In this article, I explore some of the material aspects of the technological underground landscape of the Prague metro, the building of which started during socialism and has continued until the present. The materiality of the older parts of the metro is informed by and shaped according to a particular socialist world view. Since then, the metro has been reshaped not only ideologically, but also aesthetically and materially. The remnants of the socialist past as well as other agents of potential disturbance have either been expelled or made invisible. Nevertheless, the past remains rooted in the materiality of absence, continues its presence in the metro of today, and disturbs the experience of its smooth surface. The juxtaposition of what is absent with what is present also gives rise to ghostly figures, namely those feeding on contemporary anxiety of disturbance, potentially shattering the existence of the otherwise technologically perfect and unambiguous underground transport system. Concentrating on the affect of the metro's material absences manifested in diverse ghostly figures allows me not only to overcome the view of the metro as a fixed, planned, ideological and technological space, but also to approach it in terms of its actual presence. Drawing on Vidler, I understand ghostly figures to be representations of the uncanny moment of a sudden view behind the ordinary appearance of the metro. Referring to Lefebvre's notion of difference, I link the absences to the metro's rhythmicality. I argue that ghosts resist annihilation because they are manifestations of difference within a rhythmic landscape. They are the results of the workings of the absences that form an inseparable part of the metro; the absences inform the rhythm as well as nurture the uncanny.
