Contemporary digital culture, exemplified by YouTube, represents phonocentrism's most extreme and paradoxical manifestation. YouTube appears to fulfill the ancient dream of immediate, present speech—faces speaking directly to us, creating illusions of spontaneity, intimacy, and unmediated communication. Yet this digital speech lacks entirely the philosophical justification that once grounded the preference for oral dialogue.

The concept of hauntology (hantologie) was introduced by Jacques Derrida in his now well-known book Specters of Marx (1993). Derrida conceived hauntology as a way to explain the return of the past, of lost futures, the ghostly traces that refuse to vanish, and the impossibility of a pure, self-contained “now.”

Although Pussy Riot are no PFLP and their performances operate in a distinctly different register, their cathedral action was primarily political in intent rather than focused on artistic innovation.