‘Revisiting lost futures – How are hauntological themes represented in the narrative setting of ‘Maniac’?‘ (2019):
My undergraduate dissertation submitted to the Communications, Media and Culture programme at Oxford Brookes University in March 2019. Awarded first-class honours.
Entitled ‘Revisiting lost futures – How are hauntological themes represented in the narrative setting of ‘Maniac’?’, in this research project I perform a close reading of the 2018 Netflix series Maniac using the theoretical framework of hauntology, as developed by the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher.
The dissertation emulates the structure and methodological tradition of a postmodern close reading, and in doing so demonstrates how Fisher’s theory – while more amorphously designated and less developed in academic practice than Derridean-Jamesonian postmodern theory – can nonetheless be an effective lens with which to produce productive and fruitful insights into artefacts of twenty-first century popular culture.
benedict tetzlaff - deas. 