A ghost story where you are the ghost

What if the ghost haunting the present is you? In You Are a Ghost, Katherine Guinness offers a provocative new theory of “negative hauntology,” arguing that ghostliness is not a metaphor but the defining condition of life under late capitalism. Through compelling readings of films such as The Sixth Sense, Ghost, Beetlejuice, and The Others, alongside television, immersive performance, and contemporary art about platform surveillance and automated intelligence, Guinness reveals how today’s culture reflects a world where futurity, agency, and even humanity have already been lost.

Yet, rather than ending in nihilism, You Are a Ghost imagines a new form of collective consciousness grounded in our shared condition. Bold, accessible, and deeply original, this book rethinks social death, capitalism, and political solidarity, offering readers a new way to understand contemporary culture—and how to haunt it.

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Katherine Guinness is assistant professor of critical studies in the Department of Art at the University of Maryland. She is author of Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel (Minnesota, 2019) and coauthor of The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube.