This article proposes a new, critical methodological framework aiming to unearth hidden, forgotten or banished issues in research using feminist theory, such as criminology and sociology, synthesising feminist theory and hauntology. By developing a framework for “speaking with ghosts”, we provide concrete tools to theoretically interrogate feminist issues of the past, present and future using a lens of archetypical imagery in order to prompt ethical as well as political critique. The framework is illustrated by unearthing gendered and feminist spectres of three photographs taken by young women in a recent photovoice study exploring everyday violence among youth. By applying the framework on the photographs, drawing on conceptual metaphors of both the spectral and of fairytales, which are always and already important sites of feminism, the study unpacks how spectres relating to heteropatriarchy and gendered power orders still haunt the everyday lives of young people and how the use of a feminist hauntology can provide potential for ethical, social and political change. Unlike previous consolidations of feminism and hauntology, this methodological framework is designed to promote political, ethical and social change as well as critique by delineating concrete ways of teasing out the feminist spectral in late modern texts, thus going beyond previous engagements with the spectral.
Skott et al. (Tue,) studied this question.