On the Possibility of Spectral Ethnography

Abstract

This article reflects on the possibility of engaging in a kind of ethnography of absence, an anthropology of people, and places and things that have been removed, deleted, and abandoned to the flows of time and space. Here, the author suggests a mode of ethnographic inquiry that performs an archaeology of the emptied present and of the vacant spaces of culture. Using recent ethnographic fieldwork in the North American High Plains as the basis of his analysis, the author seeks to reimagine his own ethnographic practices in the context of these hollowed-out and spectrally resonant spaces of culture. What significance can be drawn from the multiple layers of time and materiality that have accumulated in these places and what type of haunted narratives can emerge from the discarded remnants of human occupation? How can ethnography excavate the lives-once-lived from the space of abandonment?