Specter, Phantom, Demon

AbstractIn this article, I engage the existential and ontological ambiguity of “hauntology” by considering the three figures of specter, phantom, and demon. The literary ghost, the psychoanalytic ancestor introject, and the theological evil spirit evoke distinct but interrelated modes of being and nonbeing, presence and absence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. What they have in common is the element of secrecy, where the secret may in various instances be shameful, not yet speakable, or deceitful. My ethnographic focus is on the demon in contemporary Roman Catholic exorcism as a figure of lies, deceit, and destruction within a ritually constructed assumptive world, and I examine this figure by describing the hauntological structure of the lifeworld of a demonically afflicted woman. The analysis shows that the notion of hauntology can help understand the contemporary phenomenon of Catholic exorcism, but also reciprocally that the examining of the practice of exorcism can help elaborate a theory of hauntology.