Shipwreck Hauntography

Drawing on a broad theoretical range from speculative realism to feminist psychoanalysis and anti-colonialism, this book represents a radical departure from traditional scholarship on maritime archaeology. Shipwreck Hauntography asserts that nautical archaeology bears the legacy of Early Modern theological imperialism, most evident through the savior-scholar model that resurrects—physically or virtually—ships from wrecks. Instead of construing shipwrecks as dead, awaiting resurrection from the seafloor, this book presents them as vibrant if not recalcitrant objects, having shaken off anthropogenesis through varying stages of ruination. Sara Rich illustrates this anarchic condition with 'hauntographs' of five Age of 'Discovery' shipwrecks, each of which elucidates the wonder of failure and finitude, alongside an intimate brush with the eerie, horrific, and uncanny.

Rich Sara :

Sara Rich is a maritime archaeologist, art historian, artist, and author of speculative fiction. She is currently Assistant Professor of Honors and Interdisciplinary Studies at Coastal Carolina University.

"What would contemporary theory look like if it moved underwater? In her wonderfully written Shipwreck Hauntography, Sara Rich rewrites the history of modernity in terms of its sunken vessels. Shipwrecks are not dead masses in need of salvation, but are especially uncanny forms of living matter."
- Graham Harman, Southern California Institute of Architecture

"[...] Rich includes, and magnifcently so, her own art, doing so along with the text to drive home the book’s essential point, that wrecks are not dead, nor do they need us to 'save' them or resurrect them."
- James P. Delgado, Journal of Maritime Archaeology, Vol. 17, Iss. 04