Uncanny Optical Hauntology of Photographs and Live TV Transmissions in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire

Kamila ShamsieKamila Shamsie’s Home FireShamsieHome Fire (2017) presents another dimension of the ‘uncanny’—the capacity of photographs to haunt with camera-generated ‘absent-presences’. This chapter will critically analyse the photographs, live coverage, and proliferation of picture sharing on social media in Shamsie’s novel to illustrate the instances of posthumanposthuman uncanny hauntology. I contend that photographs, live transmissions, and social media posts are posthuman photographic ghosts/phantasms/spectres. By applying the three-tiered approach to analyse the hauntology proposed by Clark (International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (4): 602–23, 2018) and the posthuman method of photograph analysis (a combination of the ideas of assemblages, rhizomes, and spacetimemattering) by Varga (International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2022), I demonstrate that family photographs (especially of Adil Pasha, the father of the three main protagonists) unpack the hauntological elements of photographs as well as the hauntedness of the post-9/11 era (a time out of joint) by the spectre of the image of a MuslimMuslim terrorist. Moreover, the spacetimemattering of the photographs and live transmission of Aneeka’s mourning over the dead body of her brother perpetuates the literal and symbolic complex personhood, in/hyper/visibility, and spacetimemattering of the material and discursive subjectivitysubjectivity of a Muslim in the post-9/11 era haunted by the living-dead and absent-presences of a Muslim terrorist. I argue that the material absent-presences (camera-produced images) in this novel amplify the silenced voices of transnational Muslims. PhotographsPhotographs and live TV transmission in this novel augment the corporeality and materiality of Muslim subjects to give them a heightened presence and provide a unique posthuman vantage point to resist the denial of their basic rights.