Performative Ontology at Contemporary Haunted Locations

Performative Ontology at Contemporary Haunted Locations John G. Sabol I.P.E. Research Center Bedford, Pa. (USA) October 2024 The past is past, yet it may leave ‘signature traces’ beyond the vistas of material memory. What else may remain in fields of memory? Indigenous peoples around the world believe in the existence of a past and present ‘lived’ and conserved continuum. Such an idea collapses the distinction between the past and the present, between presence and absence, and the surface and sub-surface remains of that presence. Is that sub-surface presence still ‘active, becoming a hidden dimension of what becomes present on the surface of those sites considered ‘haunted’? Does a human ‘haunting’ cultural performance remain present horizontally across the landscape and vertically in layers of time, memory and order? This possible presence may illustrate the impact a particular location has had on past lives and worlds in the form of a “relationship of proximity maintained regarding places, objects, ways of life or practices that are still ours and still nourish our collective identity” (Olivier 2011: 275)? If so, then the investigation of these locations must focus ‘stratigraphically’ toward the surface from the subsurface layers of presence. Today, many contemporary haunted sites are in various stages of ruination. In these places, the past is “a ghostly surface…now walked beneath rather than upon, a faint topography animated by a life that was supported now only by their memories” (Byrne 2007: 117) of past performances in certain tasks, situations, and social habits. The possible existence of these traces may represent layers of “the latest occupation of a location at which other occupations-their architectures, material traces and histories- are still apparent and cognitively active” (Pearson 2010: 35); and these become particular signature traces, as “these marks we make, these traces we leave, are ineffably archaeological” (Ibid: 43). In these traces of human ‘signatures’, Mike Pearson (2006), a leading theatre artist, archaeologist, and performance studies scholar, proposed the following question: “can we discern the movements, moments and encounters involved in their making, a forensics of the everyday: maps of practices and behaviors? (2006: 41). As he further suggests, “the relationship between material culture and human behavior, this archaeology inevitably concerns aspects of activity and experience…it might make present absence, indicating the traces of those departed or who live a life of a different timetable” (Ibid: 41-42). If phenomena are produced and, in the setting of a haunted place, reproduced through the continuation of particular practices, do these performances show how contemporary manifesting sensory modalities at a ‘haunted’ location become what they are (as ‘experienced’ and/or ‘recorded) in and thru past performed relations with specific object use on the surface of the present? Do such materializations occur in particular spaces where they were once enacted in the past, now becoming a representation of the ‘other’ within layers of socio-temporal order and memory of site occupation? Could this possibility of presence and performance be considered a ‘haunted taskscape space’? Does this performative-based framework at a haunted site represent what has been called ‘performance ontology’ (cf. Halse and Clark 2008), as a way of viewing haunted locations? Does this ‘performance ontology’ permit a conscious and empathetic way of viewing haunt phenomena at these locations that is different from the ‘usual suspect’ of ‘paranormal phenomena’? Could this ‘haunted taskscape space”, then, indicate ‘who’ may remain at these haunted locations is a human cultural ‘participant’, one who is still performing a series of specific activities in particular spaces that are “retentions from the past, as experience and memory” (Pearson 2006: 219)? Is this ‘performance-as-taskscape’ an example of a ‘performance ontology’ that may be occurring at these haunted sites? Does this perspective improve the efficacy of fieldwork at these locations, many of which are now in contemporary ruin, by conceiving of ‘haunting’ as a re-production of past human cultural performance, one that suggests an ethnographically-experienced practice that still remains at these locations; and can these ‘materializations’ be a form of continuing past practices as ‘memory activation’, a process of becoming present in the present? What is haunting many contemporary haunted locations may be worlds of localized performance practices, within layers of socio-temporal order at the site that continue to remain largely a ‘buried’ past because of fieldwork at these locations that ‘pass over’ the possible existence of these traces. Do they merely remain an absence of lives on the surface, relegated as the phenomena of ‘shadow people’ by paranormal investigators? A haunting is not simply a ‘ghost story’, a narrative whose meaning anyone can imagine and respond to. At these locations, there is also a sense to maintain a scholarly or scientific distance from what is occurring there. Mostly, these traces of potential past practices are suppressed by academic censorship or skeptical inquiry. This commonality of explanation at these sites ‘perceived’ to be haunted creates a ‘structure of forgetting’ rather than an investigative practices thru remembrance. Also, contemporary paranormal investigations continually walk thru these haunted locations on the surface, largely ignoring the context of the surfaces below which may contain layers of fields of conserved performances, experiences, and memories of prior occupational histories of the location and the ‘after-effects’ of those layered occupations. Can we make a new sense of ongoing presence come out of these haunted locations, one based on this ‘performance ontology’? One practice-based approach that we have utilized at haunted sites is what I have called ‘performance excavation” (cf. Sabol 2013; 2014; 2016; 2020; and 2021). ). A ‘performance excavation’ consists of a contemporary practice-based approach that combines social, material (objects), memory, spacial functionality, and task elements in a designed re-constructed ‘stage’. This ‘staged’ setting is structured that is based on an archaeological sensitivity to context-specific ‘material memory’ and an archaeological sensibility toward ‘performatively excavating’ within occupational site layers of socio-temporal order. The use of context-specific objects in the ‘excavation’ process is critical. These are objects that were once in use within a particular layer of sociotemporal order and memory. They act as “a mnemonic to reactivate the presence of a known individual” (Meskell 2004: 81) or group in a particular task performance and appropriate space. The ’excavation’ process is meant to produce a ‘becoming present’ (on the surface) of a ‘life after’ of context-specific performance practices, individual participants, use of particular objects and tools, and contextspecific sensorial domain effects that may be re-creating an affective ‘afterlife’ in a particular individual/object’s biographical history, one cued to the particular dimension (layer and use) of order and memory through time (cf. Meskell 2004: 7). Archaeologist Julian Thomas (2004) has maintained that archaeology’s ethical task is to “bear witness to the past other” (2008: 238). Could we include a performance-based ‘phantom past-presence present’ within that designated ‘other’? And could these haunted locations be situated in still ‘buried’ layers of vertical surfaces, representing past order and fields of memory practices? To understand a haunted location, then, I propose is to undertake an archaeological approach to ‘buried’ layers of presence in an “attempt to understand how and why it was all put together” (Byrne 2007: 11) in the first place within layers of socio-temporal order at the location. In order to understand the significance and context of these ‘haunting’ layers, one must performatively ‘excavate’ the site through a ‘stratigraphic inversion’: a still ‘active’ vertical surface becoming present thru a ‘performance excavation’ within each of these layers of sociotemporal order. This becomes a presence analyzed from the subsurface toward the surface within fields of conserved performative memories. Such a practice-based approach can produce, I suggest, a relevant contribution toward a reflexive design in fieldwork performance that is specifically directed towards these possible conserved fields of memory at a haunted location. Pickering (1995) has suggested a “performance idiom” for the study of scientific practice, articulating a new focus toward the production of scientific facts. I am suggesting in this short article that this ‘performance idiom’, can be used within a concept of ‘performance ontology’, one enacted through context-specific investigative performance practices in particular spaces at the haunted location, as a ‘performance excavation; and that it can allow haunt phenomena to come into being as a resonant experience, responding to contemporary context-specific performances in fields of memory between past and present resonant practices. Materializations that may occur during the ‘performance excavation’ would create a relationality in field design that would link contemporary investigative ‘memory activism’ performance and past fields of memory, manifesting (in response) as a form of ‘memory activation’. And this would occur by constituting each other through remembrance as a context-specific ‘performance idiom’ mediation. The use of a ‘performative ontology’ at the haunted site contrasts sharply, in both the meaning and interpretation of haunt phenomena, with that enacted at these locations thru para-investigative technological use in data acquisition. This tech use by contemporary paranormal investigators is meant to bring scientific order to haunting ‘disorder’. But these: “technologies cannot in any simple way be defined by their mere functional properties; technologies become what they are through the particular ways they are contextualized in various changing patterns of use and abuse…” (Halse and Clark 2008: 133). The question regarding ‘use’ or ‘abuse’ is this: do contemporary technologies at a haunted location, as a performed investigative practice, really a form of context-specific re-patterning of past performed sociotemporal practices at site? or are they in reality a contemporary ‘abuse’ of these technological tools in the name of a ‘scientific’ approach? Do they really bring ‘order’ to human cultural haunting ‘performance’ that provides meaning to what is actually occurring at site? Does the result of these tech-driven ‘para-histories’ really result in contemporary human haunting reality? In contrast, thinking in terms of a ‘performative ontology’, Halse and Clark (2008) have suggested that this “has proven productive for the …questioning of apparent identities, [and] claims to authenticity (2008: 133). So, what is really important in a haunted site investigation? Is it determining the environmental conditions that may (or may not) produce an ‘eerie’ or ‘uncanny feeling’, which may be directly related (or not) to an actual ‘haunting’, or is it determining ‘who’ may actually be doing the haunting, through the continuation of a specific performance practice, and ‘why’ it may still be occurring in a particular contemporary space? Human cultural performance and production is, unlike tech ‘performance’, a contextual class of behaviors and practices that are involved in a specific situation, event, or even social habit. It is something that is consciously arranged, executed, and experienced, and which may be remembered at a haunted location. A performance practice is meant to achieve a specific outcome of a particular past task that continues to be remembered and further executed within a particular layer of sociotemporal order that is continuing at the haunted location. If a haunting is the actual lived memory of practices of past people at site, then this performance perspective can show how a haunting illustrates how humans once constructed their lives and identities, and performed in particular spaces and specific situations. In a similar way, the haunting, if it is a human-based phenomena, should be reenacted (re-produced) doing those same performance patterns at the haunted location that were similarly enacted there in the past in those same spaces. ’Performance ontology’ is a way from the past towards the present that outlines a particular social script of acts in particular spaces that may be remembered. This situates haunt phenomena as a form of past human socio-cultural practice and memory. The haunting becomes a testimony to the conservation of past memories as a form, I propose, of intangible cultural heritage, rather than a ‘paranormal’ or ‘supernatural’ event. The ’performance excavation’ is a designed space that attempts to ‘excavate’ these normal practices of a given layer of socio-temporal order at site, and document what those practices have become today at the haunted location (fragmented, trace signatures). This type of investigative, practice-based fieldwork is not about entertainment, a means to provide a cheap thrill, or accommodate a particular social media platform. It is about generating new ways to perceive ‘human presence as socio-cultural performance’ at a haunted location. The ‘performance excavation’ is meant to alter the contemporary behavior and use of ‘investigative’ practices through a performatively ‘excavating’ process of ‘recovery’ of the continuation of past layers of memory. It is to come to know a ‘haunting’ as a form of past cultural production, an empathetic and embodied engagement of other ways of knowing a haunting. If the role of ethnography is to map ‘existing’ practices, and the role of archaeology is to determine all that remains of the past (multiple pasts) in the present, then an ethno-archaeological approach as a practice-based ‘performance excavation’ thinking in terms of a ‘performative ontology’ as a baseline, may be a useful and important consideration of what ‘existing’ practices (as a ‘haunting’) still remain at site. A haunting, rather than being something considered ‘paranormal’, may simply be about understanding the important role of past performance practices, and using this performance connection to what is already there in layers of site occupational order and memory. The ‘performance excavation’ is a means to foster identity and agency between the ontology of past occupational layers at the haunted site and connect that with the here and now of presence (in all its materializations): what is still being remembered and practiced in acts of memory. It is up to skilled (and artistic) fieldworkers to perform in resonant fashion in enabling those past practices to become present again, if they remain conserved and remembered, and to become context-specific experiences and documentation in the contemporary setting. The present will soon be past. What ‘signature traces’ will remain in the future at these haunted locations? ‘Who’ will remain, and ‘what’ will these remains be? Mike Pearson (2010) has said: “Our physical contact constitutes an ongoing archaeological record…[forming] complex stratigraphies…lurking in the domestic and the ordinary…’an archaeology of us’” (2010: 43). But whose ‘archaeology of us’ will it be in the future at these haunted locations? Will it become merely ‘para-investigative’ signature traces, especially at those locations considered today ‘para-sites’? or will it remain the continuing presence of layers of past socio-temporal order and memory of those who once ‘lived’ and occupied that location in multiple past worlds and cultures? It matters what occurs at these haunted sites in the present in the form of investigative performance. This is because those performances can produce effects, what is experienced from the past-present in the future, and what remains of this contemporary present, as a ‘para-investigative site’. Bibliography Byrne, Denis. 2007. Surface Collection: Archaeological Travels in Southeast Asia. Lanham, Md: Alta Mira Press. Halse, J. and B. Clark. 2008. Ethnography. EPIC: 128-45. Design Rituals and Performative Meskell, Lynn. 2004. Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Berg. Olivier, Laurent. 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and Memory. Lanham, Md: Alta Mira Press. 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