# Hauntology Special Issue English Abstract v1: Living Remains

本文为研究档案公开版，保留来源版本的论述与限制。公开时间：2026-09-08；不表示已完成同行评审。 本文属于公开研究资料（历史笔记、研究稿或来源记录）：已完成格式、来源限制与重复项筛查，尚未完成逐篇独立事实复核；原文中的解释、候选判断和未确认内容均按其原有限制阅读。

来源版本日期：2026-06-01

证据边界：本页为 T3 英文投稿摘要写作稿，不新增影片事实裁决。电影事实、分段、台词、说话人与声画判断仍以前序 T0/T1 来源页和用户校正为准；本页只处理英文投稿表达、问题设定和理论贡献。

# Hauntology Special Issue English Abstract v1: Living Remains

## Recommended Title

```text
Before Death, After Visibility:
Living Remains, Hauntology, and Pre-Mortem Afterlife in Shoot Self with You
```

Alternative title:

```text
Preservation Is Not Possession:
Hauntology, Living Remains, and the Ethics of Visibility in Shoot Self with You
```

## English Abstract / Proposal v1

Hauntology is often approached from the side of what comes after death: the dead, the past, and the unfinished event return as shadows, remainders, debts, or voices that disturb the present. This article asks whether hauntology can also describe a condition that begins before biological death: the conversion of living persons and ongoing events into witnessable, preservable, repeatable, yet unpossessed remains.

The article examines *Shoot Self with You*, a 156-minute Chinese experimental feature and performance-film. The film does not represent ghosts in any conventional sense, nor does it enter death studies through death scenes, funerary rituals, or mourning narratives. Rather, it stages a more difficult question: how does a living person become a remainder? An opening declaration of intimacy is carried away from a two-person relation by camera movement, space, and the presence of others; rehearsal failures and unfinished versions repeatedly return instead of being discarded; when language can no longer prove relation, beds, water, white light, bodies, dreams, and everyday objects begin to act as provisional witnesses; in the public performance, blankness, refusal, staring, skipping, the desire not to be seen, and delegated speech cease to belong only to private interiority and become living residues held by spectators, materials, procedures, and other voices; finally, backstage sound, names, thanks, institutional marks, black screen, and silence turn the event into an afterlife while refusing to let preservation become possession.

Methodologically, the article does not search for apparitions. It reads haunting through shifts in the ownership of appearance, speech, silence, refusal, ending, and remains. I argue that *Shoot Self with You* shifts hauntology from the return of the dead to the ghosting of the living. The ghost here is not an invisible deceased figure, but a living subject who becomes over-visible yet still unpossessed. For death studies, the film offers a theory of pre-mortem afterlife: practices usually associated with posthumous existence, such as witnessing, naming, preserving, repeating, commemorating, and leaving remains, can begin before biological death.

The article does not equate visibility with death, nor does it claim that every visible subject is ghostly. Rather, ghostliness emerges when living appearance, speech, silence, and ending continue as remains beyond the subject's control. The film's final ethical claim is therefore not that everything should be preserved, but that preservation must reach its own limit. To be seen is not to be understood; to be recorded is not to be owned. Preservation is not possession.

## Short Version

This article examines *Shoot Self with You*, a 156-minute Chinese experimental feature and performance-film, as a case for rethinking hauntology and death studies before biological death. Rather than representing ghosts, death scenes, or mourning rituals, the film asks how a living person becomes a remainder: how appearance, speech, blankness, refusal, public witnessing, backstage sound, names, thanks, and silence turn living events into traces that can be preserved but not possessed.

Methodologically, the article reads haunting not through apparitions, but through shifts in the ownership of appearance, speech, silence, ending, and remains. It follows an opening declaration of intimacy carried away by the camera, rehearsal failures that return as unfinished versions, public moments in which blankness and the desire not to be seen become shared residues, and a closing movement of backstage voices, names, gratitude, black screen, and silence.

I argue that the film shifts hauntology from the return of the dead to the ghosting of the living. For death studies, it offers a theory of pre-mortem afterlife: witnessing, naming, preserving, repeating, and leaving remains can begin before death. Preservation, the film insists, is not possession.

## Keywords

```text
Shoot Self with You; Human Surrender; hauntology; death studies; living remains; pre-mortem afterlife; visibility; performance-film; preservation ethics
```

## Submission Note

The safest English phrase for the core concept is:

```text
living remains
```

Use `ghosting of the living` as the hauntological intervention, not as the only title concept. This lowers the risk of making hauntology seem merely metaphorical while keeping the article's theoretical force.

Avoid making `surrender` the main abstract keyword unless the article includes a clear sentence:

```text
Surrender here does not mean submission to another person, but the collapse of the fantasy that the self can sovereignly own its visibility, speech, memory, and afterlife.
```