The Ontology in Literary Studies: Fields, Relationships, and Theoretical Frameworks

Abstract

This research examines the use of hauntology in literary studies and addresses the need for a clearer conceptual and methodological framework for its application. It adopts a qualitative critical methodology based on conceptual review and analytical synthesis, tracing hauntology from Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx to its later development in Mark Fisher’s cultural criticism and its applications in contemporary literary criticism. The study focuses on three related aspects: the main literary fields in which hauntology functions as a critical reading tool, the textual relations produced by hauntological reading, and the theoretical frameworks through which the concept has been applied. It identifies postcolonial literature, trauma and memory narratives, science fiction, and the new gothic as major fields responsive to hauntological analysis. It also clarifies four key relations: temporal, existential, textual, and authoritarian. Finally, the study compares the Derridean deconstructive, Fisherian cultural-critical, and psychoanalytic-traumatic frameworks, showing how each contributes to literary analysis. The research concludes that hauntology offers a useful approach for reading texts shaped by memory, historical trauma, absence, and lost futures.