Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Hauntology: 1969



It seems that as history progresses the world is moving ever closer to a reality predicted by Philip K. Dick. Here he gives us a foreshadowing of the emergence of the idea of hauntology:

But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's ideal objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately — and against ordinary experience — vanished. The man contains — not the boy — but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.

Philip K. Dick - Ubik, 1969.

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