The family functions as a haunted structure that speaks ahead of its members

Evidence

Hauntology, then, telepathy, the persistence of the no longer…You don’t have to believe in the supernatural to recognise that the family is a haunted structure, an Overlook Hotel full of presentiments and uncanny repetitions, something that speaks ahead of us, instead of us… — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 107

Categorization

• DEFINE: Locates hauntology squarely in the family as an overdetermined, echoing structure.
• XREF: Extends the haunted-house figure begun with Sylvian’s ghosts; connects to the family as compulsion-to-repeat theme of The Namesake’s immigrant arc. — connects to: Male heirs are fated carriers of the father’s name who can never escape repetition — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 282; The family is a hauntological structure of inherited repetition. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 525; A person can be defined by the structure of their relations to the dead — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1262 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The family is a hauntological structure of inherited repetition. #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 525
• Contingency arises when routine and family cease to impose interpretive structure #complicates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 335
• A person can be defined by the structure of their relations to the dead #qualifies (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1262
• In structuralist thought the speaking subject is spoken by unconscious cultural structures #qualifies (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 195