The Birth of Hauntology

2022

Summary

This short film was made in Gdansk, Poland, in June 2022. It was inspired by visiting the Gdansk shipyards and by my own memories of childhood television news in the early 1980s. The film proposes that, without Solidarity, the concept of Hauntology would not have become a word and thus a concept.

The past events in the Gdansk shipyard coincided with multiple strikes in the UK, as well as high inflation and energy costs, the ongoing housing crisis and dissatisfaction with an unaccountable government and the continual erosion of workers’ rights in Britain.

The film was further influenced by the gentrification of the shipyards in Gdansk in Poland's post-communist era, and the slow decline in the number of workers, which numbered 20 000 (at the end of Communism) and now numbers only 2,000 (1). The battle to get rid of the communist government contributed in later years to the dismantling of the workplace the workers had fought to protect under the earlier Communist regime.

I suggest that the demand for a free trade union in 1980 was the start of the end of Communism in Europe. The years and events that followed led to the downfall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet empire a few years later.

This then led to Fukuyama’s ‘End of history' (2)  essay and finally to Jacques Derrida’s response to this essay that first coined the phrase ‘Hauntology’. (3)

Other factors that gave agency to the struggle of the Gdansk shipyard workers and the free trade union movement including the Catholic church and, more specifically, the Pope at that time, the Polish-born, Jean-Paul II, as well as the foreign press. (It has been suggested (4) and dismissed by the likes of Noam Chomsky (5), that the assassination attempt of the Pope in 1981 was due to his involvement and support with/of Solidarity.)

The British press, which mainly covered the events from a pro-Solidarity stance and by and large supported the in-power Thatcher government at that period, were conversely critical of Union actions (NUM) in the domestic British miners' strikes. The media and the Thatcher government were equal in their stance against the British union movement.

It would suggest that supporting (by the right-wing government of Margaret Thatcher) a union of workers striking (Solidarity) was preferable to Communism (6). Once the Communists were beaten, the unions could be dismantled or diluted with free-market offerings, which may well have been the logic applied.

The lack of historical focus on Anna Walentynowicz (7) within the movement highlights the leader ‘lost’ to history, possibly due to gender or possibly to do with politics, choice or personality. Pushed aside from this central role, she died in 2010 in a suspicious plane crash in Russia. The investigation that found nothing suspicious about the crash was led by Vladimir Putin(8). The living ghost of retribution from a fallen empire seeking revenge?

References

  1. In your pocket essential city guides (2022), The Story of the Gdansk Shipyards. Available at: https://www.inyourpocket.com/gdansk/The-story-of-the-Gdansk-Shipyards_73707f (Accessed: 11 August 2022).

  2. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. United States: Free press.

  3. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. United Kingdom: Routledge.

  4. Blomfield, A. (2006) Soviets 'had Pope shot for backing Solidarity’. Telegraph.co.uk, 3rd March. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20070311124803/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2006%2F03%2F03%2Fwpope03.xml&sSheet=%2Fnews%2F2006%2F03%2F03%2Fixworld.html (Accessed: 11 August 2022).

  5. Herman, E. and S, Chomsky, N. (1988) Manufacturing Consent. United States: Pantheon Books.

  6. “Thatcher was Suspicious of Polish Solidarity Movement”, Spiegel International. (27.02. 2012) Available at: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/shunning-solidarity-thatcher-was-supicious-of-polish-solidarity-movement-a-817778.html (Accessed: 11 August 2022).

  7. Poland (2022), Anna Walentynowicz, the spark that led to Solidarity. Available at: https://poland.pl/history/historical-figures/anna-walentynowicz-spark-led-solidarity/ (Accessed: 11 August 2022).

  8. Smith, A, D. (2016) “Will Poland ever uncover the truth about the plane crash that killed its president?”, The Guardian, 7 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/07/smolensk-plane-crash-lech-kaczynski-poland-russia (Accessed: 11 August 2022).