PhD Thesis by Carrie Clanton
This thesis presents my study of “ghosthunting”—the practice of attempting to capture ghosts, pri... more This thesis presents my study of “ghosthunting”—the practice of attempting to capture ghosts, primarily using cameras and audio recorders—as a metaphorical device for the use of audio-visual media within anthropology. I conducted fieldwork with ghosthunters, paying particular attention to their attendant audio-visual media practices and outputs, in order to redress the reluctance of anthropology to a) evaluate audio and visual media as mechanisms for producing anthropological critique—although some anthropologists have taken pains to do that with writing—and b) to understand the particular "haunted" history of audio-visual media as being related to critical anthropological concerns such as representation, time, and the other.
The history of the use of audio-visual media within ghosthunting follows a similar trajectory to that of anthropology, and the resultant methodologies and outputs of both disciplines function in ways that are less inclined towards discursive “speaking with others” than they are towards attempting to produce demystified representations of others. Neither practice has, in contemporary times, acknowledged the historical connection of audio-visual media to the supernatural, nor its capacity to deal with the uncanny as a critical provocation.
My study of ghosthunters shows that despite attempts to reify ghosts via photography, audio, and film, those media are themselves devices that maintain the uncanny as an ethical injunction towards the other—whether as ghosts or as the cultural “other” of anthropological critique. An acknowledgement of the “haunted” origins and capacities of media allows for ethical engagements with anthropological others, ultimately suggesting critical media methodologies for anthropology that, while informed by anthropology’s “crisis of representation,” radically differ from written ethnography. Viewing the relationship of media and anthropology through the lens of Derrida’s hauntology is a useful framework for thinking about media methodologies that can stand as critique.
Book Chapter by Carrie Clanton
Inbetween Fiction and Non-Fiction: Reflections on the Poetics of Ethnography in Literature and Film in the Formation of World Society. Ed Michelangelo Paganapoulous. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018
To the uninitiated, traditional ethnographic texts and films can seem like dream worlds—phantom r... more To the uninitiated, traditional ethnographic texts and films can seem like dream worlds—phantom realities that, in their unmediated (or sometimes over-mediated) state induce uncanniness like fantastic poetry; likewise, they can induce boredom. James Clifford’s (1997) celebration of the relationship between cultural representation and the uncanny, and of the unintentional surrealism inherent in contemporary anthropological outputs, underlines that the uncanny is a provocative and potentially critical aspect of representation. What can the concept of hauntology—the deconstructive provocation inherent to ghosts--tell us about representing the uncanny, whether in the form of the spectral, or as the generalised cultural experience of “otherness”? Clifford describes how the clips and sutures apparent in the construction of any ethnography are what constitute its capacity to stand as critique: the process is on view with the author fully implicated in the building of the cultural representation. But as John Hutnyk (2004: 32) has asked of Clifford’s lauding of collage, “how useful are even ‘historical and political’ [Clifford 1997: 3] juxtapositions without thinking politically about what to do with them?” A true provocation—a critically evocative representation that acknowledges the Levinasian other–is defined by the example of hauntology. Admitting the ghost-like properties inherent to anthropological writing--and more recently to filmmaking (keeping in mind that media itself is uncanny, with its ability to produce doubles, to freeze time, to produce digital recordings capable of endlessly repeating) is a starting point for thinking through new ethnographic possibilities. With the uncanny there is no discernable origin; unlike things may be put together and juxtaposed, but the uncanny effect comes not from any obvious sutures of the assemblage, but from the “secrecy” and “unknowability” of this representation as a complete and mysterious whole, even as it may evoke something familiar or nostalgic as it debuts. Categories then fall by the wayside, with this new representation standing, like a ghost, as something indefinable and challenging, but ultimately representing responsibility towards the other as that which defines the self.
Conference Presentations by Carrie Clanton
ASA Conference: Thinking Through Tourism, 2007
The U.K. is at present steeped in practices relating to the spiritual in the form of ghosts. From... more The U.K. is at present steeped in practices relating to the spiritual in the form of ghosts. From television channels saturated with programmes seeking the UK’s most haunted locations, to the popularity of contacting dead relatives through celebrity mediums to the ghost walks on offer in many towns promoting themselves as tourist destinations, people are engaging with the dead in ways that implicate both personal and collective history and heritage. In this paper, I focus on the ways in which ghosts are utilised in a secular way by the British tourist and heritage industries, supporting claims of historical authenticity and the right to heritage status, while simultaneously offering tourists and locals the chance to consume the exotic at home through time, rather than
via travel over distances to other locales.
Timecode: Hauntology 20 Years On, 2013
Contemporary ghosthunters have attempted to reveal and resolve the secret of the ghost--usually t... more Contemporary ghosthunters have attempted to reveal and resolve the secret of the ghost--usually through digital photographic archives--rather than uphold the experience of secrecy itself (to paraphrase Colin Davis’s description of Derrida’s hauntology). In the sonic realm, however, ghosts are maintained. Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) is the sound recording of apparently empty spaces that reveals, often through digital manipulation, the garbled sounds of voices assumed to be of the dead, and certainly the transcribed samples are cryptically poetic. EVP raises questions about the related representational acts of speech, transmission, and translation, and the provocative possibilities of recording, remixing, and sampling. Is EVP an accidental uncanny practice, a modern day surrealist exquisite corpse? With the uncanny there is no discernable origin; unlike things may be put together and juxtaposed, but the uncanny effect comes not from any obvious sutures of the assemblage, but from the “secrecy” and “unknowability” of this representation as a complete and mysterious whole, even as it may evoke something familiar or nostalgic as it debuts. “Maintaining now the spectres of Marx”—this may be read not as a rumination but as a call to a media-methodological revolution, an injunction to maintain through practice the experience of secrecy that the uncanny provides.
Journal Articles by Carrie Clanton
Stimulus Respond Issue 1: Magic, 2007
Many Cinemas, Issue 3, 2012
Cinema is an intrinsically ghostly medium, its narratives conjuring other times and places. But a... more Cinema is an intrinsically ghostly medium, its narratives conjuring other times and places. But all media may be said to be “hauntological” in nature, entailing chronological and spatial disruptions that technologically produce a sense of the uncanny. Beyond the séance-room of the cinema, other hauntological representations such as dub and electronic music constitute politically and culturally deconstructive media projects.
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PhD Thesis by Carrie Clanton
The history of the use of audio-visual media within ghosthunting follows a similar trajectory to that of anthropology, and the resultant methodologies and outputs of both disciplines function in ways that are less inclined towards discursive “speaking with others” than they are towards attempting to produce demystified representations of others. Neither practice has, in contemporary times, acknowledged the historical connection of audio-visual media to the supernatural, nor its capacity to deal with the uncanny as a critical provocation.
My study of ghosthunters shows that despite attempts to reify ghosts via photography, audio, and film, those media are themselves devices that maintain the uncanny as an ethical injunction towards the other—whether as ghosts or as the cultural “other” of anthropological critique. An acknowledgement of the “haunted” origins and capacities of media allows for ethical engagements with anthropological others, ultimately suggesting critical media methodologies for anthropology that, while informed by anthropology’s “crisis of representation,” radically differ from written ethnography. Viewing the relationship of media and anthropology through the lens of Derrida’s hauntology is a useful framework for thinking about media methodologies that can stand as critique.
Book Chapter by Carrie Clanton
Conference Presentations by Carrie Clanton
via travel over distances to other locales.
Journal Articles by Carrie Clanton
The history of the use of audio-visual media within ghosthunting follows a similar trajectory to that of anthropology, and the resultant methodologies and outputs of both disciplines function in ways that are less inclined towards discursive “speaking with others” than they are towards attempting to produce demystified representations of others. Neither practice has, in contemporary times, acknowledged the historical connection of audio-visual media to the supernatural, nor its capacity to deal with the uncanny as a critical provocation.
My study of ghosthunters shows that despite attempts to reify ghosts via photography, audio, and film, those media are themselves devices that maintain the uncanny as an ethical injunction towards the other—whether as ghosts or as the cultural “other” of anthropological critique. An acknowledgement of the “haunted” origins and capacities of media allows for ethical engagements with anthropological others, ultimately suggesting critical media methodologies for anthropology that, while informed by anthropology’s “crisis of representation,” radically differ from written ethnography. Viewing the relationship of media and anthropology through the lens of Derrida’s hauntology is a useful framework for thinking about media methodologies that can stand as critique.
via travel over distances to other locales.