The ‘haunted ballroom’ functions in Jack’slibidinal echonomy (to borrow a neologism from Irigaray) as the place ofbelonging in which, impossibly, the demands of both the paternal andthe maternal superegos can be met, the honeyed, dreamy utopia wheredoing his duty would be equivalent to enjoying himself...

thedepressed spirit of our times

The present tense – or rather the hesitation between past andpresent tense – creates an ambiguity, suggesting a fatalistic eternity, acompulsion to repeat – a compulsion that might be a self-fulfillingprophecy. The ghosts return because he fears they will..

Since then, cultural time has folded back on itself,and the impression of linear development has given way to a strangesimultaneity

The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by adeflation of expectations.

he 21st century is oppressed by a crushingsense of finitude and exhaustion