Hauntology: Neoliberalism, State-Keynesianism, and Repressed Contradictions in Post-1980 Anglo-American Fiction

This thesis will apply a Marxist, world-ecological framework to the study of the aesthetic mode of hauntology in post-1980 Anglo-American fiction. I argue that hauntology is an aesthetic mode which arises in fiction set within core regions of the capitalist world-system. I contend that hauntological fiction is characterised by a historically specific form of haunting, in which the era of neoliberal conditions is haunted by the period of state-Keynesianism. Hauntological novels are typified by a return to the mid-century from a post-1980 perspective, and this attachment to the mid-century mediates unresolved contradictions. I focus on a number of contradictions, including: the contradiction between capitalism’s promotion of individual self-interest versus the conditions required for total social reproduction; the contradiction between capitalism’s claims to legal equality and freedom versus capitalism’s reliance on forms of inequality and economic coercion; and the contradiction between capitalism’s drive for exponential growth versus ecological limits. Crucially, haunting in hauntological fiction occurs not only from the past but also from the future, particularly from the threat of the impending climate crisis which exposes the unsustainability of both state-Keynesianism and neoliberalism. I argue that reading hauntological fiction can provide an opportunity to re-narrate the mid-century, avoiding conceptions of the relationship between state-Keynesianism and neoliberalism as one of pure rupture or pure continuity. The way in which the mid-century continues to haunt neoliberalism in these novels speaks to how neoliberalism did not simply emerge in opposition to, but built upon, the affects, subjectivities, and institutions created by state-Keynesianism. Simultaneously, hauntological fiction offers an insight into how the affective experience of the transition from state-Keynesianism to neoliberalism was one of rupture and can shed light on how perceptions of a clean break between the two orders have generated a mindset of declinism.