Haunting hermeneutics: a deconstructive approach to the past

Ethan will challenge the idea of a stable past or meaning that can be called back or retrieved - what he calls "ontological realism". 

The past by definition is gone and thus has no definite properties or perhaps we can say that it has latent properties that are activated when we do history. But this activation of the past is always partial leaving remains that are hidden or dormant. This is a past that is absent but haunts us and can return in ways that disturb our conventional historical narratives and understanding of what the past and history is. 

To account for this play of absence and presence the speaker advocates for a "hauntological" approach to the past - a term meant to expose the ways that scholars and teachers take the spectral haunting absent past and silently replace it with a representation that appears to have the properties and essence of a present object (in French “ontologie” and “hantologie” carry the same pronunciation). 

The hauntological approach is one that is attuned to the way the past, like a ghost, is both present and absent and as such it forces us to rethink interpretative hermeneutics for research and teaching to allow for multiple or seemingly conflicting pasts.

This event will be particularly useful for those interested in education, curriculum studies, pedagogy, subject didactics, hermeneutics and history education.

Seminar series: Hermeneutics and Subject Education

This event is part of this series. The seminars are organised by UCL's Subject Specialism Research Group, Edge Hill University and the University of Stavanger. These are offered under three streams: 1) hermeneutics and subject education 2) hermeneutics as/for curriculum theory, and 3) environmental hermeneutics.

Coming to know and understand the world and coming to know and understand ourselves are intimately linked and yet, in recent 'knowledge turns' in education, understanding and interpretation often receive less attention than memory and information. What insights can hermeneutics and the arts of interpretation bring to educational discussion? What, if anything, is distinctive about the educational contribution of different disciplines of interpretation?

Related links

• Subject Specialism Research Group
• Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment