{"title":"The Survival of Specters: Hauntology and Richard Powers’s The Overstory","authors":"Kazutaka Sugiyama","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.a899473","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018) is acclaimed for its depiction of structural similarity between collectives of different species that analogously connects human and nonhuman others, such as trees and computer programs. In this essay I argue that, among the various forms of nonhuman existence in the novel, specters in particular are central to the narrative and deserve critical consideration. By examining them through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and its related concept of survival, alongside an ecocritical perspective, specters emerge as a distinct form of life that eludes the dualism of life and death. This hauntological and ecocritical approach invites us to see how Powers reconceives life itself as not only a familiar state of being but also an autonomous and paradoxical being that is inseparably part of us and irreconcilably other to us as well, compelling the reader to acknowledge the human as part of something larger: life itself.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"55 1","pages":"210 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.a899473","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018) is acclaimed for its depiction of structural similarity between collectives of different species that analogously connects human and nonhuman others, such as trees and computer programs. In this essay I argue that, among the various forms of nonhuman existence in the novel, specters in particular are central to the narrative and deserve critical consideration. By examining them through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and its related concept of survival, alongside an ecocritical perspective, specters emerge as a distinct form of life that eludes the dualism of life and death. This hauntological and ecocritical approach invites us to see how Powers reconceives life itself as not only a familiar state of being but also an autonomous and paradoxical being that is inseparably part of us and irreconcilably other to us as well, compelling the reader to acknowledge the human as part of something larger: life itself.
期刊介绍：
From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.
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