to the human ear, suggesting just how far the depth of memory are and how deeply trauma can be imbedded within. This impetuous occurrence of memory intimates Freud’s theories on Involuntary memory and its convulsive manifestations of trauma which are often “crypted comments” which arise “with no identifiable cues.”[6]By rendering her involuntary memory “as positive”[7]Grimes has employed tenets of Freud’s Screen memory in aims of a “possibility for counter-memories to emerge”[8]in a bid to conceal tormenting truths. This convulsive delirium is evident through perpetual lyrical repetitions, most notably the phrase ‘see you on a dark night”[9](2:26) where the artist directly addresses the present physical space that remits her past trauma. The cyclic nature of this phrase portends the interminable haunting of this memory. In the bridge she accosts the resurrection of her memory by starting to ask it “To look into my eyes and tell me” (1:34) which is then abruptly interrupted by nonsensical interjections of “la la la la la”[10]as though to override and screen out the existing traumatic memory with an innocuous, unburdened one sung in a child-like, high-pitched naivety. Through evocations of the philosophical concept of Hauntology,Oblivionevinces how past trauma intermittently ruptures through to the present and the cyclic nightmare of attempted repressions along with unwanted regressions.

Patrick Driscoll, known professionally as Blank Banshee[11], (born June 28, 1987) is another Canadian artist who efficaciously employs Vaporwave tendencies in his songTeenage Pregnancy(2012)to conjure Hauntological notions of resurfaced trauma. Similarly to Grimes’Oblivion,Teenage Pregnancyalso imbues its digitised cadences with Involuntary memory by employing similar methods of repetition and recrudesce interjections. Although the two pieces share Hauntological notions of Involuntary memory, the artists execute the resolution of these ruptures in processes considered completely disparate from one another. As Grimes aspires to skew the traumatic crux of her past memory and purport it as “positive” via Screen Memory tactics, Blank Banshee aims to exploit the shared trauma of our conscripted nostalgia for origins and its circuitous fissuring into adulthood. Derrida’s writings on Hauntology partially elicit its inspiration from Freud’s theory on mourning where “one internalises or introjects the dead” assimilating them within an eternal idealisation of the “deceased.”[12]However when this mourning is not resolved, according to conventional “psychoanalytic theory, there is no true introjection,” only “an incorporation of the phantom.”[13]This concept of the phantom presents itself inTeenage Pregnancynot only in the title but also as a vocal schism which endeavours to interrogate our nostalgia for origins. The songbegins with a motif consisting of sustained, sporadically placed notes which make no sense out of the context of the future layers of sound. This relates to Derrida’s idea of the past and future being omnipresent in our understanding of present. Along with persistent crescendos and diminuendos, the drumbeat oscillates from one ear to the other destabilising the foundations of the song, allaying an insecurity in the linguistic information soon to occur. Layers of varying digitised motifs build up and establish the repetitious undulations“of traumatic and/or stressful events” that “are often poorly integrated into the life-story and identity of the person and for the same reason tend to intrude repeatedly upon consciousness.”[14]The cacophony of litanydrops out to expose the crux of the trauma, that being the disruption of childhood innocence and accosting of our romanticised mourning of childhood. In his writings about the Uncanny,Nicholas Royle, entails “another thinking of the beginning: the beginning as already haunted.”[15]This is illuminated in the recapitulation of the phrases “I’m just a kid”(1:52) and “It was only a mistake”(2:22) as the tonality of the verbiage starts at a high pitch but glissandos in glitches to a low, disturbingly distorted articulation affronting our mourning for the fictitious public memory of childhood. The timbre of the voice purports the dismay of this disarrayed experience of childhood through a cybernated vibrato, crackling in a manner that mimics the tremolo of vocals on the cusp of crying. As heard inOblivion, Blank Banshee effectively elucidates the spectral persistence of trauma associated with Derrida’s definition of Hauntology, yet strays from projecting a positive manufacturing of memory to mask the said trauma and instead aspires to exploit the negations of childhood nostalgia.

WhilstOblivionandTeenage Pregnancyanalyse humanist, embodied experiences ofHauntology, English artist/producer Leyland James Kirby (Born May 9, 1974), professionally known as The Caretaker, released the trackYou and the Night(1991) which is emblematic of notions of the Uncanny and its reconstruction of space and time from remnants the past. Convictions of the phantom in Derrida’s ideas of hauntology amalgamate with the Uncanny to permeate unease and construe a contorted understanding of time, space and our standing within this misshapen memory. The sentiment of the phantom is evoked as elements of the past present themselves in fragments rather than in their historical totality, evident in the preternatural patina that filters the obfuscated layers of music. The crackle and grainy effect that filter the vexing remnants of music tacit an antiquity, yet this nostalgia prompted for the past is later accosted by its own decay and overlay with elements of the future. “The Uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty,” in particular “what is being experienced”[16]which is explicit in underscoring this Hauntological eclipsing of time. The pieceopens with low, prodigiously distorted instruments playing a minor, perturbed melody of acute, atonal nonsense, manifesting this uncertainty of the Uncanny. The eerie instruments have been slowed down to an acute largo, lending this uncertainty to our understanding of time and its disequilibrium in the extraction of memories. The layers of ominous instruments further destabilises time as each section of the orchestra are playing at augmented 4thintervals. These augmented 4thintervals were historically classed as the devil in music and its use was periodically forbade in sacred songs.[17]As well as underscoring the inconsonance of time in memory, similarly to the Involuntary memories present inOblivionandTeenage Pregnancy, the devil in music is also remnant of the dissonant re-evocations of trauma which Freud concurs “were a manifestation of death instincts.”[18]The high pitch strings confute notions of nostalgia as all though they are recognisable to the listener’s ear yet, their esoteric distortion detaches them from recognition in our memory. The dislocation of time in memory and Uncanny trauma in Hauntology is made audible inYou and the Nightthrough The Caretaker’s utilisation of cryptic chromaticism and deep decay.

Similarly toYou and the Night, Hauntological time is deeply confounded in Grimes’Oblivionthrough predilections of the Vaporwave genre to expound the circuitous capitalist purgatory of the present. Simon Reynolds discusses Vaporwave as “a kind of aural or musical detritus” which adopts “dead media sound production from the 80s and earlier”[19]to concoct a nostalgia for the inception of capitalist fruition and also futures that never came to fruition. Vaporwave can also present itself as “a kind of memory play that is produced through representations of repressed trauma or loss” which can be “expressed through musical form as a process of catharsis.” Grimes herself proclaimed that she “took one of the most shattering experiences of my life and turned it into something I can build a career on”[20]and capitalise off. Gerhardt Richter first coined the term “Capitalist Realism” in 1963, which Mark Fisher later adopted in his writings to presage why “We remain trapped in the 20th century.”[21] Fisher denotes that due to the “reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago” our “current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia.”[22]This formal nostalgia is immediately connoted inOblivionthrough the opening motif allayed by a synth sentimental of “dead media”[23]of the 80s/90s. The motif imbues a sense of nostalgia via its upbeat major melody, playing into the romanticism of the 80s when capitalism harnessed new offerings. The ethereal yet heavily digitised female vocals reverberate with efficaciousness, yet the echo also illuminates an ebb in these capitalist expiations as the words lag past their initial debut. This reminiscence for a time with fresh bearings can be heard in thesporadic piano (1:50) bridge which doesn’t abide by typical methodologies of music, alluding to a time in Capitalism where everything being produced was new and experimental. Although it contrives an air of excitement, the notes echo and envelope itself by its own ghostly refractions and further confound our capitalist nostalgia and sense of time concurrent with it.Old riff comes back into play followed by the other infinite loops, speaking not only to incessant haunting of past coming to present but also the incapacity to cultivate anything new under capitalism. The song ends on an interrupted cadence, sounding unfinished by nature and insinuating that these loops and our wistfulness for the past could continue on for an eternity.

Simon Reynolds discusses Vaporwave as a musical genre of “Retromania,” defining it as “Pop culture’s addiction to its own past,”[24]which is epitomised in Blank Banshee’sTeenage Pregnancy. As alluded to prior,Vaporwave music “plays with the idea of nostalgia for something that never happened”[25]which Mark Fisher concurs is the haunting of Lost Futures. This reworking of the past is conceived out of utopian visions of the 80s which were “co-opted by capitalism and repackaged for consumption”[26]and now haunt the present tense with past visions of the future. In consonance with Grimes’Oblivion,Teenage Pregnancymanifests the sound production of the 80s/90s, but instead of manufacturing its nostalgic utopianism, Blank Banshee appropriates a riff directly from a musical relic of 1982, beingGrand Master Flash and the Furious Five’s hit The Message.[27](0:27)The Message accosted the structured cultural divides under capitalism in the 80s and exhibits capitalism’s sedentary nature as the song aids a message about class and race that is just as culturally significant today. The sampled riff is profoundly manipulated through an increase in duration, pitch altering, lingering reverberations and interrupted cuts followed by repeated interjections of the same phrase which disallows the riff to resolve. This disseverance of the riff communicates a Lost Future desired by the original song which has been pervasively and ironically stifled and stultified by capitalism, betokeningElizabeth Guffy’sunderstanding ofRetro-Futurismas the message “remains a sensibility, rather than a plan of action.”[28]This asphyxiation of rebuttal to capitalism is furthered by the unchanging layers of hypnotic digitised motifs which add to a sense of being directionless. These invariable layers underscore how under capitalism “cultural time has folded back on itself, and the impression of linear development has given way to a strange simultaneity.”[29]This stunting of linear development is also exteriorized through the repeated phrase “I’m just a kid” which evinces capitalism’s stilted eternality in its past days of prophecy.

Both Blank Banshee’sTeenage Pregnancyand The Caretaker’sYou and the Nightutilise Vaporwave’s appropriation to incarnate the past, forming memory through the depletion and decay of their audio relics. Even though there is a subordinate amount of time between the Romanticism movement and the conception of Hauntology, there is a distinct convergence of concepts as through absence we derive definitions of past. Sophie Thomas writes of the affiliations of ruins in Romanticism and how in their “state of decay, ruins signify loss and absence”, furthermore “a visible evocation of the invisible, the appearance of disappearance.”[30]Fisher denotes the extent to which “cultural artifacts” in the form of music “can historicize the human condition”[31]as audio ruins an “absent whole.”[32]The caretaker has appropriated Eddie Higgins’ 1934 hitYou and the Nightand the Music and represented it with a patina of an embellished state of deterioration and distortion. Linking back to a Vaporwave idiosyncrasy, due to the levels of decay and dissonance each segment of the orchestra is isolated to a layer of its own presenting as a relic rather than a unified body of noise.You and the Nightdiffers from Blank Banshee as its appropriation predates the vitality of capitalism in the 80s and instead samples from the 1930’s, where the Industrial revolution and turbulent international relations were yet to meet the capitalism Francis Fukuyama called “the endpoint of history that would replace human conflict with universal peace.”[33]This notion is evident in melodramatic undulations in dynamics as the persistent adjusting between disturbed diminuendos and climactic crescendos prevails a volatility to the past before “accepting of contemporary capitalism as the only viable social structure.”[34]Apex of discomfort when the orchestra plays in a unison vivace, yet instead of playing in a congenial harmony the decaying layers play in disillusioning quartertones. The vocals are then discerningly doubled, a low voice more representational of the original track yet is still acutely diluted, the doubled voice at a higher pitch, filtered through an alienesque, digitised tremolo multiple octaves higher. This digitised doubling in an almost extraterrestrial tone depicts a duplicity to the past, acting as a fissure to an alternative future to contemporary capitalism. The Caretaker’sYou and the Nighthas employed the “technological advances and special effects”[35]of Vaporwave and the conceptual preface of Romantic ruins to recreate visions of the past and offer insight into Lost Futures.

Through imbuing connotations of Involuntary memory with Derrida’s definition of Hauntology,Grimes’Oblivion, Blank Banshee’sTeenage Pregnancyand the Caretaker’sYou and the Nightinvestigate the resurfacing and rupturing of past trauma into the present tense. Each artist conveys the spectrality of trauma and its recurrent Hauntological embodiment which pervades into the present. The three songs concurrently apply the musical genre of Vaporwave to elucidate contemporary nostalgia for the vitality of the consumerist contingencies of capitalism in the 80s/90s. The three pieces interrogate the cyclic idealisation of Capitalist Realism and the Lost Futures as a result of this societal sedentary.

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