A ghost ethnography amidst violence: The researcherʼs body as a sensing agent

In this paper, following the Russian occupation of Crimea in March 2014, I present an analysis of the peninsulaʼs wounded semiotic landscapes and develop an approach of ghost ethnography . Building on my ethnographic fieldwork in the region back in 2017 and 2019—after Qırım-Crimeaʼs annexation but before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine—I trace the signs of massive ideological transformation but also instances of erasure that followed as Russia deprived its public spaces of the Ukrainian present. By introducing an ethnographic vignette from the field and discussing previous research on absence, place, and affect, I develop an approach to study vibrant voids , affectively charged and haunting traces of violence. Combined with photographs of the semiotic landscapes, residentsʼ insights, and the researcherʼs fieldnote observations, an ethnography of ghosts centres the researcherʼs body that not only records and notices, but also senses the ghosts that outlive vehement acts. In this way, approaching the researcherʼs body as a sensing agent that facilitates ways of knowing in settings where violence enacts absences, a ghost ethnography grasps the phenomena that seem missing, thus shedding light on knowledges that otherwise remain in the shadows. • An ethnography of ghosts centres the researcher's body that senses ‘absent presences’ that outlive vehement acts. • To ‘matter the spectre’ through the body means to unsettle fixed ontologies of visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. • Centring the researcher's body in studies of violence means attuning to the language of haunting.