Exorcising the Ghost - or Spectres of Bin Laden
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Abstract
The article examines Zero Dark Thirty as a narrative treatment of a traumatic moment of crisis. The article proposes perspectives on a narrative logic and the means by which this logic is executed. It does so by using Derrida’s notion of spectrality as demonstrated in his readings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as well as his analysis of archival spectrality (Derrida, 2006 and Derrida, 1995). This Derridean perspective allows us to see the movie as an attempt to confront the horrors of crisis and bring the ensuing disequilibrium back into balance. This process, however, entails a complicated negotiation of spectrality that aims to preserve one’s own ghostlike state while giving the enemy’s various spectral forms a body so that he may be properly laid in earth.
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