Mark Wigley’s 1993 book ‘The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt’ is a painstaking and comprehensive analysis of Derridean theory in conjunction with architectural and spatial logic. In it, he declares:
By definition, only space can be haunted, and space is understood as that which houses. After all, the word “haunting” is etymologically bound to that of “house.” Haunting is always the haunting of a house. And it is not just that some houses are haunted. A house is only a house inasmuch as it is haunted.
Architect Daniel Naegele’s review of the book is not entirely favourable – especially as regards the architectural framing of the book – but ultimately he concedes that in the ‘most engaging and accessible section,’ in which Wigley asserts Derrida’s work as a ‘theorising of space’,
[he] examines Derrida’s concern with the space and spacing of writing, with the space of inscription, [and] offers us a way of seeing writing. Seeing writing engages the reader as active participant in a Derrida reading. We experience deconstruction. We see what Derrida means. In so doing, we understand deconstruction as a process or event.
If the spatialisation of deconstruction may in fact help us to ‘see’ what is meant by it, then it follows that the same may be true for hauntology as an extension (or subsection? Room within, maybe, to follow an architectural logic) of Derrida’s deconstructive theory.
Ultimately, what I have set out to accomplish in my work here – through close engagement with a specific spatial construction, which will develop later – is to envisage hauntology as a space; be it a house, a painting, or a piece of writing. I hope to demonstrate, through explanation, analysis, and practice, the ways in which hauntology can come to constitute a spatial dimension which is both inhabited and created.