The Spectral Continuum: Rethinking Posthumanist Historiography in William Gibson’s "The Gernsback Continuum"

Abstract

Traditional historiography favours human speciesism and exceptionalism. It assumes linear temporality and presents human historiographers as recorders of heroic accomplishments and technological advancements – both established markers of human progress – of a future-oriented Anthropocene. Challenges to Cartesian dualism, a human-centred approach to time, space, memory, and the reductive treatment of non-human material as objects of human history are frequently raised in Posthumanist discourse. Building on this, a framework of posthumanistic historiography rejects the pitfalls and problems of linear temporality and historiography. This paper takes up William Gibson’s short story The Gernsback Continuum to advocate for the posthumanist recognition of agency, relationality, and multiplicity of non-human entities by resolving a historiographic conundrum. Drawing on the notions of posthumanist history proposed by Ewa Domańska, along with pioneering posthuman thinkers Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, the paper views historiography as an assemblage of human, technological, media, photographic, and other forces that haunt the story’s protagonist. It calls for a treatment of historical objects that persist through temporal boundaries as spectral agents and ‘co-authors’ of historiography. By doing so, the paper adds a spectral dimension to Domańska’s framework, striving to recognise the ‘spectral agency’, ‘polytemporality’ and ‘zonal hauntings’ of architectural and media remnants in a posthumanist historiography that seeks to provide epistemic justice. Therefore, the study invites an inclusive understanding towards the non-human in historiography.