The ghost and his double. Stories of teenagers in the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s

Abstract

The article moves from Spectres of Marx, a 1993 book authored by Jacques Derrida, and tries to set up a dialogue between Derrida’s thought on Marxism at the end of the twentieth century and some works of fiction published in the US Pacific Northwest in those very years. In particular, the article focuses on spectrality as a theme that Derrida relates to crucial events occurred in the 1990s, such as the end of the Cold War and the so-called end of history. In the article, spectrality is crucial to the reading of The Drowned Son, a short story that Seattle writer David Guterson published in 1996. The theme is investigated in the article and associated with the process of identification/disidentification of both texts’ teen protagonists – Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Derrida's book, and the young Paul Hutchinson of Guterson's short story – with their fathers. The latter are discussed as symbolic sites of authority, at once, paradoxically, internalized and yet rejected by their sons.