| Summary: | The contribution provides an overview of Fay Brauer’s highly inspiring chapter “Scientistic Magnetism and Hauntological Metarealism: The Phantasmatic Doubles of Duchamp and Durville” included in the edited volume Realisms of the Avant-Garde that was published in 2020 as part of De Gruyter’s European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies series. Focusing on early work of Marcel Duchamp in great detail, Brauer discusses the rarely addressed artist’s engagement with occultism and scientistic magnetism. The concept of hauntology, outlined by Jacques Derrida, provides Brauer with methodological tools that enable her to link the seemingly negligible connection and interdisciplinary affinity between Duchamp’s artistic visions she labels as “hauntological magnetism” with the occult experiments – “scientistic magnetism” – of Henry Durville. Derrida’s idea of the recurring spectres on which Brauer builds has the potential to contribute not only to the analysis of Duchamp’s work, but can also provide methodological tools for literary studies, e.g. for discussions of recurrent motifs in the oeuvre of a given author.
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