The airstream futuropolis: Hauntological reading of Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum”

This article focuses on William Gibson’s s hort story “The Gernsback Continuum”, and its reading that may be arrived at through the employment of hauntology. Gibson’s story happens in cityscapes of the American Southwest — its urban areas are turned here into a site of struggle between the disillusioned present and the ever-recurring visions of a glorified future. Among the problems tackled by this article is the nature and history of Art Deco architecture and design of the 1930s, the expectations that the Americans of the 1930s had for the future, and the influence that the surviving relicts of the bygone period still exert on the urban dwellers. This article presents hauntology as a theory capable of producing a captivating reading of the story based on the works of Jacques Derrida, Mark Fisher, and Andrzej Marzec.janekmoryn@gmail.comJan Moryń is a graduate of English Studies at the University of Lodz and has completed his MA course with a thesis on a hauntological reading of selected works of American literature. He participated in exchange programmes at University College Dublin and Universidad de Sevilla. While reading literature, he is mostly preoccupied with observing how novelists employ historiographic processes in their fiction.University of Lodz Doctoral School of HumanitiesBetsky, A. 1993. A Hollywood ending for those who take this elevator to the top. LA Times 15 Jul. 1993. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-07-15-we-13155-story.html (20 July 2019).Bredehoft, T. 1995. The Gibson continuum: cyberspace and Gibson’s Mervyn Kihn stories. Science Fiction Studies 2: 252-263.Derrida, J. 2006. Specters of Marx. New York: Routledge.Fisher, M. 2003. Recording ghosts. k-punk 12 Nov. 2003. http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/000818.html (20 July 2019).Fisher, M. 2008a. No future 2012. k-punk 13 May 2008. http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010368.html (20 July 2012).Fisher, M. 2008b. Ghost modernism. k-punk 15 Jul. 2008. http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010507.html (20 July 2019).Fisher, M. 2012. What is hauntology? Film Quarterly 1: 16-24.Fisher, M. 2014. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. London: Zero Books.Gibson, W. 2016. Burning Chrome. Croydon: Gollancz.Gorney, D. 2010. William Gibson and the future of the future. The Atlantic 14 Sep. 2010. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/09/william-gibson-and-thefuture- of-the-future/62863/ (20 July 2019).Herman, A. 2012. Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II New York: Random House.Hollinger, V. 1991. Cybernetic deconstructions: cyberpunk and postmodernism. In: L. McCaffery (ed.), Storming the Reality Studio, 203-18. Durham: Duke University Press.Marzec, A. 2015. Widmontologia. Teoria Filozoficzna i Praktyka Artystyczna Ponowoczesności. Warszawa: Bęc Zmiana.McGuirk, C. 1992. The ‘new’ romancers: science f iction innovators from Gernsback to Gibson. In: G. Slusser & T. Shippey (eds.), Fiction 2000, 109-29. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press.Ross, A. 1991. Getting out of the Gernsback continuum. Critical Inquiry 2: 411-433.Westfahl, G. The Gernsback Continuum: William Gibson in the context of science fiction. In: G. Slusser & T. Shippey (eds.), Fiction 2000. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press.28 (1/2020)677