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Cryptomimesis
The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing
In the last thirty years the living-dead, the revenant, the phantom,
and the crypt have appeared with increasing frequency in Jacques
Derrida’s writings and, for the most part, have gone unaddressed.
In Cryptomimesis Jodey Castricano examines the intersection
between Derrida’s writing and the Gothic to theorize what she calls
Derrida’s “poetics of the crypt.”
She develops the theory of cryptomimesis, a term devised to
accommodate the convergence of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and
certain “Gothic” stylistic, formal, and thematic patterns and motifs
in Derrida’s work that give rise to questions regarding writing, read-
ing, and interpretation. Using Edgar Allan Poe’s Madeline and
Roderick Usher, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Stephen King’s Louis
Creed, she illuminates Derrida’s concerns with inheritance, reve-
nance, and haunting and reflects on deconstruction as ghost writing.
Castricano demonstrates that Derrida’s Specters of Marx owes
much to the Gothic insistence on the power of haunting and explores
how deconstruction can be thought of as the ghost or deferred prom-
ise of Marxism. She traces the movement of the “phantom”
throughout Derrida’s other texts, arguing that such writing provides
us with an uneasy model of subjectivity because it suggests that “to
be” is to be haunted. Castricano claims that cryptomimesis is the
model, method, and theory behind Derrida’s insistance that to learn
to live we must learn how to talk “with” ghosts.
jodey castricano is assistant professor in the Department of
English at Wilfrid Laurier University.
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Cryptomimesis
The Gothic and
Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing
jodey castricano
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca
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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2001
isbn 0-7735-2264-6 (cloth)
isbn 0-7735-2279-4 (paper)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2001
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant
from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation
of Canada, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges
the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (bpidp) for its activities. It also
acknowledges the support of the Canada Council
for the Arts for its publishing program.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing
in Publication Data
Castricano, Carla Jodey
Cryptomimesis: the gothic and Jacques Derrida’s
ghost writing
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7735-2264-6 (bound) –
isbn 0-7735-2279-4 (pbk.)
1. Derrida, Jacques. 2. Deconstruction. 3. Gothic
revival (Literature). i. Title.
b2430.s484c38 2001 194 c2001-901014-1
Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13
by Caractéra inc., Quebec City
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For my mother,
Norine Castricano
Yesterday, you may remember, we made each other
a promise. I now recall it, but you already sense all
the trouble we will have in ordering all these presents:
these past presents which consist of the present of a promise,
whose opening toward the present to come is not that of
an expectation or an anticipation but that of commitment.
Jacques Derrida “The Art of Memoires” (47)
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Convocation 3
The First Partition: Without the Door 5
Cryptomimesis or, the Return of the Living-Dead 31
“‘Darling,’ it said”:
Making a Contract with the Dead 54
The Question of the Tomb 83
An Art of Chicanery 109
Inscribing the Wholly Other: No Fixed Address 131
Notes 135
Bibliography 153
Index 163
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Acknowledgments
While I might trace this work back in spirit to a younger self who
was fascinated with ghosts, secrets, underground chambers, trap
doors, secret passages, and encrypted messages, I can also partially
attribute my current theoretical interest in phantoms and haunted
spaces to the fact that, when I was nearly ten, my father built a
family room in our basement that included a bookcase that, when
a concealed latch was released, swung open like a door. One could
then walk through the opening which led through a passageway
behind a wall. By following this passageway, one could emerge like
a phantom through another concealed door on the opposite side
of the room. These days, I’m told this house is haunted.
This book traces the trajectories of such hauntings. Over the past
few years, I have been fortunate to have had the time, the encour-
agement, and the financial support to explore what was originally
a childhood fascination with all things Gothic and which became
a critical analysis of the social and cultural dimensions of haunting
where these can be seen to resonate in literary and cultural studies,
in philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Research and preparation of this
work was originally assisted by a Graduate Fellowship from The
University of British Columbia which went towards early specula-
tions, and by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada which provided the
opportunity to make manifest those intimations. More recently,
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x Acknowledgments
Wilfrid Laurier University provided further support in the form of
a Postdoctoral Fellowship which facilitated the honing of the work,
and a Book Preparation Grant which enabled me to bring this
project to completion.
Thanks, too, are due to Gothic Studies for their permission to
reprint from “Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s
Ghost Writing,” an article derived from the manuscript which
appeared in the April 2000 special issue of the journal, edited by
Steven Bruhm, arising out of the wonderful Fourth Biannual con-
ference of the International Gothic Association entitled “Gothic
Spirits – Gothic Flesh,” which was held in Halifax in August 1999.
Thanks are also due to the institutions that granted permission
to use their materials: Quotations from Jonas and Ezekial, words
and music by Amy Ray, copyright © 1992 emi virgin songs,
inc. and godhap music (All Rights Controlled and Administered
by emi virgin songs, inc. All Right Reserved, International
Copyright Secured, Used by Permission). Quotations from W.B.
Yeats, “The Second Coming” reprinted with the permission of
Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from The Poems of
W.B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copy-
right © 1924 by The Macmillan Publishing Company, copyright
renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. I also want to thank
Stephen King for his permission to reprint from Pet Sematary and
Marsha DeFilippo, Stephen King’s Assistant, for her good humour,
patience, and assistance.
I am grateful to those who read this manuscript in its various
incarnations, and who made invaluable comments: J.C. Smith, for
his boundless enthusiasm and generous conversation; Peter Quarter-
main for sharing his love of poetics and Michael Zeitlin for his ongo-
ing support. Thanks as well to Eric Savoy and Anne Williams for
their thorough and thoughtful reading of the manuscript and to Joan
McGilvray of McGill-Queen’s University Press for keeping things on
track. Thanks are due especially to Lorraine Weir who encouraged
the work from its inception, served as a guide, and who asked pro-
vocative questions in person and in the margins. I also want to thank
Margaret Eady for her generous response to a question that, years
ago, opened a door and Nelia Tierney who was not afraid of talking
with ghosts. Finally, thanks to Jacqueline Larson, for her keen edi-
torial eye, for sharing her insights, and for the love and encourage-
ment she offered throughout all the stages of this work.
