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Explorations of the ghost are not unknown within academia, nor within the field ofliterary studies specifically. However, previous discussions of the ghost have been containedeither within single subject approaches, or otherwise favoured psychoanalysis, hauntology,literature or film to the exclusion of the rich, cross-fertilised, hybrid influences andconstructions that inform the tropes and logics of any given iteration of a spectral text. Thisthesis provides a method of reading ghost texts that can synthesise and respond to the rangeof research already undertaken on the ghost story without disregarding or abandoning themimetic realism of the form. It would be impossible to fully trace or catalogue the seeminglyinexhaustible array of spectres and spirits that have been said to dwell in Australia, or todisentangle the various traditions that underpin Australian ghost stories and hauntingaccounts. Instead, this work concerns itself with the narrative methods which render the ghostvisible and sensual within the written Australian ghost story: in short, the mechanics ofrepresentation and embodiment which underpin narratives of spectral engagement. For thisreason, rather than deal exclusively with the loaded (and cultural determinate) terms ofghosts, hauntings, revenants and so on Broken Gates and Leaky Graves defines whatunderlies these – a concept of spectrality and the spectral.As terms spectral and spectrality have become widely used within a section of thehumanities interested in the subjectivity of experience, suffering or identity. According toMaria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Pereen in their introduction to The Spectralities Reader(2013) this usage is largely accepted to have been inaugurated by Jacques Derrida’s 1993Spectres of Marx. Derrida’s usage set the spectral against the conventional and thetaxonomic:A traditional scholar does not believe in ghosts – nor in all that could be called thevirtual space of spectrality. There has never been a scholar who, as such, does notbelieve in the sharp distinction between the real and the unreal, the actual and theinactual, the living and the non-living, being and non-being [.], in the opposition4Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

between what is present and what is not, for example in the form of objectivity.(Derrida 1994, p. 11)For Derrida spectrality is a virtual space that denies and evades standard systems ofknowledge and inquiry. The ghost, to Derrida, cannot be known as it is: ‘at once arbitrary andimpossible: one can neither classify nor count the ghost’ (ibid p. 138).Del Pilar Blanco and Pereen map the appeal of the terms spectral and spectrality toscholars both directly and indirectly influenced by Derrida’s adoption of the subject:“Spectre” and “spectrality” not only have a more serious scholarly ring to them [thanghostly], but specifically evoke an etymological link to visibility and vision, to thatwhich is both looked at (as fascinating and spectacle) and looking (in the sense ofexamining), suggesting their suitability for exploring and illuminating phenomenaother than the putative return of the dead.[.]In their new spectral guise, certain features of ghosts and hauntings – such as theirliminal position between visibility and invisibility, life and death, materiality andimmateriality, and their association with powerful affects like fear and obsession –quickly came to be employed across the humanities and social sciences to theorize avariety of social, ethical, and political questions. (del Pilar Blanco and Pereen 2013a,p. 2)Derrida, and theorists who follow Derrida, apprehend the ghost and haunting as a similerather than as an object of inquiry. The amenability of spectrality to the academy, its‘scholarly ring’, is tied to a usage that is evocative rather than definitional: a literal eliding ofthe ghost that underlies its ghostliness. While this approach has its uses within the humanitieswhere it is commonly found, it is only of limited use to direct discussions of the literary ghostand haunting. The term becomes dislocated from its origin point. In effect, the spectralbecomes synonymous with the ghost-like rather than the ghostly. While this shift may seemminor, it is worth remarking that while the ghost may be described as ghostly (albeitsomewhat tautologically) it cannot be described as ghost-like. As del Pilar Blanco and Pereen5Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

outline, the ‘expansive adoption of the spectre as able to (re)configure fundamental aspects ofour culture and existence [is] always perilously close to overstretching the concept andignoring local variations in the way ghosts and haunting are apprehended and employed’ (delPilar Blanco & Pereen 2013b, p. 35).Derrida’s writing does, in some of its specifics, echo the descriptions attached toghosts and hauntings that will be found throughout the thesis, and in the language of theoristsand scholars who are quoted or referenced throughout. Derrida’s deployment of spectralterms and hauntology has no interest in the ghost or haunting as subject. For Derrida, and forthe theorists who follow on from Spectres of Marx, the ghost is a tool for reading with, ratherthan a subject to be read or theorised in its own terms. To this end, the Derridean approachselects and extends those ghostly qualities which best serve its purpose while suppressingthose conservative, ideological or culturally specific aspects of the ghost which do not meshwith spectrality as unclassifiable. As del Pilar Blanco and Pereen write ‘[Derrida] uses thefigure of the ghost to pursue (without ever fully apprehending) that which haunts like a ghostand, by way of this haunting, demands justice or at least response’ (del Pilar Blanco andPereen 2013a, p. 3). In approaching those things which are like a ghost Derrida does notaddress the spectre as it exists fictively. Colin Davis in ‘Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms’(2005) argues that: ‘Derrida’s spectre is a deconstructive figure hovering between life anddeath, presence and absence, and making established certainties vacillate. It does not belongto the order of knowledge’ (Davis 2005, p. 376). The ghost may appear to underminebinaries, and as such, to trouble existing categories of knowledge. However the fictive andfolkloric figure of the ghost is culturally determinate, and is ‘known’ according to literary andfolkloric traditions.6Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

Roger Luckhurst highlights the limits of the Derridean ‘hauntology’ especially whenconfronting the deeply invested and specific topographies that surround, and interpenetratethe discourse of ghosts, hauntings and the paranormal. Hauntologies are positioned inbetween, they vacillate between life and death, presence and absence and as such ahauntological approach can sketch out the culturally determinate grounds of the haunting andthe ghost only abstractly. Writing of the spectral turn as ‘the critical language of spectral orhaunted modernity that has become cultural-critical shorthand in the wake of [JacquesDerrida’s] Spectres of Marx’ (Luckhurst 2002, p. 534), Luckhurst argues that even as thehauntology is sympathetic to a reading of a ghostly and ghosted reality this shorthand can:‘only go so far in elaborating the contexts for the specific topography of London Gothic –that, indeed, the generalised structure of haunting is symptomatically blind to its generativeloci’ (ibid). While Luckhurst is interested only in the specific context of what he terms theLondon Gothic, his claims extend to the blindness of Derridean approaches to all specificcontexts and loci. What this blindness results in is a post-Derridean eye to which ‘no concept,no self-identity, no text, no writing [ ] is not haunted’ (Luckhurst 2002, p. 535).Derrida and other theorists within the spectral turn are not blind to the features orqualities of the ghost. For the most part, however, they are not interested in the mechanics ofthe ghost. Rather, many of the writers who use the terminology of spectrality, haunting or thehauntology specifically are often uninterested in the ghost itself. By ‘ghost itself’ is meant theghost as it would be understood from folklore or ghost stories rather than as a poetic orallusional figure. For the above reasons, it is clear that the pre-existing uses of spectrality andthe spectral, while compelling in their capacity to extend into the space between purelyliterary investigation and historical or sociological fields, cannot articulate the mechanics ofthe ghost story as it is formulated around the ghost and ghost-like as a tool for, rather thanobject of analysis. This reinforces the need for a new approach which reclaims the language7Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

of the spectre to examine and explore the ghost and haunting whose narratives and literaryworks are part of the ‘generative loci’ to which Derrida’s approach is specifically blind. Thisapproach would necessarily be grounded in a conception of the ghost as real, or potentiallyreal rather than a purely figurative, or metaphorical presence within texts. A conception thatlike the Victorian’s figurative ghost described by del Pilar Blanco and Pereen ‘remain[s]grounded, to an extent, in the ghost’s possible reality as an empirically verifiable supernaturalphenomenon, making it less a tool for obtaining insight into something else than itself anobject of knowledge’ (del Pilar Blanco and Pereen 2013, p. 3).The use of the spectral within this thesis refers explicitly to the presence of theimmaterial supernatural within a mimetically real, material world rather than the liminalposition used by other critics of the spectral. In order to embrace the mimetic, reality affecton which this enmeshment relies a method of reading is needed which can speak to both thisreality and the rich meaning contained in, and communicated by ghostly fictions. In order todo this, a definition of spectral is advanced that is grounded in philosophy: specifically thephilosophies of Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. While thespecific borrowings from these philosophers will be explored later, it should be noted thatthis is not intended to render the spectral a philosophical innovation, but to ground theliterary, or fictive investigations undertaken with the concept within a mimetic reality andconsciousness.Within the philosophical framework of this literary investigation the spectral refers toa form of immateriality that it is both active (autonomous) and ‘inner worldly’. It belongs to,and operates within, the material world and not within a transcendent or ‘otherworld’. Also, itis independent of any single individual and exists, at least potentially, outside of theirconsciousness or imagination. This relationship and belonging is expressed in philosophical8Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

terms, as it is philosophy which best allows a negotiation between the many fields of researchwhich focus on the ghost, the structures of realism within the text, and the reality of the worldon which they are modelled. The ‘being’ of ghostly and spectral agents is not fundamentallydifferent than other forms of being, as regards its worldly position. While it may not have anobjective, material existence, spectrality remains anchored to the material world by the sameconnections which connect things which do objectively exist. Martin Heidegger reminds hisreaders in Being and Time (1927) that ‘the world of Da-sein [conscious beings] is a withworld. Being-in is being-with others’ (Heidegger 1997, p. 112). No entity is ever fullyautonomous, being born into, and arising only within a world of objects and other beings. TheDa-sein determines and is determined by the experience and understanding of these otherbeings:The others who are “encountered” [.] in the surrounding world at hand are notsomehow added on in thought to an initially merely objectively present thing, butthese “things” are encountered from a world in which they are at hand for others. (ibidp. 111)The spectral is ‘at hand’ for others, they are not dependent on any particular individual. Ghosttourism, for instance, is motivated by a desire to contact ghosts that are not personal. Ghosts,for all they are immaterial, are still ‘publicly’ accessible, as other objects, to anyone. It istexts which feature this kind of spectrality, of immaterial but materially relevant agents,presences or narratives which are of interest to the thesis.The conception of spectrality outlined above is key to the development of a culturallogic, and means of reading that logic, originated by this thesis. Spectral language is themechanism by which past narratives, histories and personalities continue to erupt into thepresent and become sensible through material reality and tactile sensory impressions within9Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

ghost narratives. The spectral demarcates that which is immaterial but materially relevant –spectral language is the structure and substance of that spectrality’s material articulation.Spectral language is explored in depth over the course of the first two chapters of thethesis, where its particularities and its flexibility are outlined in the practical interpretation ofa number of texts. Rather than attempt to fully explain spectral language prior to this textuallyembedded exploration, this introduction will instead serve to provide some information aboutits philosophical underpinnings and their contribution to a literary investigation. BillHemminger has pointed out that Heidegger offers an understanding particularly useful totheorising animistic texts such as Ben Okri’s 1991 The Famished Road which ‘redefine theworld human beings inhabit and argue[s] for increased interplay between physical andspiritual in a modern technologised world’ (Hemminger 2001, p. 67). As Hemmingeridentifies, Heidegger offers an alternative to anthropocentric models where ghosts, spirits andtheir like are the purview only of humans and their delusions. While Heidegger notes thesignificance of objective presence to ontology, in that one cannot encounter what is notpresent, this objectivity does not presuppose being, nor render it a ‘thing’. As he writes inBeing and Time ‘Da-sein can never be past, not because it is imperishable, but because it cannever be objectively present. Rather, if it is, it exists’ (Heidegger 1997, p. 348). The ghostinhabits a peculiar position, in lacking an objective, material existence as spectral thingsmust, but is still present in and through the references of material things. Using the exampleof a boat, Heidegger explains ‘the boat anchored at the shore refers in its being-in-itself to anacquaintance who undertakes his voyages with it, but as a “boat strange to us,” it also pointsto others’ (ibid p. 111). Ghosts are an implied other, they may be the disenfranchisedresidents or owners of a house, as in Tin Winton’s 1992 Cloudstreet (examined in ChapterThree: Red Heart/Black Spirit), beings who are present in the ‘being-of-itself’ of the house.10Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

In this sense, the ghost of a haunted place is not ‘added on’ but implicit in the nature ofobjectively present things. The phenomena of phantom lights, table rappings, unlocking doorsand other discernible happenings form the references to the ghost who is never fully ‘here’but exists as a reference from that which is at hand and experiential.The ‘at-handedness’ and ‘implied others’ of Heidegger’s writing exist within both anontological and cultural context. What is at hand and what others are implied are not relianton an individual’s understanding. However, these implications and references are more likelyto be detected or understood when they fit with a cultural familiarity or understanding. Forexample, the rappings, lights and so forth referenced throughout the introduction as stockelements of the ghostly happening are clearly cultural properties. The nature of this logic,although more fully mapped throughout the thesis, is worth some discussion. It is tempting tothink of these tropes as historical and outdated superstition, while this is not true that viewdoes hang over spectral language’s construction, particularly in Western literature.In The Rise of Supernatural Fiction (1995) E.J. Clery points out that in the eighteenthcentury supernatural excess could only be excused by ‘exemplary historicism’: ‘rationallyspeaking, ghost and goblins are not true, but when they appear in the literary artefact of pastages, they are true to history, accurate representations of an obsolete system of belief’ (Clery1995, p. 54). In the case of the ghost, if not the goblin, this obsolescence is incomplete. Thebelief in ghosts has been regularly revived in the nineteenth and twentieth century Spiritualistmovement and by the plethora of ghost investigation programs like Most Haunted (20022010). Regardless, for the audience Clery describes, ghosts belonged to history and notfantasy. Rather than a literary invention the ghost story is embedded in reality. As ghost‘culture’ changes, through the Spiritualist movement, oral culture, urban legends, televised11Broken Gates and Leaky Graves:Spectral language and Australia’s ghost stories.

and technological ghost hunting, cross-fertilisation between different national and culturalghost beliefs and ghost stories, the literary ghost story changes as well.Ghost stories rest within both historical and contemporary mimetic realities. Theghost therefore exists ‘within’ the world, rather than outside of it. However, the paranormalshould not, as it can be in Magical Realism, or post-modern fiction, something that isunremarkable and unremarked upon by characters within the fiction. The ‘rules’ of themimetic reality should be clear and chiefly mundane. The paranormal in this case is definedby the transgression of a seemingly mundane reality, even if these transgressions highlightthat reality has never genuinely been ‘mundane’. While this element of the definition isstretched in the third chapter of this thesis to consider fiction which models an IndigenousAustralian supernaturally implicit reality, the distinction is significant. Fiction which does notmodel reality does not embrace the mechanics of the ghost story. Mechanically, the ghoststory attempts to reconcile the supernatural or paranormal with common reality, areconciliation which demands the ghost story base its material manifestations and mediatorsin common and worldly objects. ‘Australian’ ghost stories are not a fundamentally differenttype of literature than ‘transnational’ ghost stories. The discussion above, and the definitionsand limits proposed within, apply equally well to the ghost story as a transnational narrativeform, and to ghost stories within Australia. Rather than propose the Australian ghost story asa distinct literary form, this thesis pursues Australian ghost

Broken Gates and Leaky Graves: Spectral language and Australia's ghost stories. world to be in its essentials a reflection of our own, making us anxious witnesses to a sudden and often fatal violation of everyday reality by the supernatural'(Cox and Gilbert 2008, p. x).