A hauntology of the ‘American Nineties’. Reenchanted imaginaries in the shadow of two deaths
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13129/2281-8138/2024.0.73-90Keywords:
Hauntology, 1990s, Reenchantment, Popular Culture, NarrativesAbstract
A hauntology of the ‘American Nineties’. Reenchanted imaginaries in the shadow of two deaths.
The concept of the shadow embodies an inherent ambivalence, encompassing both darkness and light, a duality mirrored in 1990s—a decade marked by hope and disillusionment, anxiety and carefreeness. These contrasting elements, particularly in the U.S., shaped and were shaped, by the shadows cast by two defining traumatic events: the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the attacks on September 11, 2001. As Philip E. Wegner terms it, the 1990s represented “life between two deaths”, a period marked by the emergence of reenchanted imaginaries and new cultures and narratives of un/belief that were more complex and nuanced—more umbratile—than any one-way interpretation. The article will employ Derrida’s and Fisher’s complementary concepts of hauntology to analyze the cultural landscape of the 1990s, delineating a profile of a decade in American culture. This profile can only be fully understood when viewed through the liminal spaces between its opposing trends, perpetually caught in contrasting and shadowy imaginaries and narratives.
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