While ghosts in the dominant Western tradition have often been associated \;with other-wordliness or liminality\, the aim of this conference is to \;critically examine discourses and texts which emphasise the corporeality and \;physicality of ghosts and the ghostly. Allowing ghosts to occupy the centre \;rather than the periphery challenges &ndash\; and allows us to reconsider anew &ndash\; a \;number of key oppositions such as: life and death\, inside and outside\, \;corporeality and incorporeality\, self and other\, present reality and past \;memory\, and so on.
This commitment to thinking the reality of the incorporeal can be clearly \;identified\, for example\, in the Stoic turn in twentieth century French \;thought. The ancient Stoics developed a form of materialism which admitted \;four &ldquo\;incorporeals&rdquo\; into their ontology &ndash\; place\, time\, the void\, and \;&ldquo\;expressibles&rdquo\; (linguistic sense or meaning). While being the proximate \;surface-effects of material or corporeal causes\, &ldquo\;incorporeals&rdquo\; were seen as \;filling out the dimensions of the cosmos\, itself a single surface expanding \;and contracting to the rhythm of bodily actions and passions. These \;incorporeals were considered as having almost zero being or substance\, yet \;they were required to complete the Stoics&rsquo\; materialism. For Deleuze\, the \;Stoics were thus the first to &ldquo\;reverse&rdquo\; Platonism &ndash\; the ideal world of Forms \;no longer seen as transcendent and as now nothing more than an incorporeal \;lining co-extensive with the sensible world &ndash\; with the corporeal and the \;incorporeal neither simply the cause nor the effect of the other.
Perhaps it is psychoanalysis which develops this hypothesis the furthest. \;Psychoanalysis considers castration &ndash\; the infant&rsquo\;s awareness of the mother&rsquo\;s \;lack of a penis &ndash\; as constituting a deadlock in the infant&rsquo\;s reality. This \;deadlock is displaced in part thanks to the development of the phantasm &ndash\; \;literally a ghost &ndash\; a psychical structure composed of de-personalised \;memories\, a kind of death through which the infant must pass in order to \;further its psychical development\, and thanks to which the infant can \;re-connect with the materiality of reality.
Psychoanalysis emphasises the importance of memory in the present\, and we \;should consider memory as a privileged site of the ghostly. More generally\, \;Derrida&rsquo\;s concept of &ldquo\;hauntology&rdquo\; &ndash\; which refers to the state of the spectre \;as neither being nor non-being &ndash\; argues for the existence of the &ldquo\;present&rdquo\; \;as inseparable from that of the &ldquo\;past&rdquo\;\, an individual or society&rsquo\;s past as \;both revenant and out-of-joint\, and as essential to one&rsquo\;s continued survival \;in the present.
Bearing in mind lines of argumentation such as these\, we wish to explore \;questions of ghostliness and in/corporeality in a number of fields\, \;including but not limited to the following: