Notes toward a methodology of haunting

This article considers the methodological implications of Avery Gordon's work on haunting for the field of memory studies. Like Gordon, we take issue with forms of positivist social-scientific research which fail to even acknowledge (let alone reckon with) ghosts. Specifically, we emphasize how these methodological orientations to research and knowledge production are thoroughly ensconced in Euro-western knowledge paradigms that rationalize colonialism. To do so, we draw on Indigenous studies scholars, many of whom have themselves expanded Gordon's approach to haunting. By bringing insights about haunting as a methodology to bear on the field of memory studies, we aim to provoke a wider conversation about haunting's usefulness, including its risks and limitations, as an approach to producing knowledge about violent pasts and their durability in the present.