The family is a hauntological structure of inherited repetition.

Evidence

Psychoanalysis could be crudely boiled down to the claim that we are our family history, although it is perhaps at this point that we can dispense with the term “history” and replace it with “hauntology”. The family emerges in Freud as a hauntological structure: the child is father to the man, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. The child who hates his father is condemned to repeat him, the abused becomes the abuser. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 525

Categorization

• DEFINE: Redefines family history as hauntology.
• XREF: connects to: The family functions as a haunted structure that speaks ahead of its members — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 107; Male heirs are fated carriers of the father’s name who can never escape repetition — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 282; A repeating rise-and-fall life pattern reveals the Freudian compulsion to repeat. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 585

Broader Connections

• A repeating rise-and-fall life pattern reveals the Freudian compulsion to repeat. #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 585