Haunting stories of abuse: revealing ghosts through critical performance ethnography

This project explores what it means to be haunted by a history of abuse. Through critical performance ethnography I explore the incommunicability of intimate abuse. In an effort to make meaning out of these acts, we work to label past experiences and place them into an easily explainable context. In so doing, many mundane acts of abuse might not be viewed as legitimate by the people who experienced these acts of abuse. This project employed a performance centered research method. A staged performance was created that juxtaposed ethnographic research, theories of victimization, memory, and haunting, and a traditional ghost story. This opened up conversations of how histories of abuse continue to effect people long after the physical abuse stops. This analysis suggests that focusing on the relationship aspect of intimate abuse offers methods of praxis that are absent when our focus rests on labels