Social Ghosts and the Dead of World History: Ghost Theory [Paperback]

1. Germinal: Social Ghosts and the Dead of World History  2. Ghost theory: On Shape-Shifting  3. Lithic Empires: On the Dead of World Prehistory  4. Stone Being: Statues and the Phenomenology of Spirits  5. Wooden Souls: Heads, Beings and the Organic World  6. On Daimonia: Life, Death and Being  7. Abyssal Modernities: From the Interior of Being  8. Coda: On the Dead of Worlds to Come

This book looks at the phantasms and spirits of classical social science and philosophy, including Hegels World-Spirit, Webers Verstehen and Marxs phantasms, exploring the relationships and interactions between those spirits and materiality across five broad themes.

Martyn Hudson is an Assistant Professor in Art and Design History at Northumbria University and the author of nine books on critical theory, history and visual culture. He is the editor of the Visual Modernities series at Routledge.

Social Ghosts and the Dead of World History looks at the global phenomena of the dead in world history, examining the phantasms and spirits of classical social science and philosophy.

From Hegels World-Spirit to Max Webers Verstehen and Marxs phantasms, there is a recurring obsession with the spirits of modernity. This book explores the relationships and interactions between those spirits and materiality in five broad areas: the nature of the dead in modernity, shape-shifting and mobile souls, the spirit in accounts of prehistory and archaeology, the phenomenology of spirits and the relation to statues and stone, and the nature of spirit as it is manifested in wooden artefacts and folklore. It offers a counter-modernity to that of classical social science and philosophy and new ways of thinking about our crises and catastrophes in social theory and the world and the worlds beyond this wlS#