Specters of Cavafy

Maria Boletsi is Marilena Laskaridis Endowed Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Associate Professor in Film and Comparative Literature at Leiden University.

Preface: Cavafy and Specters
1. Introduction: Cavafy’s Ghost Ships
a. Ghost Ships
b. Specters, Time, and Justice
c. Reading Cavafy Preposterously
d. The Writer’s Inkwell: From Tyrannical Prehension to Foreign Hands
e. Ghosts and the Archive
f. Outline
2. Cavafy’s Poetics of the Spectral: On Broken Promises and Conjurations
a. Introduction
b. On Broken Promises
c. On Conjurations
d. Living with Specters
3. Haunted Modernity: Cavafy’s Noonday Demon
a. Reading Preposterously: From Sotiropoulos’ What’s Left of the Night to Cavafy’s “In Broad Daylight”
b. Ghosts and Modernity
c. Cavafy’s Noonday Demon: From Religion to Capitalism and Back
d. A Little Box…
e. …and a Big Box
f. Ghosts of Capitalist Futures
g. Haunting and Desire
4. The Reluctant Ironist: Affect, Spectral Truth, and Irony’s Temperature
a. Introduction
b. Irony and Affect
c. “A Diary of Occurrences,” But Not Quite
d. Philosophical Scrutiny
e. Cavafy’s Little God of Irony
5. Specters of Barbarians
a. Introduction 
b. The Poem’s Literary and Artistic Restagings
c. The Poem as a Figure of Cultural Mutation
d. Waiting for the Barbarians After the Cold War
e. Between Enlightenment, Decadence, and Modernism: Barbarians and Historical Time
f. Barbarians and the Desire for New Narratives
g. Reluctant Irony as Being-With-Specters
6. The Futurity of Things Past: From Colonized Egypt to the Greek Crisis and Beyond
a. Introduction
b. Cavafy’s Fractured Statue
c. Verses in Transit
d. “Violence Is A Dangerous Thing”
e. Debt, Reform, and Violence in Colonies Past and Present
f. Reading-by-Fragments and the Promise of Futurity
Epilogue: Returns and Unknown Destinations
a. Cavafy as Control-freak, Collector, Surgeon, Reluctant Destroyer, Revolutionary
b. Concluding, Or Returning
Notes
References
Index