The airstream futuropolis: Hauntological reading of Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum”

Abstract

This article focuses on William Gibson’s s hort story “The Gernsback Continuum”, and its reading that may be arrived at through the employment of hauntology. Gibson’s story happens in cityscapes of the American Southwest — its urban areas are turned here into a site of struggle between the disillusioned present and the ever-recurring visions of a glorified future. Among the problems tackled by this article is the nature and history of Art Deco architecture and design of the 1930s, the expectations that the Americans of the 1930s had for the future, and the influence that the surviving relicts of the bygone period still exert on the urban dwellers. This article presents hauntology as a theory capable of producing a captivating reading of the story based on the works of Jacques Derrida, Mark Fisher, and Andrzej Marzec.