志异 Draft by Drama box december 2013 (english) | Page 39

Gh o s t s
A similar aura exists with the
memories of ghosts who are perceived
to dwell in abandoned or traumatised
landscapes and their existence in a
no-man’s land between past, present
and future. In this sense, the
spectral world can be regarded
as the alter ego of memory for it
serves a function in reminding us
that humans are not the only ones
capable of remembering. Ghosts do
remember and true ghost stories
have credible appeal. Spectral
consciousness is also an underlying
theme that runs across an American
landscape inhabited by legacies of
slavery, secession, and civil war in
the works of William Faulkner. The
role of ghosts laying their burdens
on the present and as foretellers of
the future is also evident in Karl
Marx’s prescient commentaries on the
European socio-political situation
more than a century ago as seen
in The Communist Manifesto and
in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte.

Time is
duration, a term
introduced by
Bergson which
poignantly
illustrates the
fluid and
heterogeneous
dimension within
which memory
meanders in a
non-material
world that can
only be
perceived
intuitively.