Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination“Avery Gordon’s stunningly original and provocatively imaginative book explores the connections linking horror, history, and haunting. ” —George Lipsitz “The text is of great value to anyone working on issues pertaining to the fantastic and the uncanny.” —American Studies International “Ghostly Matters immediately establishes Avery Gordon as a leader among her generation of social and cultural theorists in all fields. The sheer beauty of her language enhances an intellectual brilliance so daunting that some readers will mark the day they first read this book. One must go back many more years than most of us can remember to find a more important book.” —Charles Lemert Drawing on a range of sources, including the fiction of Toni Morrison and Luisa Valenzuela (He Who Searches), Avery Gordon demonstrates that past or haunting social forces control present life in different and more complicated ways than most social analysts presume. Written with a power to match its subject, Ghostly Matters has advanced the way we look at the complex intersections of race, gender, and class as they traverse our lives in sharp relief and shadowy manifestations. Avery F. Gordon is professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Janice Radway is professor of literature at Duke University. |
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abstract Amnesty International analysis animated Argentina AZ's Beloved Beloved's blind Cincinnati claim Coffin complex CONADEP conjure consciousness crucial culture dead death Denver desaparecido Dirty War disap disappearance encounter everything face fiction forces Freud Fugitive ghost Ghostly Matters Gordon hand haunting human ibid imagination invisible Jung kill kind knowledge Levi Coffin living looking Luisa Valenzuela Margaret Garner Marxism means memory military mode modern Mothers never novel object past photograph Plaza de Mayo political postmodern present psycho psychoanalysis question reality relationship remember repression Sabina Spielrein schoolteacher Sethe Sethe's shadow Simon Garner simply Simpson and Bennett slave narrative slavery social society sociological imagination sociology speak specter story structure of feeling Sweet Home Taussig tell terror things thought tion Toni Morrison torture Tucumán uncanny experiences unconscious understand Valenzuela and Morrison violence visible woman women writing