Paper short abstract:

How can we think and write about our field-site when its imagined status is hazy or else, risks aligning with violent state practices? How to descend onto it ethically? And what is this ‘it’ anyway? Can spectrality afford some methodological attunements when its uncertain absence haunts us?

Paper long abstract:

“Welcome to Kurdistan!” – “Shish. You’re not in Kurdistan, you’re in Turkey!”

Although it remains an imagined project, defining your field-site is not often as straightforward as it sounds. In the region of Kurdish borderlands, it became a complex issue, historically and affectively charged. Was I in Iraq, KRI, or Bashur? Turkey or Bakur?

Aha! Got it: multi-sited! Nope; not even that seemed appropriate as it risked reproducing state imaginaries. After all, I was working within the ‘Kurdish region.' Already during fieldwork, the question of ‘where am I’ began hunting me. Yet, it quickly became clearer it was not only after me, it was possible it infested every mountain, village, and house I set foot in.

Navigating the methodology of ‘field-siting,’ the paper attempts a preliminary discussion on the notion of spectrality as a frame at the interfaces and interlaces of various imagined territorialities. Problematizing the now omnipresent multi-sited approach, I propose spectrality as a heuristic and possible methodological attunement to situating oneself. Drawing from the masters of hauntology (Derrida, 1993; Good et al., 2022) and the study of the negative (Taussig, 1999; Stoler, 2013; Navaro-Yashin, 2020), how can we approach the imagined life of the ‘field-site’ as a spectral presence, in its affective, ambiguous, and unstable nature? With the help of ‘footage-debris’ and stories collected in the field, this contribution will begin a reflection on the role of spectrality in the scientific prescription of defining ‘your’ field-site.’