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This dissertation argues for the importance of the concept of haunting in understanding the novels of John Edgar Wideman that chronicle African American city life in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at the end of the twentieth century. It analyzes the novels The Homewood Books (1981-1983), Philadelphia Fire (1990), and Two Cities (1998) for the manner in which haunting interrupts a straightforward, “realist,” approach to this topic. My findings are that Wideman proceeded through the use of a fragmented chronological style, through surreal scenes in which characters encounter ghosts, and through philosophical digressions that haunting inspires, digressions in which both characters and author try to make sense and narrative out of the ambiguity that the specter and its effects—distorted times, spaces, and concepts—leave in its wake. My analyses, whose theoretical foundations are found in the work of Jacques Derrida and Avery Gordon, among others, show that Wideman makes the idea of haunting register on a variety of scales in his work, to combine into narratives the ways in which life in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia can be both horrifying and contradictory; to demonstrate the ways in which history bleeds into the present and jeopardizes an emancipated future; and to maintain a sense of political mission—all of which in the context of the fraught issue of writing about African American urban communities that presented itself in this period. ; Diese Dissertation argumentiert, dass das philosophische Konzept ‚Haunting’ eine wichtige Perspektive auf die Romane von John Edgar Wideman bietet, insbesondere jene, die das Afroamerikanische Stadtleben in Pittsburgh und Philadelphia am Ende des zwanzigste Jahrhundert beschreiben. Die Dissertation analysiert die Romane The Homewood Books (1981-1983), Philadelphia Fire (1990), und Two Cities (1998) und fragt danach, wie ‚Haunting’ das realistisches Erzählen unterbricht. Meine Arbeit zeigt, dass Wideman versucht, diese Unterbrechungen realistischen Erzählens durch die Nutzung eines ...
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