Of Ghosts and Justice: Spectral Politics in 20th-Century U.S. Literature

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorAranda, José F.
dc.creatorStoeltje, Sam
dc.date.accessioned2023-05-24T20:49:44Z
dc.date.available2023-05-24T20:49:44Z
dc.date.created2023-05
dc.date.issued2023-04-19
dc.date.submittedMay 2023
dc.date.updated2023-05-24T20:49:45Z
dc.description.abstract“Of Ghosts and Justice: Spectral Politics in 20th-Century U.S. Literature” attends to the representation of the spectral in transgeneric literary works, at the same time resignifying and retheorizing the term “spectral” to include its ostensive “literal” referent, that is, the ontologically and epistemologically and ontically impossible within modern and post-modern discursive cultures. Following but departing from Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, this dissertation locates moments of non-dominant and abject(ed) metaphysics as they emerge in generically uncertain texts, and seeks to understand these moments in relation to struggles for justice at personal, institutional, and geopolitical scales: struggles against capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy, cis/hetero/patriarchy, ecological violence, as well as the more abstract violence of epistemological genre-making. Bringing Derridean deconstruction together with decolonial theories, specifically theories of genre by Jodi Byrd and cosmogonic intellectual history from Sylvia Wynter, I attempt through my readings to “let the spirit speak” and to listen from a position of genuine onto/epistemological openness. The primary texts include Black Elk and John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, literary-ethnographic writing by Carlos Castaneda and Zora Neale Hurston, the autotheory-practice of Gloria Anzaldúa, and an unknown work of channeled literature from the 1970s, The Great Adventure: A Handbook for Living in this World and on the Other Side, written by and through my departed friend Alice Neihardt Thompson. Through reading these texts, some of the complex mythopoetics underpinning U.S. literature come into focus, including interrelations between the Frontier and Spiritualism, coloniality and anthropology, appropriation, queer feminism, psychedelic countercultures, as well as Indigenous and African-diasporic cultures of belief. Interweaving autoethnography and other transgeneric praxes, the dissertation arrives at a conviction of the importance of onto/epistemological openness in reading U.S. literature. Encountering these strange, metaphysically abject and uncanny texts, I note that spectral literatures are a practice of myth-making and re-making, and that such makings are full of political potential and peril. Given that myth is defined by its claim to sacredness, transcendence, and a position of being beyond critique, I close with a meditation on the (im)possible necessity of cultivating a mythocritique and its relation to academic writing.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationStoeltje, Sam. "Of Ghosts and Justice: Spectral Politics in 20th-Century U.S. Literature." (2023) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/114888">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/114888</a>.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/114888
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.
dc.subjectU.S. Literature
dc.subjectReligious Studies
dc.subjectLiterary Theory
dc.subjectDeconstruction
dc.subjectDecolonial Theory
dc.subjectSettler Colonial Studies
dc.subjectSylvia Wynter
dc.subjectJodi Byrd
dc.subjectJacques Derrida
dc.subjectSpecters of Marx
dc.subjectGenre Theory
dc.subjectTransgenre
dc.subjectGloria Anzaldúa
dc.subjectJohn Neihardt
dc.subjectBlack Elk
dc.subjectBlack Elk Speaks
dc.subjectZora Neale Hurston
dc.subjectCarlos Castaneda
dc.subjectCultural Anthropology
dc.subjectAlice Neihardt Thompson
dc.subjectSpiritualism
dc.subjectNeo-Spiritualism
dc.subjectPsychical Research
dc.subjectKenneth Burke
dc.subjectAnarchist Studies
dc.subjectAnti-Civilization
dc.subjectAnarcho-Primitivism
dc.subjectRadical Ecology
dc.subjectDavid Graeber
dc.subjectIndigenous Critique
dc.titleOf Ghosts and Justice: Spectral Politics in 20th-Century U.S. Literature
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.materialText
thesis.degree.departmentEnglish
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanities
thesis.degree.grantorRice University
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Thumbnail Image
Name:
STOELTJE-DOCUMENT-2023.pdf
Size:
7.5 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
Thumbnail Image
Name:
CertificateOfCompletion.pdf
Size:
118.6 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt
Size:
5.84 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
2.61 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
Collections
Rice University Electronic Theses and Dissertations