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The Domestic Uncanny: Co-Habiting with Ghosts

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The Domestic Uncanny: Co-Habiting with Ghosts THE DOMESTIC UNCANNY: CO-HABITING WITH GHOSTS CARON W LIPMAN DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON DECEMBER 2008 1 DECLARATION I confirm that the work here presented is my own. Information derived from other sources is indicated in the thesis. Signed: 2 ABSTRACT The 'haunted home' has enjoyed a long-standing position as a motif within society, crossing a span of narratives, from anecdotal local stories shared informally between family and friendship networks, to the established gothic traditions of literature and film. This project uniquely examines the ways in which people who believe their homes to be haunted negotiate the experience of co-habiting with ghosts. It is a qualitative study which has applied a mix of creative methodologies to a number of in-depth case studies in England and Wales. Geographers and researchers in related disciplines have recently expressed interest in the idea of ghosts or haunting, but have tended to focus upon public metropolitan spaces, and to employ the ghost as a metaphor or social figure. In contrast, this project contributes to a growing literature on the material and immaterial geographies of the home, the intangible and affective aspects of everyday life within the particular context of the domestic interior. The project explores the insights uncanny events experienced within this space reveal about people's embodied, emotional, spatial and temporal relationships with 'home' as both physical place and as a set of ideals. It studies the way in which people negotiate experiences which appear to lack rational or natural explanation, and the interpretative narratives employed to explain them. It suggests ways in which different forms of belief influence interpretations of uncanny events. It also suggests ways in which inhabitants of haunted homes negotiate the co-habitation with ghosts through a number of strategies which reinforce their own subjectivity in the face of potential encroachment into their private space. 3 CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 10 WIDER CONTEXTS 12 Ghosts in Social, Cultural and Historical Context 13 Investigating Ghosts 20 Famous Hauntings 22 HOME 25 Defining Home 25 Contesting Ideals 26 Gender 27 The Place of Home 29 SELF AND HOME 33 Situating Subjectivity 34 Self and Other 39 Bodies and Sensations 41 THE UNCANNY HOME 43 The 1m/material Geographies of Home 48 The Material Uncanny 50 Liminality 51 MEMORY 53 The Social Life of Ghost Stories 56 APPROACHING THE GHOST 59 The Ghost as Metaphor or Social Figure 59 Approaching the Ghost Differently 61 Contesting Knowledge, Embracing Uncertainty 66 Experiencing Otherwise, Knowing Differently? 70 4 CHAPTER TWO: THE RESEARCH PROCESS 76 CASE STUDIES 78 HOME VISITS 81 THE METHODS 82 Interviews: The Blueprint 82 Interviews: The Process 83 Guided Tours: The Blueprint 84 Guided Tours: The Process 85 Video and Photography: The Blueprint 85 Video and Photography: The Process 86 Diaries 88 ETHICAL ISSUES 88 ANALYSIS AND WRITING 91 THE CHAPTERS 94 THE CASE STUDIES 96 IMAGES 100 CHAPTER THREE: THE IM/MA TERIALITY OF 101 THE HAUNTED HOME PART A: THE MATERIAL UNCANNY 101 Liminality 104 Nature and Domesticity 109 Familiarity 115 Home Agency 129 PART B: THE TEMPORALITIES OF THE HAUNTED HOME 136 Old Homes 136 Reinforcing Relationships 140 Re-imagining Domesticity 142 Past-in-Present 145 Past-in-Past 150 Change versus Continuity 152 CONCLUSION 158 5 CHAPTER FOUR: STRATEGIES OF CO-HABITATION 163 PART A: EMBODYING, DOMESTICATING THE GHOSTS 163 The Ghost as Personhood 163 The ghosts are not orthodox 166 The ghosts don'tfeel 167 Naming and Humour 168 Gender and Co-habitation 172 Conventional gender categories 172 Placing gender 173 Benign female/malevolent male 177 PART B: STRATEGIES OF DISTANCE AND COMMUNICATION 181 Distance 181 Geography 181 Playing down impact 184 Not seeing 186 Ghosts don 't!can 't communicate 191 Not talking 194 Communication 197 Connecting 197 Accepting 199 Engaging 201 The Sharing of Ghost Narratives 203 Talking with the Ghosts 204 Ghosts speak to inhabitants 205 Inhabitants speak to ghosts 208 PART C: NEGOTIATING SELF-SPACE 213 P (CS2): Giving Away Power 213 Ch (CS2): Tussles with a Ghost 216 T (CS6): •Accommodating' Ghosts and Landladies 219 B (CS 10): Performing his Place 223 CONCLUSION 227 6 CHAPTER FIVE: KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF AND EVIDENCE 235 PART A: KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF AND UNCERTAINTY 235 Different Types of 'Knowledge' 236 Just knowing 236 Personal 'meanings' 238 Contested Beliefs 238 Gender and self-doubt 249 Embracing Uncertainty 252 PART B: BELIEF, EVIDENCE AND EXPERIENCE 260 Different Beliefs, Different Responses 260 Cultural belief 261 Folklore belief 265 Religious belief 271 Evidence, Proof, and Experience 274 Natural explanation first 274 Material evidence 278 Experiences challenge beliefs 281 Seeing is believing 284 Corroborating experience 287 Testing the ghosts 293 CONCLUSION 297 7 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 301 CROSS-CUTTING THEMES 302 Familiarity 302 Uncertainty 303 The Hierarchy of the Senses 304 Imagination and Reality 305 Cultural Conventions 306 Continuities 307 The Liminal Home/Self 308 POSITIONINGS 312 Home 312 Approaching the Ghost 313 New Humanism 314 BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 CASE STUDY KEY 348 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to my supervisors, Professor Catherine Nash and Professor Alison Blunt, for their continuous encouragement and incisive advice over the last few years. I would not have completed the research if it were not for their sensitivity and patience, as well as the support of my family and friends. In particular, I thank my mother, Frances, and my partner, Sigrid, who made it a task to mine the second-hand shops of England for books on ghosts, of which I now have a full bookshelf. This thesis was made possible by the generosity of my interviewee participants. I also wish to thank the Geography Department at Queen Mary for granting me a fully-funded studentship. My gratitude goes more generally to the wider community of researchers, many of whom inspired and challenged me with thought-provoking and productive comments. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my father, Maurice Lipman, 1931-1993. 9 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION How does it feel to live in a 'haunted home'? How do people negotiate the so-called banality of their everyday worlds with the experience of uncanny, anomalous or strange events within the domestic interior? What does it reveal of the intersection of the material and immaterial within the home? Might it suggest ways in which people experience boundaries between public and private, interior and exterior? How do people interpret experiences which are uncertain and unpredictable? How are such experiences defined, explained, narrated? And what does this tell us about the relationship between different kinds of beliefs and forms of knowledge? Lastly, does such an experience challenge ideas of 'self, already embroiled in notions of 'home'? This project sets out to put these, and related questions, to the test. It uses qualitative research methods to investigate thirteen case study scenarios in England and Wales, in 'haunted homes' ranging from inner-city apartments, suburban semis, to rural cottages. The key criterion is for participants to continue to live in their homes despite experiencing uncanny events, which they mayor may not attribute to the supernatural. The relationship between the categories of 'uncanny' and 'ghost' are complex, and depend on individual contexts. The 'uncanny' is usually denoted as a general, broad description for the spaces as well as experiences of the haunted home. It can include a vague sense of anomalous phenomena, presence or atmosphere. Its uses and meanings are discussed later in this chapter. 'Ghosts' are perceived to be contained within the domestic uncanny, as well as contributing to its haunted aspect as a source of uncanny events, if not constituting the uncanny event itself; at times there is a focus on a particular, specific figure of a ghost. 10 My main aims are to explore: i. The relationship between the material and immaterial in the domestic interior, focusing on the home as an 'uncanny' and 'liminal' space, and teasing out the dynamic between the familiar and strange ii. The centrality of memory and history within the uncanny home: the way people configure their experiences in relation to their own, and their home's, past; and, related, the relationship between materialities and temporalities iii. The ways in which people manage to 'co-habit' with ghosts; how they deal with this self-other relationship within such close quarters, and in everyday life iv. An exploration ofthe influence of the wider cultural context, where what counts for beliefs, evidence, and know ledge, are contested v. Lastly, central to this research is the underlying question: how do we approach the ghost? How do we research anomalous phenomena and people's experiences and beliefs? This introductory chapter offers an overview of relevant ideas, placing the above set of questions in context. I start with an exploration of the wider historical, social and cultural context explaining how popular assumptions about ghosts and hauntings have developed over time. I then move to review contemporary academic research on specific areas of relevance, starting with the home, and the relationship between self and home, including theorisations of bodies and the senses. The next section focuses on ideas of the uncanny, describing the material,
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