doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.01

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.02

Lost media is a term that refers to media artefacts that can no longer be located in the public domain. Their obscure origins and nature have fostered the emergence of an engaged online community dedicated to their identification and preservation. Its members act not merely as media enthusiasts but also as custodians of media legacy. They share a distinct fascination with the mystery surrounding such content and its marked contrast to the apparent ubiquity and accessibility of digital information. The search for lost media reveals processes through which collective memory is constructed, where action is driven by absence. Selected examples demonstrate how missing materials are reconstructed and documented, with archival practices combined with narrative strategies and the circulation of rare content online. This article argues that lost media should be understood not only as objects of cultural longing and nostalgia but also as a form of resistance to the ephemerality of digital culture.

Key words: lost media, internet culture, archiving, memory

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. „The system of collecting”. W: The Cultures of Collecting, red. John Elsner, Roger Cardinal. London: Reaktion Books, 1994.

Derrida, Jacques. Gorączka archiwum. Impresja freudowska. Tłum. Jakub Momro. Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2016.

Derrida, Jacques. Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka. Tłum. Tomasz Załuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2016.

Ernst, Wolfgang. Digital Memory and The Archive. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Fisher, Mark. Dziwaczne i osobliwe. Tłum. Andrzej Karalus, Tymon Adamczewski. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Słowo/obraz terytoria, 2023.

Marshall, Lee. „For and against the record industry: An introduction to bootleg collectors and tape traders”. Popular Music 22, 1 (2003).

Marshall, Lee. „Whatever happened to tape-trading?”. W: The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture, red. Nicholas Cook, Monique M. Ingalls, David Trippett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Marzec, Andrzej. „Fragmenty, resztki i przekleństwo archiwum – o nostalgii w kulturze found footage”. Teksty Drugie 2 (2016).

Marzec, Andrzej. Widmontologia. Teoria filozoficzna i praktyka artystyczna ponowoczesności. Warszawa: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, 2015.

Pierce, David. „The legion of the condemned – why American silent feature films perished”. Film History 9, 1 (1997).

Pierce, David. The Survival of American Silent Films: 1912–1929. Washington: Council on Library and Information Resources and The Library of Congress, 2013.

Rasmussen, Søren. „Nonsense data and the anarchive: Memory in real-time”. W: Affects, Interfaces, Events, red. Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Jette Kofoed, Jonas Fritsch. Lancaster PA, Vancouver BC: Imbricate! Press, 2021.

Reynolds, Simon. Retromania. Jak popkultura żywi się własną przeszłością. Tłum. Filip Łobodziński. Warszawa: Kosmos Kosmos, 2018.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.03

This article examines the hauntological return of certain 20th-century genres of popular music in the musical practices of the past 25 years. The opening section defines the concepts of genre and style in relation to popular music. It then considers the opposition between the two metagenres of pop and rock through the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of gender, outlining the history of their binary division. The text highlights the limitations of this dichotomy and the breaches made by certain genres, which in this framework may be regarded as queer. Drawing on the hauntological approach, the author analyses various modes through which canonical genres and styles, once considered obsolete or extinct, have been reanimated in contemporary music. Different strategies of musical extinction and revival, alongside differences between both processes, are presented, and practical examples of the latter are offered. The discussion focuses in particular on three 20th-century genres – country, bubblegum pop and disco – examining the distinct trajectories of their decline and their contemporary spectres haunting the present.

Key words: bubblegum pop, country, disco, popular music, queer

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. „O muzyce popularnej”. Tłum. Jakub Kasperski. Res Facta Nova: Teksty o Muzyce Współczesnej 25, 16 (2015).

Born, Georgina. „Making time: Temporality, history, and the cultural object”. New Literary History 46, 3 (2015).

Butler, Judith. Uwikłani w płeć. Tłum. Karolina Krasuska. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2008.

Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Tłum. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Echols, Alice. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.

Fabbri, Franco. „A theory of musical genres: Two applications”. W: Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, red. Simon Frith. T. 3. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Fisher, Mark. „What is hauntology?”. Film Quarterly 66, 1 (2012).

Fox, Pamela. „Recycled ‘Trash’: Gender and authenticity in country music autobiography”. American Quarterly 2 (1998).

Greene, Doyle. Teens, TV and Tunes: The Manufacturing of American Adolescent Culture. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2012.

Leonard, Marion. Gender in the Music Industry: Rock, Discourse, and Girl Power. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2017.

Trainer, Adam. „From hypnagogia to distroid: Postironic musical renderings of personal memories”. W: The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, red. Sheila Whiteley, Shara Rambarran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.04

This article addresses the question of the stylistic identity of English-language feature podcasts, a form that emerged in the 2020s, shaped in part by the popularity of „Welcome to Night Vale” and contemporary television series. While feature podcasts have developed certain distinctive characteristics, they largely rely on the remediation of earlier stylistic forms, drawing primarily on radio, cinema and non-fiction podcasting, reproducing relatively simple, recognisable and repetitive narrative schemes. Irrespective of genre or subject matter, podcast narratives frequently adopt talk-show conventions, journalistic investigation formats and the aesthetics of found footage as if haunted by the spectres of analogue sound carriers and obsolete recording technologies. The article outlines the dominant stylistic model of feature podcasting and analyses three selected productions: „The Amelia Project” (2017), „Forgive Me!” (2018) and „Who Killed Alaska?” (2021). It examines the ways in which these podcasts engage in dialogue with the prevailing model, reworking established formulas to develop a more distinctive style and aesthetics so as to free themselves from forms consolidated during the early revival of the radio drama.

Key words: media, podcast, post-Serial, remediation, radio drama

Bibliography

Boling, Kelly S. „True crime podcasting: Journalism, justice or entertainment?”. Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 17, 2 (2019).

Bolter, Jay D., Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.

Bottomley, Andrew J. „Podcasting, Welcome to Night Vale, and the revival of radio drama”. Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, 2 (2015).

Fink, Joseph. „Introduction”. W: Mostly Void, Partially Stars: Welcome to Night Vale Episodes. T. 1. Red. Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016.

Hancock, Danielle, Leslie McMurtry. „‘Cycles upon cycles, stories upon stories’: Contemporary audio media and podcast horror’s new frights”. Palgrave Communications 3, 17075 (2017).

Hancock, Danielle, Leslie McMurtry. „‘I know what a podcast is’: Post-Serial fiction and podcast media identity”. W: Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, red. Dario Llinares, Neil Fox, Richard Berry. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Lindgren, Mia, Jason Loviglio, red., The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies. New York: Routledge, 2022.

McDannell, Colleen, red., Catholics in the Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

McMurtry, Leslie G. Revolution in the Echo Chamber: Audio Drama’s Past, Present and Future. Bristol: Intellect, 2019.

Morris, Jeremy W., Eleanor Patterson. „Podcasting and its apps: Software, sound, and the interfaces of digital audio”. Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, 2 (2015).

Reynolds, Simon. Retromania. Jak popkultura żywi się własną przeszłością. Tłum. Filip Łobodziński. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Kosmos Kosmos, 2018.

Rubery, Matthew. „Podcasts, audiobooks and podiobooks”. W: The Routledge Companion to Literary Media, red. Astrid Ensslin, Julia Round, Bronwen Thomas. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Spinelli, Martin, Lance Dann. Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Verma, Neil. Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Yardley, Elizabeth, Emma Kelly, Shona Robinson-Edwards. „Forever trapped in the imaginary of late capitalism? The serialized true crime podcast as a wake-up call in times of criminological slumber”. Crime, Media, Culture 15, 3 (2018).

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.05

This article examines the functioning of literary texts in the 2018 serial adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1969), released under the same title. The series invokes numerous literary works and engages extensively with Peter Weir’s iconic film from 1975. The proliferation of textual presences corresponds to the contemporary logic of media convergence, in which individual works no longer function autonomously but become embedded in broader systems of intertextual reference, as exemplified by large-scale media franchises. Many references in the series are indirect and non-obvious, which makes them particularly amenable to analysis through hauntological tools grounded in the paradigm of ‘soft’ ontology. The article conceptualises the series as a haunted text – not only at the level of narrative content but also in its formal organisation, structured around return and repetition, central categories of hauntology. The work is permeated by spectral presences, including a children’s counting rhyme, the poem The Wreck of the Hesperus, Henry James’s novel The Turn of the Screw (1898), the film adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock and the original novel itself, reinterpreted in terms of feminist and postcolonial discourses. Based on this spectral analysis of textual presences and intertextual references, the article proposes that media adaptation may be understood as a ‘host of ghosts’: a text of multiple voices and plural subjectivity.

Key words: Picnic at Hanging Rock, hauntology, adaptation theory, soft ontology

Bibliography

Backman Rogers, Anna. Picnic at Hanging Rock. London: The British Film Institute, Bloomsbury, 2022.

Cartmell, Deborah, Imelda Whelehan, red., Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Castricano, Carla Jodey. Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2003.

Christian, Beatrix, Alice Addison. Picnic at Hanging Rock. Amazon Prime, 6 maja 2018.

Davis, Colin. Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Derrida, Jacques. Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka. Tłum. Tomasz Załuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2016.

Elliott, Kamilla. Theorizing Adaptation. London: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Heller, Terry. The Turn of the Screw: Bewildered Visions. Boston: Twayne’s Publishers, 1989.

James, Henry. W kleszczach lęku. Tłum. Witold Pospieszała. Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 2012.

Lindsay, Joan. Piknik pod Wiszącą Skałą. Tłum. Wacław Niepokólczycki. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Replika, 2008.

Mitchell, Rebecca. „Death becomes her: On the progressive potential of Victorian mourning”. Victorian Literature and Culture 41 (2013).

Moers, Ellen. „Female gothic”. W: The Endurance of ‘Frankenstein’: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel, red. George Levine, U.C. Knoepflmacher. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Scholz, Anne-Marie. From Fidelity to History: Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century. New York: Berghahn, 2013.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.06

This article examines the television series GLOW (2017–2019) and its hauntological representation of the 1980s, adjusted to the expectations of contemporary audiences. Using the series as a case study, the article explores the media mechanisms through which the 1980s are retrospectively framed as a period marked by sarcastic self-awareness and the increasing social subjectivity of women. Female characters are depicted as strategically adopting subordinate roles to subvert patriarchal structures from within, mobilising gender stereotypes as instruments of resistance. By entering into dialogue with the past, most notably through the casting of performers marginalised due to race and/or gender in roles historically reserved for white men, the series reinforces the imagined trajectory of social change towards progress and increased tolerance rather than simply reproducing the patriarchal structure as static and repetitive forms. The article undertakes a hauntological analysis of professional wrestling as represented in the series and demonstrates how the Netflix production mobilises nostalgia to sustain audience engagement with both the cultural texts of the 1980s and the broader imagery of the period. This mode of cultural recycling, demonstrating no need to generate new forms, remains aligned with the logic of contemporary capitalism, in which outdated and previously ineffective solutions are repackaged and remarketed as new.

Key words: wrestling, hauntology, nostalgia, the 1980s

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Symulakry i symulacja. Tłum. Sławomir Królak. Warszawa: Sic!, 2005.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Retrotopia. Jak rządzi nami przeszłość. Tłum. Karolina Lebek. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2018.

Beekman, Scott M. Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America. Westport CT: Prager, 2006.

Burszta, Wojciech. Czytanie kultury: Pięć szkiców. Łódź: Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UAM w Poznaniu, 1996.

Derrida, Jacques. Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka. Tłum. Tomasz Załuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2016.

Dobieszewski, Janusz. Inność jako wartość. Studia i szkice z filozofii kultury i okolic. Kraków: Universitas, 2020.

Fisher, Mark. Dziwaczne i osobliwe. Tłum. Andrzej Karalus, Tymon Adamczewski. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Słowo/obraz terytoria, 2023.

Jameson, Fredric. „Marx’s purloined letter”. W: Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, red. Michael Sprinker. London: Verso, 2008.

Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.

Mazer, Sharon. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

Smith, R. Tyson. Fighting for Recognition: Identity, Masculinity, and the Act of Violence in Professional Wrestling. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.07

This article analyses the animated series The Owl House (2020–2023) as a production which seeks to confront trauma and explore possible modes of working through it. The destinies of the protagonists are shaped by events from the past that are not always accessible to them. What haunts them can be exorcised only through the discovery and articulation of truth. Drawing on the concept of cryptonymy developed by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, the article approaches the series as a narrative concerned with breaking the cycles of violence and disclosing the contents repressed to the ‘crypt’. It also focuses on the narrative arc of the Wittebane family tragedy, particularly through the figures of Grimwalkers, where truth proves fundamentally inaccessible and the spectres (phantoms), while produced through its distortion, emerge as its sole repositories. In this respect, Grimwalkers more closely resemble Jacques Derrida’s spectres than the phantoms theorised by Abraham and Torok. The article argues that although the series sends the message of the necessity to uncover the truth (‘decrypt the crypt’), confront the inherited trauma and liberate oneself from it, this project ultimately fails in the face of death, rendering the exorcism impossible.

Key words: The Owl House, hauntology, cryptonymy, gothic, psychoanalysis

Bibliography

Abraham, Nicolas, Maria Torok. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. Tłum. Nicolas Rand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Derrida, Jacques. „Fora. «Kanciaste» słowa Nicolasa Abrahama i Marii Torok”. Tłum. Barbara Brzezicka. Teksty Drugie 2 (2016).

Dragon, Zoltán. „Derrida’s specter, Abraham’s phantom: Psychoanalysis as the uncanny kernel of deconstruction”. The AnaChronisT 11 (2005).

Kłosiński, Michał. „Inny «świat» Miłosza: ojciec – matka – krypta”. Pamiętnik Literacki 102, 2 (2011).

Kobus, Aldona. „Jak nawiedzają lesbijki. Homo-spektralność i trauma w niezależnych podcastach Midnight Radio (2018) i Weaver (2021)”. Przegląd Kulturoznawczy 59, 1 (2024).

Marzec, Andrzej. Widmontologie. Warszawa: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, 2015.

Piekarski, Ireneusz. „Interpretacja jako kryptonimia, czyli Nicolasa Abrahama i Marii Torok czytanie zakrzywione”. Teksty Drugie 5 (2016).

Rand, Nicolas. „Renewals of psychoanalysis”. W: Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel. Tłum. Nicolas Rand. Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 1994.

Sage, Victor, Andrew Lloyd-Smith. „Introduction”. W: Modern Gothic: A Reader, red. Victor Sage, Andrew Lloyd-Smith. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.

Terrace, Dana. The Owl House. Disney Television Animation, 2019–2023.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.08

This article seeks to examine the tensions between the teratological and hauntological dimensions of the board game Vagrantsong designed by Matt Carter and collaborators. The game’s narrative centres on a group of vagrants who inadvertently find themselves aboard a ghost train. In order to survive, they must restore Humanity to the spirits (Haints) that inhabit it. The analysis first considers the monsters encountered by players, whom they are required to confront in play as the embodiment of ‘otherness’. The Haints are estranged cryptonymic phantoms – a mixture of psychoanalytic and Derridean hauntology with China Miéville’s teratological approach. Particular attention is paid to their representation not only in narrative terms but also through their mechanics in the game system. Another dimension of the analysis concerns the monstrosity of the game environment and the train itself as an emblem of industrialisation and capitalism. The final section addresses other non-material yet influential aspects of gameplay – spectres shaping the player’s experience, most notably experienced through the artistic style evoking animation of the Great Depression era and the game’s implicit engagement with capitalist logic. Ultimately, Vagrantsong emerges as a game structured by paradox whose dynamics may be read through the lens of what Mark Fisher termed capitalist realism.

Key words: board games, hauntology, teratology, ghost train, Vagrantsong

Bibliography

Abraham, Nicolas, Maria Torok. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. Tłum. Nicholas Rand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

Barnes, Alicia. „Railing through reality: Trains and mobility in Victorian ghost stories”. The Journal of Transport History 45, 1 (2024).

Booth, Paul. Board Game as Media. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021.

Briefel, Aviva. „Ghost speed: The strange matter of phantom vehicles”. Victorian Literature and Culture 50, 4 (2022).

Derrida, Jacques. „Fora. «Kanciaste» słowa Nicolasa Abrahama i Marii Torok”. Tłum. Barbara Brzezicka. Teksty Drugie 2 (2016).

Derrida, Jacques. Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka. Tłum. Tomasz Załuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2016.

Fisher, Mark. Realizm kapitalistyczny. Czy nie ma alternatywy?. Tłum. Andrzej Karalus. Warszawa: Książka i Prasa, 2020.

Janik, Justyna. „Ghosts of the present past: Spectrality in the video game object”. Journal of the Philosophy of Games 2, 1 (2019).

Klein, Norman M. „Animations as baroque: Fleischer Morphs Harlem; Tangos to Crocodiles”. W: The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema, red. Chris Gehman, Steve Reinke. Ottava: YYZ Books, Images Festival, 2005.

Kłosiński, Michał, Agata Zarzycka. „Trains, stations, and railways as harbingers of biopolitics in digital games: From governance to hauntology”. Games and Culture 18, 1 (2025).

Leino, Olli T. „Pętla śmierci jako komponent”. Tłum. Maciej Nawrocki. Teksty Drugie 3 (2017).

Miéville, China. „M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological; Versus and/or and and/or or?”. Collapse 4 (2008).

Scoggin, Lisa. „The pseudo-1930s world of Cuphead”. W: The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing, red. Lisa Scoggin, Dana Plank. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Torner, Evan. „Distinguishing analog games”. Boardgame Historian, 17 października 2021. https://bghistorian.hypotheses.org/2030.

Vagrantsong. Matt Carter, Justin Gibbs, Kyle Rowan. Wyrd Games, 2022.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.09

This article offers an analysis of the podcast The Magnus Archives as an auditory heterotopia of fear, in which the medium functions both as a carrier of narrative content and a structural element defining its hauntological architecture. The opening section demonstrates how listening to a podcast organised around repetitive narrative formulas and acoustic thresholds places the listener in a liminal state, transforming everyday listening practices into a ritualised experience of horror. The world presented in The Magnus Archives is constructed as a heterotopic space where cassette tape assumes the role of a medium of resistance to digital reduction. Tape is interpreted as a hauntological fetish and simulacrum – an object whose obsolescence endows it with hauntological causal power, while the digital simulation of its analogue sound generates an aura of authenticity. A study of episodes 196–197 illustrates how tapes cease to function as neutral documentary props and instead become the infrastructural foundation of the fictional world. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s hauntology and Carl Knappett’s concept of distributed agency, the article argues that within the ostensibly anachronistic medium of the podcast, tapes assume agency over both characters and listeners, establishing a hauntological infrastructure of digital culture.

Key words: podcast, audial, heterotopia, media fetishism

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Tłum. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Citton, Yves. The Ecology of Attention. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2017.

Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester, Washington: Zero Books, 2014.

Fisher, Mark. The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2017.

Foucault, Michel. „Inne przestrzenie”. Tłum. Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska. Teksty Drugie 6 (2005).

Hillis, Ken. Online a Lot of the Time: Ritual, Fetish, Sign. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2009.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2008.

Knappett, Carl. „Photographs, skeuomorphs, and marionettes: On the simulation of agency in social life”. Journal of Material Culture 7, 2 (2002).

Kopytoff, Igor. „The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process”. W: The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, red. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Markley, Robert. „Boundaries: Mathematics, alienation, and the metaphysics of cyberspace”. W: Virtual Reality and Its Discontents, red. Robert Markley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Pietz, William. „The problem of the fetish, I”. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 9 (1985).

Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. New York: Faber and Faber, 2011.

Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982.

Van Elferen, Isabella. Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.10

This article analyses the game Hypnospace Outlaw (Tendershoot, 2019) in the context of retro digital culture and game studies. Drawing inspiration from the internet of the late 1990s, the game does not merely offer a nostalgic reconstruction of the Web 1.0 aesthetic, but it functions as a counterfactual archive of the graphical user interface (GUI). Referring to hauntology (Derrida, Fisher, Dolan), the article argues that Hypnospace Outlaw operates not only at the level of affective haunting by the past but also at the level of the medium’s operability. In line with Wolfgang Ernst’s concept of media archaeology, the interface becomes the subject of history: it does not simply represent the past but activates it in the operational mode through errors, glitches, rhythms and procedures. The category of the ‘UI game’ proposed in the text refers to games that treat the interface not as a transparent frame but as a critical medium and a laboratory for alternative media histories. In contrast to retro games that affirm the aesthetics of obsolete formats, UI games reconfigure their underlying logic of operation, compelling players to confront procedural constraints and system failures. In this sense, Hypnospace Outlaw does not merely evoke the past; it interrogates and tests it, redefining the retro as a speculative practice rather than an exercise in nostalgic recollection.

Key words: Hypnospace Outlaw, interface, retro, hauntology, media archaeology

Bibliography

Daniels, Dieter, Gunther Reisinger, red., Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009.

Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. London: Routledge, 1994.

Dolan, Patrick. „16-bit dissensus: Post-retro aesthetics, hauntology, and the emergency in video games”. Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies 8, 1 (2021).

Dolan, Patrick. Retro Resonance: The hauntological power of post-retro aesthetics in video games [dysertacja doktorska]. Toronto: York University, 2024.

Ernst, Wolfgang. Digital Memory and the Archive. Red. Jussi Parikka. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014.

Fulton, Jeff, Steve Fulton. The Essential Guide to Flash Games: Building Interactive Entertainment with ActionScript. Berkeley: Friends of ED, 2010.

McCrea, Christian. „Gaming’s hauntology: Dead media in dead rising, siren and Michigan: Report from hell”. W: Proceedings of DiGRA 2010: Think Design Play. Utrecht: DiGRA, 2010.

Milligan, Ian. „Welcome to the Web: The online community of GeoCities during the early years of the world wide web”. W: The Web as History, red. Niels Brügger, Ralph Schroeder. London: UCL Press, 2017.

Morrell, Edward. „Player Decentered Design”. Tampere: Tampere University, 2020. https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/121002.

Pias, Claus. „The game player’s duty: The user as the gestalt of the ports”. W: Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, red. Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.11

This article examines Spec Ops: The Line (2012) in the context of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and the evolving conventions of American war cinema. Hauntology is understood here as a conceptual counterpoint to ontology. Central to the analysis is the Derridean spectre: a being suspended between life and death, presence and absence. The author argues that the Vietnam War has assumed such status – it is haunted by the conventions it has generated and continues to haunt the subsequent representations of warfare. Spec Ops consciously engages with this hauntological legacy; it invokes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, while focusing on recontextualisation and deconstruction. It initially adopts the form of a conventional military shooter game, gradually exposing the brutality and moral disintegration inherent in war, alongside the protagonist Martin Walker’s descent into madness as a contemporary analogue of Kurtz. Spec Ops emerges as a critique of American militarism and imperialism. Following its withdrawal from sale in 2024, the game has acquired a spectral status: while absent commercially, it remains present in the journalistic and academic discourse. The article contends that Spec Ops is both haunted by earlier spectres of Vietnam and itself functions as a relational spectre of war in contemporary culture.

Key words: hauntology, war cinema, Vietnam War, game studies, war games

Bibliography

Davis, Colin. „Hauntology, spectres and phantoms”. French Studies 59, 3 (2005).

Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. London: Routledge, 2012.

Eberwein, Robert T. The Hollywood War Film. Red. Barry Keith Grant. Chichester UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Fisher, Mark. „What is hauntology?”. Film Quarterly 66, 1 (2012).

Hellmann, John. American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Lovell, Julia. Maoizm: Historia globalna. Tłum. Filip Majkowski. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2020.

Morwood, Nick. „War crimes, cognitive dissonance and the abject: An analysis of the antiwar wargame Spec Ops: The Line”. Democratic Communiqué 26, 2 (2014).

Murray, Soraya. „Race, gender, and genre in Spec Ops: The Line”. Film Quarterly 70, 2 (2016).

Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Film Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. New York: Random House, 1981.

Smethurst, Tobi. „‘We put our hands on the trigger with him’: Guilt and perpetration in Spec Ops: The Line”. Criticism 59, 2 (2017).

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.12

The image of a mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion has become a fixed element in the social imaginary of war. The moment of detonation frequently serves as the climactic point which film directors build towards, as it most powerfully captures the audience’s imagination. Given this starting point, the article studies how cinematic representations of nuclear apocalypse depict what lies beneath the mushroom cloud and how they render the human body’s response to such explosion. Based on two examples, The Day After Tomorrow (1983, dir. Nicholas Meyer) and Threads (1984, dir. Mick Jackson), the article juxtaposes differing creative perspectives on nuclear catastrophe. It examines whether these representations correspond to facts and whether human bodies are portrayed as subject to processes of adherence or are instead aestheticised in ways designed to make them visually more compelling. Although focused on film representations, the article situates itself within the field of dead body studies. It emphasises the cultural significance of how human remains are depicted in popular culture products that reach mass audiences, exploring how what once belonged to the realm of the living is transformed into a spectre occupying an intermediate zone between presence and absence.

Key words: atomic bomb, film, remains, apocalypse, shadow

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. O przemocy. Nieposłuszeństwo obywatelskie. Tłum. Anna Łagodzka, Wojciech Madej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Aletheia, 1999.

Cordle, Daniel. „‘That’s going to happen to us. It is’: Threads and the imagination of nuclear disaster on 1980s television”. Journal of British Cinema and Television 45, 1 (2013).

Dawkins, Claire. „The pragmatic interplay between media and political policy: An analysis of The Day After and its implications on American cold war nuclear policy and opinion”. Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association 2020, 4 (2021).

Derrida, Jacques. O apokalipsie. Tłum. Iwona Boruszkowska, Krzysztof Wojtasik. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Eperons-Ostrogi, 2018.

Domańska, Ewa. Nekros. Wprowadzenie do ontologii martwego ciała. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2017.

Grudziński, Przemysław. Teologia bomby. Narodziny systemu nuklearnego odstraszania 1939–1953. T. 1. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988.

Łuczak, Dominika. „Ikonologia zdjęć rentgenowskich”. Sztuka i Dokumentacja 14 (2016).

Marzec, Andrzej. Widmontologia. Teoria filozoficzna i praktyka artystyczna ponowoczesności. Warszawa: Fundacja Nowej Kultury Bęc Zmiana, 2015.

Monaco, James. Alain Resnais: The Role of Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Ogonowska, Agnieszka. Tekst filmowy we współczesnym pejzażu kulturowym. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej, 2004.

Overpeck, Deron. „‘Remember! It’s only a movie!’: Expectations and receptions of The Day After (1983)”. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 32, 2 (2012).

Petrie, Jon. „The secular word ‘Holocaust’: Scholarly myths, history, and twentieth century meanings”. Journal of Genocide Research 2, 1 (2000).

Prince, Stephen. Apocalypse Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Shapiro, Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film. New York: Routledge, 1995.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.13

‘Haunted modernity was made by optics,’ writes Marina Warner in Phantasmagoria (2006). According to the British researcher, the modern fascination with ghosts, spirits and the uncanny emerged from developments in optical technologies, which transformed traditional and religiously grounded conceptions of spirits into secular forms of entertainment. The application of new technological discoveries, including increasingly sophisticated optical instruments, proved central to this shift. The work of Richard Mosse, an Irish artist working with photography and video, may be understood as a form of haunted postmodernity. His projects deploy advanced media techniques and optical devices to render Derridean spectres perceptible. In The Enclave, documenting the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Incoming, addressing the refugee crisis; and Broken Spectre, focused on deforestation in the Amazon, Mosse traces, in a subtle yet forceful manner, what remains latent or repressed in contemporary culture and what returns in a striking visual form. Employing Kodak Aerochrome film alongside specially designed thermal and multispectral cameras, Mosse produces images that make visible what dominant social, economic and political narratives tend to obscure or silence. His projects disrupt the habitual modes of perception, cognition and language, dislodging viewers from established interpretative frameworks.

Key words: spectres, photography, video, media, optics

Bibliography

„A conversation between Richard Mosse and Trevor Tweeten”. W: A Supplement to The Enclave, red. John Holten. Berlin: Broken Dimanche Press, 2014.

Cole, Teju. „When the camera was a weapon of imperialism. (And when it still is.)”. The New York Times Magazine, 10 lutego 2019.

Gioni, Massimiliano. The Encyclopedic Palace: 55th International Art Exhibition. La Biennale Di Venezia. T. II. Venice: Marsilio, 2013.

Guadagnini, Walter, Franziska Nori, red., Territori instabili: confini e identità nell’arte contemporanea = Unstable Territory: Borders and identity in contemporary art. Firenze: Mandragora, 2013.

Kermeliotis, Teo. Stunning Congo artwork shows conflict in a different light. CNN, 5 czerwca 2013.

Kopkiewicz, Aldona. „Widmowa teraźniejszość. Rozmowa z Jakubem Momrą i Andrzejem Sosnowskim”. Dwutygodnik.com 179 (2016). https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/6411-widmowa-terazniejszosc.html.

Laporte, Dominique. History of Shit. Tłum. Nadia Benabid, Rodolphe El-Khoury. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.

Moser, Gabrielle. „Chromophobia: Race, colour and visual pleasure in Richard Mosse’s The Enclave”. Prefix Photo 32 (2015).

Sconce, Jeffrey. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

Seymour, Tom. „Richard Mosse – Incoming”. British Journal of Photography, 15 lutego 2017.

Sontag, Susan. O fotografii. Tłum. Sławomir Magala. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Karakter, 2017.

Viveros-Fauné, Christian. „Richard Mosse’s new film portrays the refugee crisis in thermal detail”. artnet, 13 lutego 2017. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/richard-mosse-new-film-barbican-853790.

Warner, Marina. Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Wei, Lilly. „Critic’s pick – Richard Mosse”. Art News, marzec 2014.

Žižek, Slavoj. Przekleństwo fantazji. Tłum. Adam Chmielewski. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo UWr, 2001.

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.14

This article presents a theoretical outline of reflections on the relationship between childhood, media and the category of hauntology, juxtaposing pedagogical concepts with ideas present in contemporary philosophy. It offers an analysis of selected media phenomena, such as fake news and online challenges, from the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology. The focus is on their impact on children’s emotional well-being and sense of security, particularly in triggering and reinforcing fears. The author explores how media create digital spectres of disinformation and anxiety that haunt modern childhood, and how children’s literature can help addressing them. The ambivalent nature of digital environment childhood is highlighted as an important research problem. Which new media content is particularly harmful from the educational perspective? What media mechanisms contribute to children’s fears? What kinds of fear are they? How can children’s literature help reduce them? The text is a qualitative review. The first section introduces the concept of hauntology and its use in media and cultural analysis. The second part examines media spectres as educational challenges affecting children’s mental health. The final section presents selected examples of children’s literature as a prevention tool and emotional support in coping with fears induced by digital content.

Key words: hauntology, media, digital threats, disinformation, children’s literature

Bibliography

Brzostek, Dariusz. „Praktyka grozy i praktyki narracyjne. Creepypasta: niesamowitość (w) sieci”. Literatura Ludowa 3 (2016).

Derrida, Jacques. Widma Marksa. Stan długu, praca żałoby i nowa Międzynarodówka. Tłum. Tomasz Załuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2016.

Forma, Paulina. „Przesunięcie socjalizacyjne dzieci i młodzieży we współczesnej rodzinie polskiej”. Wychowanie w Rodzinie 10, 2 (2014).

Gruszczyńska, Magdalena. „Nowoczesne media w życiu dziecka. Wartość czy zagrożenie?”. Pediatria Polska 91, 2 (2016).

Jakubowski, Witold. „Media i kultura popularna jako obszar studiów nad edukacją”. Studia Edukacyjne 30 (2014).

Jasielska, Aleksandra, Renata A. Maksymiuk. „Wpływ infantylizacji kultury na zmiany w społeczeństwie konsumpcyjnym”. Kultura i Społeczeństwo 54, 2 (2012).

Jędrzejko, Mariusz, Agnieszka Taper. Cyberzaburzenia. Cyberuzależnienia. Warszawa: Von Velke, 2020.

Kałuzińska, Emilia. „Echa socjalizacji medialnej: frazemy telepochodne w wypowiedziach dzieci”. Postscriptum Polonistyczne 13, 1 (2014).

Manovich, Lev. Język nowych mediów. Tłum. Piotr Cypryański. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, 2006.

Marzec, Andrzej. Widmontologia. Teoria filozoficzna i praktyka artystyczna ponowoczesności. Warszawa: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, 2015.

Matyjas, Bożena. „Dziecko i dzieciństwo we współczesnym dyskursie pedagogiki społecznej”. Wychowanie w Rodzinie 27, 2 (2022).

Momro, Jakub. Widmontologie nowoczesności. Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2014.

Selinger, Agnes. Każdy czasem się boi. Jak pomóc dziecku radzić sobie z lękiem i zmartwieniami. Tłum. Agnieszka Cioch. Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Pedagogiczne, 2022.

Siwicki, Marek. Nowe podwórka współczesnego dzieciństwa. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo APS, 2021.

Szymaniak, Jadwiga. „Fake news. Przekłamania i manipulacje zagrożeniem demokracji. Rola szkoły”. Studia Gdańskie. Wizje i Rzeczywistość 16 (2019).

doi.org/10.26112/kw.2026.135.15