Mourning speech: Haunting and the spectral voices of nine-eleven

Abstract

In this essay I forward a psychoanalytic theory of haunting that privileges the object of speech in cultural and theatrical performance. Using this theory, I analyze the mass media exploitation of the panicked and dying voices of Nine-eleven. I conclude with two observations. First, performance is haunted by an ontological dualism central to subjectivity, which challenges any easy distinction between the live and the recorded. Second, the Nine-eleven archive is frequently used in the civic performance of political amnesia.