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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Abandonment is as old as time, but ghosting is a modern twist on this ancient experience. It translates this age-old phenomenon into our modern world of screens, delete buttons and blocking options. Ghosting is not only an unpleasant experience, or cowardly act, but a symptom of our increasingly spectral – that is, mediated and virtual – relationship to the world. The overabundance of new modes of communication has invited an almost infinite number of contacts and conversations. At the same time, it has also offered an unprecedented opportunity for ignoring messages from others. And just as we invented the car crash when we invented automobiles, we also encouraged ghosting when we created the internet.
Ghosting creates an empty space in our minds: a space faithfully tracing the silhouette of the one who ghosted us. But unlike traditional ghosts, today’s ghosters simply disappear, leaving behind a form of haunting that is closer to mourning: mourning for someone who is not in fact dead. In putting a kind of preemptive mourning into our everyday affairs, ghosting tells us much about the current human relationship – or non-relationship – to a shared sense of mortality, purpose, and spirit.
This book – the first sustained analysis of ghosting – traces the source of this vexed experience to, and through, our current media ecology, technological networks, political landscape, collective psychology, romantic mantras, and deep sense of social neglect.
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Seitenzahl: 173
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quotations
Preface
Introduction
Notes
One: Romantic Ghosting
Notes
Two: Familial and Platonic Ghosting
Notes
Three: Professional and Social Ghosting
Notes
(In)Conclusion: In Lieu of Closure
Notes
Coda: The Ghosting in the Machine
Notes
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quotations
Preface
Introduction
Begin Reading
(In)Conclusion: In Lieu of Closure
Coda: The Ghosting in the Machine
End User License Agreement
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Ghosting
On Disappearance
Dominic Pettman
polity
Copyright © Dominic Pettman 2025
The right of Dominic Pettman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2025 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6996-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024951514
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com
“At the times when you are delighted with a thing, place before yourself the contrary appearances. What harm is it while you are kissing your child to say with a lisping voice, ‘Tomorrow you will die’; and to a friend also, ‘Tomorrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again’?”
– Epictetus, Discourses
“… you have gone (which I lament), you are here (since I am addressing you).”
– Roland Barthes
Preface
My uncle ghosted our family, some time in the 1980s. My father’s younger brother, Gordon – then in his twenties – first announced a new name, Gabriel. Not long afterwards, he promptly disappeared into the ether. After talking to various friends left behind, we pieced together the outlines of Gabriel’s escape plan: moving from Adelaide to London, and starting a new life with a new identity, perhaps with designs on making a name for himself in the theater. When I myself was living briefly in North London in the 1990s, I often wondered if I was sitting next to my quasi-mythical uncle on the Tube, or unknowingly rubbing shoulders in a café. There were no photos to provide any clues, other than the faded black-and-white ones of a rather anonymous childhood in rural, post-war Australia. My one actual memory of then Uncle Gordon was as the source of a sharp rebuke, when I was about nine years old, for touching his white grand piano. (“Would you like it if I touched your bongos?” he snapped, knowing my precocious fondness for Latin percussion.) Looking down the streets, and around the parks, of England’s grey capital, any number of these strangers could now feasibly be called Gabriel.
The word “ghosting,” as we use it today, was of course not yet available in the 1980s. Instead, we would use the vocabulary of the time, often inherited from former periods. My uncle had “fled,” “eloped,” “decamped,” “absconded,” “deserted,” “forsaken,” or “abandoned” us. I never felt the emotional weight of any of these terms, as I did not know the man, so could summon no sorrow at his sudden absence. Instead, a significant part of me was impressed with the drastic and decisive action my uncle had taken to get the hell away from the sticky tendrils of home and family. Gordon-now-Gabriel became something of a hero to me, if not exactly a role model to base my own actions upon. (For I could never be so ruthless.) This deficit of resolve is no doubt why I secretly admired the radicality of his act. Writing now, in 2024, the window of possibility that Gabriel will return to the fold – repentant or not – seems to be practically closed. Indeed, the family has no idea if this absent black sheep is living or dead. And who knows by what baroque signaling system we might learn of the passing of this invisible relative. He could well have died at the turn of the millennium.
Such is the troubling force and uncertainty of the act: something we now call ghosting. To simply withdraw from one’s family or friends – without so much as an explanation – is a powerful and shocking statement, one that reverberates painfully for those left behind. It is a form of symbolic suicide: one that allows the perpetrator to avoid the inconvenience of actually dying. Nevertheless, it can leave the same guilt, bitterness, and unresolved feelings. “Why?” is the refrain we all feel deep in our bones when someone has ghosted us. What did we do to warrant – or even authorize – such behavior? How is it that we weren’t given an opportunity to apologize, to mend our ways, to make amends? Ghosting is a form of violence because it leaves the ghosted one (or ones) gasping at the silent vehemence of the act. It also leaves them grasping at straws to explain why they deserved to be abandoned like this.
Ghosting puts us all in the position of Miss Havisham, in Charles Dickens’s novel, Great Expectations: a broken woman – only in her thirties in the book, but often depicted as much older – skulking around her dusty mansion, muttering to herself, and refusing to wear anything other than her original wedding dress, after being left at the altar on that fateful day. There is indeed something gothic about the ghosting process, as the name suggests. We are all haunted by the possibility of being ghosted, in addition to previous experience. (And given the popularity of the term in “the discourse,” we can reasonably assume that ghosting is an increasingly common practice.)
Abandonment is as old as time; inscribed in Greek myths, Chinese sagas, and African folk tales. People have always felt compelled to suddenly follow their own hearts toward a new path, even if this meant hurting those who rely on them to continue living in a specific way, or in a specific place. Ghosting is thus a modern twist on this ancient experience. And as such, it updates a rather timeless phenomenon for our own age of crossed wires, delete buttons, and blocking options. Ghosting names a specific form of haunting in an age that has supposedly banished ghosts into the margins of our fluorescent-lit modernity. Indeed, ghosts seem to haunt our films, minds, and stories in reverse proportion to their felt presence in real life, since, unlike Miss Havisham, very few of us live in decrepit mansions. Ghosts today are not the gauzy spirits of Victorian times – nor are they the poltergeists of the 1980s – but rather the abstract, restless revenants of times past; whether these luminescent residues represent other epochs, before our own time, or simply previous moments in our own modest lives.
Ghosting creates an empty space in our own minds and souls: a space faithfully tracing the silhouette of the one who ghosted us. (Not unlike the chalk outline found at a murder scene.) The ghoster thus embodies – or rather dis-embodies – what the philosophers call “a structuring absence.” And the ghostee henceforth carries this absence with them, in a way that shapes their lives in the aftermath. (The ghosted always feel somewhat belated, for this reason. They are, to quote some popular television shows, “the leftovers” or “the left-behind.”) Ghosting is in fact worse than a traditional haunting, since the classic ghost has the decency to actually show up, and be present; albeit in a shimmering, immaterial, ectoplasmic kind of way. The problem with most old school ghosts is that they are too close, even if one cannot see them. Their presence may be uncanny, but it’s palpable. Today’s ghosters, in contrast, simply disappear, leaving a more subtle, complicated form of haunting; something closer to mourning. Mourning for someone who is not in fact dead. Traditional ghosts shimmer with a queasy kind of transparency. Twenty-first-century ghosters, in contrast, cloak themselves in a light-absorbing opacity.
Can the mourning produced by this ultimate silent treatment match, or even exceed, the mourning for a dearly departed one? What kind of relationship remains – if any – between the ghoster and the ghostee? And what psychological or emotional strategies can the latter deploy, in order to cope with the distress of being jilted in this way? Existential questions will necessarily be supplemented by sociological ones, given the channels in which ghosting occurs. For instance, beyond the inter-personal dynamics of the act, how do today’s smartphones act as accomplices for the would-be ghost? Does social media somehow encourage this nefarious practice? And if so, how does the keen memory of the internet sometimes work against the ghoster’s best laid plans to wink off the grid? As with our own second-guessing, when abandoned by someone who is precious to us, the questions multiply and mushroom.
Personally, I can only speculate as to why my former Uncle Gordon changed his name to Gabriel. Was this the name of a youthful celebrity crush? Did he just like the sound of the word? Or was it, immodestly, in honor of the great archangel Gabriel – the one who enjoyed God’s favor, and who embodied the power to act as God’s messenger, connecting the chasm between heaven and earth? The latter would be pleasingly ironic, given my uncle Gabriel’s own powers of auto-excommunication: of withdrawing into the black box of a new life, unshared and thus completely unknown.
It is the texture, context, and ambivalent temptations of this painful, paradoxical experience that we shall be exploring in the following chapters.
Introduction
A specter is haunting Europe. (And not only Europe!)
This specter stalks the land and invades our hearts. It shapes our fears and whispers from our darkest corners. For we are – every single one of us – haunted by the ghost of ghosting.
At a certain age, we have all been ghosted at some point in our lives. Indeed, we’ve all likely ghosted somebody in turn.1 Depending on our sensibility, we may wince and grieve over such abrupt partings. Or we may simply shrug, rationalizing such behavior – whether perpetrator or victim – as an inevitable by-product of an overly social world. Indeed, given the number of personal connections we are obliged to maintain in modern times, in contrast to the classic tribe or village of yore, it is no surprise that some of these relationships will become burdensome. And the easiest option is to simply let some of them fall by the wayside. Like spinning plates, some will inevitably crash to the ground.
The sociologist Robin Dunbar famously suggested a specific number corresponding to the maximum amount of people that the average person can interact with in any meaningful, reciprocal sense. That number is 150. Beyond this figure, we ostensibly cannot maintain friendships or collegial ties with any true traction, and things dissolve into empty para-social gestures. Indeed, as I myself move past the milestone of fifty summers, I sometimes find it challenging to nurture any more than fifteen relationships at any given time. The older we get, the more we cherish and value those who have helped us along the way. And yet, the older we get, the more we may feel the weight of those we have helped carry us through life.
Such is the premise for the 2022 film, The Banshees of Inisherin, which asks what happens when we tire of friendships even in a small community of a few dozen souls. (In this case, in rural Ireland of the 1920s, which for all intents and purposes resembles the rural Ireland of the early 1800s.) The protagonist of the film, an amiable and simple fellow by the name of Pádraic Súilleabháin (played by Colin Farrell), finds himself suddenly ignored by his life-long friend, the grizzled fiddle-player, Colm Doherty (played by Brendan Gleeson). The latter has reached a point in life where he wants to spend his remaining time composing music that people will remember, rather than frittering away the day with a man who, while perfectly pleasant, is not exactly inspiring company. Colm becomes so exasperated by his former friend’s attempts to restore the relationship that he threatens to cut off his own fingers, one for every time Pádraic approaches him with a view to conversation. The offended party presumes this threat is hyperbole. He quickly learns, however, that the determined would-be ghoster is as good as his word. By the time the scandal reaches its peak – with Pádraic setting fire to Colm’s house in exasperation – the latter has lost all the fingers on one hand. (Clearly a disaster for someone whose sole purpose seems to be playing the fiddle.)
This scenario – equally masochistic and sadistic – seemed to resonate with audiences, still reeling from the social upheaval of the Covid lockdowns, and The Banshees of Inisherin became a controversial litmus test for various understandings of friendship, and its limits. The film, moreover, struck a chord with a populace still dealing with the ongoing fallout from Covid’s intense impact on so many relationships: some fused into a deeper intimacy by the pressures of claustrophobic living arrangements, and others fractured beyond repair by these very same pressures. Something about seeing this rather heartless drama unfold on such an intimate scale, without the complications of social media and smartphones, felt like a sobering x-ray for a population already bruised by an especially intense period of reassessment, especially when it came to interpersonal relationships vis-à-vis personal priorities.
In the circumscribed community depicted in The Banshees of Inisherin, no one remains unaffected by Colm’s decision to ghost Pádraic, since both would still be – awkwardly – present in the same handful of public places. (Especially the lone pub that serves the village.) In this case, we have a ghoster and ghostee haunted by an ongoing fleshy presence, even as one of these presences sacrifices at least a few ounces of flesh in order to force the deed to completion. Such completion is elusive, however, when the ghost remains and when the haunted person clings. (First clinging to the former friend, and then to his own resentment at being rejected.) The film stirred such feelings because it’s difficult to blame either man for their motivations and reactions. (Though the violence of self-mutilation certainly tests our sympathies for the tortured artist.) Depending on our own experience – and depending on the direction we look, in terms of ongoing social obligation – it’s possible to identify with the man hoping to focus on what really matters to him, just as we can also easily share in the pain of the man who discovers his best friend no longer has a single minute to spare for him. Such are the complex motivations and conflicting experiences of ghosting.
Remarkably, a very different Irish film, The Quiet Girl, also made a global cultural impression in the same year of 2022, and explored the psychic and emotional violence of a sudden refusal of presence: an unexpected tearing up of the social contract. This film – as quiet as its title suggests – follows the fate of a nine-year-old girl, Cáit, neglected by her parents, and then handed off to distant relatives in the summer of 1981. Here, Cáit is doubly abandoned: first by her parents’ life-long chilly demeanor toward her, and second by their apparent attempt to foster her out to another family. Cáit has clearly grown up in an environment that taught her never to take love or attention for granted. And while her new home has its own sadness and hesitations, she begins to finally get an inkling of what it is like to feel a warm kind of familial company and care. (“Many’s the person missed the opportunity to say nothing, and lost much because of it.”) Being an Irish art film, however, the story cannot simply end on this happier note, as the messiness of life leaks into the frame.
Both these scenarios pose fundamental questions about social ties: especially the extent to which these bind too tightly, or, conversely, the extent to which they can be loosened altogether. Parents today are expected to “be there” for their child, although this is in some ways a relatively recent cultural imperative. Family, in any case, is supposed to represent a life-long bond. There is no shortage, however, of exceptions: children running away from home and, in some cases, parents doing the same. (As happens for comic effect in an episode of Ripping Yarns, when mother and father are driven to abscond from the family home to avoid their son, Eric, deemed “the most boring man in England.”) Marriage – in contrast to blood kinship – is underwritten by a legal contract, supposedly guaranteeing life-long commitment, “through sickness and in health.” The statistics, however, tell a different story. Friendships are more ambiguous, in the sense that any contract is unwritten, and usually unspoken. We cherish friends for “sticking with us,” even when there is no legal pressure to do so. This does not mean, however, that the hurt of a friend suddenly breaking all contact is any less than the pain of a divorce or family icing. The murky moral of The Banshees of Inisherin is that no-one owes anyone else their presence, painful as that truth is to hear. Nonetheless, ghosting is a cruel act. In a world of atomized, liquified, symptomatic, and transactional relations, it can also – perversely – be a merciful one. Of which more in later chapters.
Sigmund Freud famously claimed that the first trauma an infant experiences is the withdrawal of the breast. When something so nourishing and comforting is taken away from us, we learn to scream in full fury. In the midst of the pure howl of this shriek, we also begin to learn something crucial about the world: the fact that what we want, and what we need, is not going to be provided on demand (or on tap, as it were). Presently, when the infant has figured out the harsh truth that the breast is not just a magic soothing machine, but a part of the mother’s body, we learn to cherish the mother’s holistic presence. By the same token, we begin to fear her absence. Freud calls this the fort/da
