Bonus: Haunting with Kathryn Gillespie

Claudia talks with Kathryn Gillespie about “haunting” as a way to notice how harm and care shape everyday human–animal relationships. They discuss everything, from feeding urban crows to grieving orcas and lab beagles learning what grass feels like. They consider the role of attentiveness in relations with animals and ask what becomes visible when we stop treating violence as background noise.

Date Recorded: 1 April 2026

Kathryn Gillespie, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and educator dedicated to understanding the relationships of harm and care humans have with other animals. Her work invites readers to reflect on their own connections and disconnections with animals and the natural work and imagine a path to gentler futures. She is the author of The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves and The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She lives at the end of the world with a wonderful human, three senior rescue horses, and a donkey with a big personality.  Learn more about Kathryn via her website. 

Featured: 

• The Sound of Feathers by Kathryn Gillespie 
• The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie
• The afterlives of the lively commodity by Kathryn Gillespie 
• Playing Possum by Susana Monsó
• Animals and the Right to Politics by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka 
• Ghostly Matters by Avery F. Gordon
• The Spectralities Reader edited by Maria del Pilar Blanco  and Esther Peeren 
• How to do nothing by Jenny Odell

Other Episodes of The Animal Turn

• S2E5 - Intimate Geography with Kathryn Gillespie

Quote: 

“Haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with (slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is denied (as in free labor or national security). Haunting is not the same as being exploited, traumatized, or oppressed, although it usually involves these experiences or is produced by them. What's distinctive about haunting is that it is an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known, sometimes very directly, sometimes more obliquely. I used the term haunting to describe those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done-with comes alive, when what's been in your blind spot comes into view. Haunting raises specters, and it alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future. These specters or ghosts appear when the trouble they represent and symptomize is no longer being contained or repressed or blocked from view. The ghost, as I understand it, is not the invisible or some ineffable excess. The whole essence, if you can use that word, of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demands its due, your attention. Haunting and the appearance of specters or ghosts is one way, I tried to suggest, we are notified that what's been concealed is very much alive and present, interfering precisely with those always incomplete forms of containment and repression ceaselessly directed toward us. From Ghostly Matters (page xvi).

The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, LinkedIn,Blue Sky, and Instagram

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder. 

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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Transcript

Siobhan O'Sullivan 0:00

This is another iROAR podcast.

Kathryn Gillespie 0:04

We're haunted in the present by the past, but also by the present. And so all those sort of invisible structures that are, you know, conditioning us into often fraught relationships of harm and violence, attending to those and the and the those like kind of haunting the yeah, that like haunting element in the present can I think be really like power, you know, powerful as a as a different way of knowing, and then also thinking about sort of what's to come. So there's then haunting in the past, haunting in the present by the past and by the present, and then could think about future hauntings.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 0:55

Welcome back to the Animal Tone Podcast, everyone. In this bonus episode, I'm speaking to probably one of my favorite people to speak to on the show because somehow we almost always end up in giggles and talking about bad TV shows. To be fair, it only comes later on in the episode, but we do do it, and that's Catherine Gillespie. Catherine Gillespie has been on the show before where we spoke a bit about intimate geographies a good couple of years ago now. And in today's episode, we talk about the idea of haunting. Haunting is a fascinating and interesting concept, and I find that the more myself and Katie spoke about the concept, almost workshop the concept over the course of this interview, the more useful and powerful I've found it to be. So I myself am very excited to do more reading on the idea of haunting in general, for thinking about my scholarship and the relationship between animals who live today and animals who have once lived and who will live in the future. And I hope you find it as generative and as interesting a conversation as I did. Before we get to it, let me tell you a little bit about Catherine Gillespie. She is a writer, researcher, and educator dedicated to understanding the relationships of harm and care humans have with other animals. Her work invites readers to reflect on their own connections and disconnections with animals and the natural world, as well as to imagine a path to gentler futures. She is the author of The Sound of Feathers, Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves, which is our focus of the episode today, as well as The Cow with Eartag 1389. It's a brilliant, brilliant book. So if you haven't checked out Catherine's books, make sure to go and have a look at them. And if you haven't come across her journal articles, they're always really conceptually useful and helpful. She's one of the reasons why I think geographers have been leading the charge when it comes to thinking about animal studies, and because I'm a little bit biased when it comes to thinking about geographers. Anyhow, Catherine Gillespie lives at the end of the world, which she calls the end of the world, with a wonderful human, three senior rescue horses, and a donkey with a big personality. Let's do it. Katie, thank you so much for joining me back on the Animal Turn. It's really uh wonderful to see you again and to have read your work again. I'm a huge fan. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for for coming back to the Animal Turn. It's uh it's great to have you.

Kathryn Gillespie 3:21

Oh, thank you so much for for inviting me and being willing to have another conversation. I still remember uh with a lot of fondness our our last conversation together um using four years ago now.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 3:35

I think it was four years ago. Um I mean, I think about your because we spoke about intimacy the last time you were on the show, and I think about it quite often. And you you mentioned this book, you were working on this at the end. Um, I think when we had had that kind of conversation, what are you working on now? I remember having a brief conversation about the crow who was leaving you gifts. Um you you had said, you know, this crow was leaving you gifts, and I was like, hmm, I was a bit incredulous, and then you told me that you, you know, sometimes you would leave food as a gift for, and I was like, hmm, aren't there questions about feeding? And you know, I think about that often because yeah, I'm now in a city where there are more and more crows, and the crows actively seek us out. Like I'm walking now with Linus, and they know that there is dog treats involved. So you that conversation comes up so often because you know you just you toss a dog treat there, and then like 12 crows are following you around, and then they remember you, and the next day they're there. So, anyway, I remember that so clearly um because I'm I'm not too sure why I was so incredulous about this this idea of, I mean, yeah, it's it's it's a common critique that comes up, right? Like, should you feed wildlife? What's the the problems and stuff? Um, and now you've written about it. Now the book is here and the crows make an appearance, and I can see that it's still a thing you're grappling with yourself, right?

Kathryn Gillespie 4:53

Definitely. Yeah, and it's it's funny. I've I've continued to think about the ethics and and sort of politics around feeding, feed, feeding wildlife. And um, and I I have felt uncomfortable about that with the crows. Um, but then thinking about I'm recently, no, not recently now, in 2022, moved uh from from Seattle. Uh from Seattle to an extremely remote uh part of north central Washington state. Um, and it's a town of population 35. And so it's very 35 people. Yes, 35 people. And and probably actually a lot of ghosts. There's a it there's a actually proper ghost town in the town. Um well, it's mostly just ghost town because the town is is not very um yeah, well populated with living humans. Um, but this place is so much more uh landscape of animal life and plant life and than it is one of sort of human infrastructure and um and yeah, sort of human human activities. And so I'm constantly in not necessarily in contact, but in shared spaces with free living animals. And so that that question of of feeding comes up because here it feels like that's not like I wouldn't think to feed the deer or the elk or the bobcats or uh you know and the species up here. But thinking back to the crows and that geographic context, they're they're living in the midst of you know this kind of multi-species environment in a very sort of human-dominated landscape, and they're scavengers and they're you know surviving on the sort of uh excess, I guess, in a lot of ways, of of human life. Um, I had a uh moment when I I had been sort of regularly sharing food with them, and I saw them uh pulling apart a Burger King bag um on the street and eating the Burger King. And I'm like, don't eat the Burger King, I'll give you some nuts. Just you know, but anyway, it's it just just being being here in a place where it is more animal, an animal geography than a human one, has given me a sort of a little more clarity on that distinction around.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 7:34

I mean, I think it's for for me thinking about that conversation, at least now, because I think before I used to be a bit more firm on it, and I've become a little less because I realize that sometimes those lines seem really arbitrary. You know, like songbirds, people willingly go out and put seed out for songbirds, but don't feed a crow, even though crows are protected. And it's also, I think it's so often just framed as the human somehow doing the act, but very often, so one of the things you mentioned is the sound. I mean, the title of your book is Sound of Feathers, and the fact that you would hear them. So we've got these massive gardens close to where we are, and I walk with Linus, and you will hear they seek us, they they literally swoop in front, like I can hear them flying, right? And then they swoop in front and they land in front, like their intention is completely clear about what they are communicating, and and they will keep at it until eventually you you give in, and then you have 20 of them, uh, and then you're like, oh damn it, I made a mistake, and then and then um and then you retreat back. But it's not just um I don't know, sometimes we frame the feeding relationships as I'm making a decision to do X, but I really think that oftentimes I don't even think about it, and they seek out that action from me, if that makes sense. Um, but it's interesting what you say about the shift from being in a city to a rural space and how that's made you think differently about these feeding relationships. Uh do you think you're more or less in contact with animals where you are now, or just differently in contact with them?

Kathryn Gillespie 9:10

Uh that's a good question. I would say maybe differently um in contact with um, I mean, in in the city, I would always see the crows, other birds, squirrels, um, sometimes a raccoon, uh, cats who are either uh, you know, not attached to human homes or were like indoor-outdoor cats, um, and and of course dogs. But here the variety of species is just really astounding. Um, we kind of never know who we're gonna who we're gonna run into. Um, but a lot of it is is, I mean, certainly, certainly they're like visual encounters. We there are a lot of elk and we see these, you know, large herds of elk come and get into the hay that we um keep for for we have a a little herd of three um rescue senior horses and a and a donkey, and um, which has just been delightful. Um, but but yeah, so we'll we'll see we'll see the animals, but more more often uh we see their sort of tracks and traces, so which is a different kind of um experience, really. Like, you know, we're well actually it's snowing right now, we were gonna be coming into spring, but um, you know, with it during winter, just the you know, I'll walk up to the barn, which is maybe a one and a half minute walk, and see the tracks of more than a dozen different species. And, you know, so it's it's sort of yeah, this feeling of like of them being here, but not not always here in the sort of in this visual encounter way, but it it really yeah, it really feels like we're surrounded by animals and that we're living, yeah, sort of more, more in their world. And one of the stories that I share in the book that I think is relevant relevant to this and to the to the feeding question too, is I did start feeding on on occasion these chipmunks who lived at uh at my old place up here. We recently, recently moved about 15 minutes away. But they they had started coming into at a shipping container that I'd turned into a workspace and would leave the door open in the summer, and they would just run in and you know, hop up on my desk and run up my leg. And they were very affectionate and social and outgoing, and so I would, you know, give them some nuts or something like that. And that felt it felt to them to me this like default relationship back to the crows, where I felt this well, you know, I kind of feel like, well, they'll want to be my friend if I give them some food. And I think that that's such a common impulse. Um, but uh, but this pretty extraordinary experience happened. I guess it was maybe two, two years ago now. My partner, uh, he's lived up here, but he grew up up here and um just has a very different sort of ethos around interacting with with animals and and beings like sensitive to them in a way that I haven't really experienced with with other people, with most other people I've encountered. So one spring, this grouse started showing up, and grouse are these wild birds who are hunted up here, and they're really sort of unremarkable looking. They're they're kind of browns and grays, and they really blend in to the, they're like maybe the size of a chicken. Uh, and they're pretty elusive. They they really, you know, hide and stay away from humans with good, good reason, um, you know, so often being being hunted or or harmed. Um, but this Krause showed up one spring and started following James around his place. And he works outside all the time. He's, you know, was digging new planting beds, you know, doing all of this sort of uh yeah, kind of like agricultural um land, like land-based work. And so she's she showed up and she started following him around, and she'd, you know, he'd be digging in the garden and uh have a wheelbarrow, and she would like sit under the wheelbarrow and watch him. And then, you know, she'd spot a worm where like the you know, who he'd like unearthed, and she'd dart out and get the worm, and then she'd go back under the wheelbarrow and sit there. And this relationship evolved to where she would actually, you know, come right up to him and really kind of be like asked to be pet and would sort of, you know, like relax her body down, and you know, he would um pat her on the back and she'd do this like really sweet little cooing sound, and and then she started like she was just she was very attached to James, and he would come up to to my place every evening for dinner. And one one evening she just he was driving up his driveway, and this and the grouse, um, who he called Winnie, uh like was barreling up the driveway after him and hopped up onto the back of his truck and wouldn't get off. And you know, he was like worried because we're he, you know, he was going to my place. And anyway, she rode along, hopped into the back of the cab on the way, way up the hill, and and and showed up at my place, and we then, you know, hopped down and hung out with us until it started getting dark. And then we were really worried because she was so far from her own territory, you know, where the the place she shared with James, and she sort of tootled on up the hill into the tall grass, and we were worried that she was gonna be, you know, eaten by a coyote or something like that. And then a day later, she came walking down the driveway at James's. And this this continued where she'd come and hop on his truck because he was driving, he she'd come up to my place, she'd disappear for the night, and she'd then she'd walk up back up the road to James's. And um, and that this went on for, I guess it was a couple of months, and where and he never fed her. And I think that that was really the like one of the really remarkable things about that is that he didn't seek out that relationship. She she did. She, you know, came out of the woods one day and decided that she wanted to form this this relationship

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Kathryn Gillespie 15:57

with

(Cont.) Bonus: Haunting with Kathryn Gillespie

Kathryn Gillespie 15:58

yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 15:59

It was such a beautiful um chapter, the whole thing with Winnie and and James and the relationship, and even your your anxiety around her in the evening, right? Like, how what do I do? She's gone, should I intervene? And uh, you know, you mentioned there that that James was like, no, she's a wild animal, she knows what she's doing. You've got to just trust that she knows what she's doing, which is really, I mean, it speaks to that kind of almost paternalistic impulse we have that somehow animals need to be protected and looked after. And sometimes it can come from a, you know, what we think to be a good place, but it can also bastardize some relationships, right? Where I even worry about that with with Linus, who's, I mean, the whole pet relationship is um problematic, right? Having, and we can talk, you know, he's he's also from a shelter, and there's reasons for that. And we've spoken on the show before about you know, pets, it's a very uneven and unequal relationship, right? Like he doesn't have the option to just leave, whereas when he did, right? Um, but even with Linus, you know, a lot of the main training around pets is to use treats as this kind of like bribery system, right? Like where if we would look, you know, like you do this and you get this, um, and it's not really out of them respecting or uh appreciating what the rules are for any reason or or giving them the benefit of the doubt. And I'm I'm particularly bad with this, like I'm constantly using treats. I'm like, okay, like I've got treats on hand, which means, which means that I, you know, it becomes a trust thing, that it shows that I don't really trust him to do um what is expected of us or of him in that situation. Yeah, I've I've had a similar relationship with an animal where we didn't feed them. It was in, I think I've mentioned it on the show before, we were cycling in Mongolia. So we were completely like alone in the middle of nowhere. And um a dog found us, and she was just, we ended up naming her Meadow because that's what you do. And um, we straight up said, Well, we're not gonna feed her because we don't want her to follow us around and we don't want her to become dependent on us, or you know, you create all these things where you're the center of their story. You've known each other for all of two minutes, and you're already the center of their lives. And um that didn't deter her. She slept outside our tent that night. The next morning, she was still there, she ran along our uh bikes for most of the next day, and then she disappeared. She was gone. We were like, oh, sad. Then two days later, we saw her, and I'm I'm telling you, it's like a hallmark film. We saw her across, okay, I'm really bad at the distances, but it was like, let's say two football fields away. Like she was far away. And and we saw her, and she saw us, and it was literally bolting towards us at full speed. We were like, she loves us, and there was something, and then later on that day she disappeared again, and we never saw her again. But it was just, it was pure and utter, she chose to be with us for us, not for food, not for a transactional purpose. And it sounds like that's what it was with Winnie as well. So that's not to say that sharing, I mean, sharing food is really intimate. Um, I think we spoke about on that on the show last time as well. It's an intimate thing, and it's not inherently wrong or poor, but and maybe this gets to the concept a little bit. There's a an a haunting there. There's there's something um that connection seems to be different somehow when it's premised on an exchange of food, right?

Kathryn Gillespie 19:19

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. And then I mean the what the the the end of the whinny, well, I don't know if I want to say the end of the whinny story, but but after a couple of months, it was um it was breeding time for for grouse, and she seemed to like to hang out longer with James than the other female grouse were, you know, going out and you know, meeting these male grouse who were calling them into the forest. And um, but eventually she did. She she disappeared, and um we, you know, hoped to see her emerge from the woods one day with a little flock of baby grouse. And we, you know, waited and watched and um and didn't didn't see her again. Um, and it was, you know, there there's yeah, this kind of sadness uh around the oh, you know, we thought that this was gonna be this like ongoing thing and that it was like and it was it was such a it was such a special like form of of connection for for the reasons we've just just been talking about. But thinking about it differently, it's that's that's so much what would be the ideal, I think, in human-animal relations, right? That the even human-human relations.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 20:47

I think sometimes we hold on to perhaps unhealthy relationships or you know, relationships that have just done their course, right? Like this was great, it was awesome. Like, how often have you hung out with people? You've been like, let's exchange numbers, we'll get coffee sometime, or you meet people randomly on a vacation and you have the best time. You're like, we'll hang out again in future. I mean, some people do, but if we're I maybe I'm just a bad person, I don't know. But oftentimes that's not what ends up happening. I think we fail to just like we want to capture it, we want to hold on to things instead of just being like, this was amazing, it was wonderful, it was good to know you. Cheers.

Kathryn Gillespie 21:23

Yeah, right. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Um, yeah, and it shows like, you know, agency and and like self-determination and um and uh you know, on her part that this was a real you know, this was in a ra relationship and encounter she chose, and she chose it in these different ways, and James responded, and then she chose to to leave. And that that's yeah, it's so um it that's that's quite quite unusual, I think, in terms of. And just as you said, we want to hang on to these relationships, right? We want the we want the crows to keep coming. And if they're not, then it's this, you know, big um big loss, or there's, you know, ways that we um more aggressively can, you know, try to seek them out. But I love what you said about the the human, the human side of that. It's completely relate.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 22:26

I've thought about this a fair fair. I mean, I think we're all, yeah, we've all got relationships where like, you know, you're hanging on to it a bit longer than than you should, because I think we have an idea of it. And I think that that's how some relationships, whether they're with animals or with other humans, um, we have an idea of what that relationship should be. And I think we we we try to capture that relationship and we try to sometimes push it into a box because that's what we want. We're after that idea more than we're necessarily, I think, responding to what's actually happening in front of us. And in that, I think we lose something sometimes. Um, and I mean, so this this book of yours was I I've read a lot of your work. I've read a lot of your journal articles, I read your previous book, uh Cow with 1389. And I mean, you're very good at kind of inserting. I think you're you're even cow with 1389, you um, hashtag 1389, you you know, you inserted your personal experiences of encountering these animals in in their situations. But this felt like something different. Uh, it wasn't as academic as your previous writing. But loads of concepts is always, I think that's just the way you think. I think you've conceptually rich. But the the whole book was kind of structured with your personal experiences of change uh and questioning also. Yeah, I mean, haunting is not in the title, but it seemed to me like this is central, that each of the chapters spoke to a ghostliness of sorts. Maybe I missed reading haunting. So maybe we could just turn towards the book now um first. You could give us an overview of what we what we're hoping to do with this book, and then we can uh talk a bit a bit about haunting and what you think of when you when you think of that word.

Kathryn Gillespie 24:07

Yeah, definitely. And it's funny um you mentioned haunting not being in the title. It actually was in the original uh subtitle. It was the subtitle was haunting and bearing witness in multi-species worlds. Um then you know now you know I really made it, right? Yeah, because we're yeah, um, but it did seem to like uh initially I conceptualized the book as really having a uh sort of overt theme of haunting that was you know sort of developed conceptually throughout the the book. And and as I as I made the book less academic, that kind of got toned down, as did the the other sort of um academic contexts. Um so yeah, but what I what I wanna wanted to do with the book was um I really have always been interested in the the mundane kind of everyday unfolding of of life and death around us that's so kind of taken for granted and very much the way things are that we you know don't even notice it, or if we notice it, it's not necessarily cause for kind of critical reflection on our own kind of role in in these like social and and environmental and political dynamics in which we're in embedded. And um I love that that feminist concept of making the familiar strange, that if we look at, you know, what do we see if we look at the things that are so familiar? Askew, what if we like, you know, sort of turn them in these different angles and and look and look at them from different kind of vantage points, trying to understand how others, you know, others would experience that familiar and yeah, and just to sort of turn turn it on its head and really um excavate what yeah, what's what's going on around us. What are we participating in? What kinds of what kinds of harm are we doing? Um, and what forms of care are we engaged with, is engaged in um as well.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 26:25

So yeah, so some so some of them that you spoke to is just to to give folks, I mean you you walk through, I think you start off with a really good account of kind of going on a tourist boat with uh looking at orcas, right? So so there's a lot of kind of these everyday activities that you speak about. The one is kind of going on a tourist excursion and that involved trying to find orcas. The other, you speak about roads and just road death, the the kind of, you know, we use roads, many of us use roads daily. We'll often see animals dead on the roads. How many of us stop to think about that? And actually, we spoke about road death, I think, the last time you were on the show as well. You spoke about gardens, I think, and gentrification. So how the spaces, the kind of abandoned spaces and cities are not really abandoned spaces, that they're they're homes. So, and then um cows and woods, which I think is perhaps not one that everyone would know as an everyday necessarily in a city, but perhaps where you are, where you might see cows and spaces you don't expect. So they there were kind of, and also the the chickens, um kind of this idea that you can just buy chickens in an Amazon box or get chicks at a store, and you know, there are just animals everywhere. There are animals on roads, there are animals in shops, there are animals um that you physically see, but there are also these presences of animals the all are all around, right? Um, so what was your thinking with the uh the the orcas with regards to haunting? How did how did haunting come in there?

Kathryn Gillespie 27:53

The orcas are interesting because they were kind of a late addition to the book. My one of my mom's bucket list dreams had always been to go whale watching. And so she came to to Seattle um with her partner one year and we and and we went. And the orcas in the Puget Sound in in western Washington state and around Seattle, um, there are there's a southern resident clan, um, which is an endangered clan, clan of orcas. Some orca populations, you know, are are stable or flourishing, um, and the these this group um is not. And um part of the and so and they they really loom larger than life uh in the kind of human imaginary of of of this of the Puget Sound, of like human animal life, there are these remarkable, you know, charismatic megafauna. And so, you know, for a lot of people they they yeah, they really yeah, they they they loom large. And and so there's this whole tourist, you know, industry um around them. But if you look at their well, for one, if you look at their their history, you know, and and the conditions that that have uh kind of unfolded that have um made their flourishing impossible, they're um you know, all sort of anthropogenic changes, shipping, pollution, you know, uh boat noise, like uh overfishing of the um they're they're in an interesting clan of orcas because their primary diet is chinook salmon and other um other orcas are have much more varied diets, so they're more adaptable to environmental change, you know, depopulation of of certain, you know, aquatic species who, you know, part of their diets. Um I don't need to go too much into details, but there are these vulnerabilities um for this this particular clan. And one of them, if you go back to um, I think it was in the 70s, there was what they called the Pen Cove Roundup. Orcas from from the southern residents were uh captured for for marine parks, um, like SeaWorld and other other marine zoos, basically. And it was an extremely traumatic experience for that clan of orcas, not only losing those who were captured, but you know, their their family members would act, you know, some of them died in the in the nets trying to rescue the the ones who were who'd been captured. And then they surreptitiously like disposed of the ones who who died who weren't then you know transported to marine zoos. And it was anyway, there's you know, studies of intergenerational trauma in in cetaceans. And um, and so that really reverberates as this, you know, as this haunting that's then accumulates all of these other sort of layers of of haunting around the their decline, you know, through all of these other means too. The like um, you know, climate change, it impacts of human, you know, capitalist activity trade, both, you know, shipping internationally, and then you know, whale watching is a trade and those, you know, just this whole whole network. And I think, you know, one other thing there with the the orcas and and haunting is and just the the possibilities for humans thinking differently about about our relationships with animals is one of the female orcas gave, gosh, maybe this was back in 2018 now, I can't remember, but gave birth um to a new up to a baby orca. And this was a big deal because their their population was really declining, there weren't reproducing enough to to sort of uh grow the population or even maintain it. So it was a big deal, and and then this baby orca almost immediately died, and the mother carried this the baby on her nose um for a thousand miles. It's like over 17 days um in this, and and it was internationally recognized, it made international news, um, this like journey of of grief. And you know, her kin came along with her, and eventually um, you know, the babies she let um go and and and you know sunk into the into the sea. Um and then but there was this remarkable recognition of her grief, and you know, and and partly that's you know, species hierarchies, right? We think of cetaceans as as close to these sort of human forms of intelligence, but one of the whale researchers at the time um had pointed out that the part of the brain in orcas that is responsible for emotion, I don't know that science, um, so I'll say it in very plain terms. Um, that's responsible for for emotion is more much more highly developed in orcas than it is in humans.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 33:30

And so I think it's the same in sperm whales, if I'm not mistaken.

Kathryn Gillespie 33:34

Yeah, yeah. I think and I think that's a shared like cetace, yeah. And um, and so that that researcher, I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher the um quote, but she said, you know, whatever whatever is beyond grief is where she is. Like that there's this idea that like that we know what catastrophic loss and you know deep kind of drowning wells of grief can um feel like, and to think that we can't even scratch the surface of understanding that experience as heightened in in Orcas, like it just disrupts the you know, I I think it helps to kind of blow apart that that hierarchy a little that you know.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 34:21

Yeah, I was at a I was at a lecture last month by um I think it's Susanna Monzo. She she won the Austrian Science Book Year Book of the Year award. Um and her book is all about whether animals can conceive of death. So she's a philosopher who's kind of um, I think it's a field of antonology, thanology, something like that. Um, and she she spoke about this case with the orca as well. Um, because it's a matter of, you know, as as philosophers do, you start to say, well, what is grief? How do we pry apart grief? What constitutes that? Um, but yeah, it's it's really remarkable uh listening to her talk because she, you know, she says, okay, you can break up a conception of death. Like obviously, animals have and are able to conceive of death. The question then becomes, in what ways do they conceive of death? And um, yeah, her book, I'm looking forward to reading it, it looks really, really interesting. But this, yeah, the story of the orca and her calf and the the obvious pain of having the calf die was just uh yeah, I remember, I remember that story coming up in the news with me as well. But what really stuck out for me with that that chapter of you writing about the orcas was I mean, you you have history kind of woven throughout, histories of colonialism woven throughout your book, but it was the kind of inattentiveness around the animals, right? So you've got these tourists set up, and and I think it's something maybe about tourism now in general. Maybe it's got something to do with smart screens, I don't know. But people spend a great deal of money and a great deal of time and a great deal of energy and enthusiasm to go on these boat tours to see an orca, right? Like it's this big thing. Uh, but whether people actually see an orca is what's in question. Um, you know, it's it's more of a transactional experience where you go, you get excited, you take a couple of photos, you're more looking at your phone to get a photo than you are really seeing the animal. And I've there's something in that inattentiveness, I think, that speaks to, and and maybe this is throughout the book, I was like, how are you using haunting here? Because like I was like, I was thinking of like being haunted by, like, are you being haunted by a ghost? Uh, but then I looked up the definition and it's got much more of a like a lingering and a longing. Haunting as a as a deaf concept has more of a lingering to it than a than a being haunted by. Um, I I immediately went for the negative. So maybe that's what maybe that had like a hue throughout. But how is this connected? This like inattentiveness and haunting, how is how how is that? What's the connection there?

Kathryn Gillespie 37:01

Um, yeah, uh good question. Um I think so a lot of the violence, I think, that we're implicated in, like directly implicated in or complicit um with, you know, regarding other animals, environments, other, other humans, is is actually often not intentional. It's um, you know, the the way that we behave and and and do harm is, you know, in these in these sort of unright like unrecognized ways is just that we're, you know, I think there's there's a lack of there's a lack of attention. There's an acceptance of the way things have been and the way they're the way they are that doesn't sort of push for like different different ways of thinking. And so being inattentive is a way of kind of uh repeating, you know, what what we're already doing. And and so I'm thinking about and so and and in terms of in terms of haunting, I think that inattentiveness, I mean I see that as as this form of haunt like haunting, like as as you said, the that it's a it's a lingering um it's a lingering thing. It's you know, it it's it's cumulative, um, you know, when we're when we're inattentive, when we when we allow that to um you know, that that sort of sense of being to to define how we're how we're living, it persists in this haunting kind of way. But what what haunting there does, I think, is it in its persistence, in you know, the persistence of of ghosts, for instance, right? Those those beings who've been annihilated, who some, you know, some who've who've managed to to survive. Um, there's a a Are you speaking about like actual ghosts here? Are you talking about like ghosts or are you like I think that that's a good question? Um the no, I I'm thinking about more um well, yeah, maybe maybe ghosts. I was I was trying to think before before like are you thinking about like haunting of ideas?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 39:26

Because I know like at some point you said individuals are haunted, but so are societies. And the way I read that was that because I mean it's doing something slightly different to history, right? History is one thing, haunting is another, and haunting is shaped by history, but it's also it's like an absence or a thing that could have been or a thing that continues. Uh it seems a lot more ephemeral, I suppose, but um yeah, like I don't know, because as you're speaking here, I'm like, and I think I need to just clarify it. Are you are you speaking actually about ghosts, the idea that there are spirits out there, or are you talking about how as an as a person who experiences the world, I'm haunted by these kinds of feelings of things?

Kathryn Gillespie 40:10

Yeah, so I think certainly, certainly the latter. Um, and I think that that's that that sort of feeling, feeling of being haunted, of feeling like there's something off and not necessarily knowing like it is ephemeral, right? It's I think part of haunting is that it's sometimes hard to identify exactly what it is that's bothering you. Right, yeah. And and I think that um I'll I'll go to the ghost in a second, but I think with with that not knowing kind of what's bothering you, but things think things feeling off. I think that that, you know, inattentiveness, these sis these so going to the sort of haunted, like individuals are haunted, but so are our societies. Um, thinking about those structures, you know, capitalism, settler colonialism, colonialism in other parts of the world, are these kind of haunting structures. They're they're so much there, but they're so they're so kind of just very much the way things are. Um, that they're they're almost invisible the way a ghost is, right?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 41:20

They can move things. I'm taking the metaphor the whole way now. So, like you can imagine if there was you were in a house, um, things are moved around, and you don't exactly know why things are in that why is it there? You're just in the house, you can't see what's moving the stuff around. But the house is literally structured in a way by by things that you can't see, and the the ghosts are moving things around, and you just know that you have to move through the world because that's where the things are. Um, and I guess I mean you could almost imagine Casper. You know, I still remember watching Casper when I was like 13 and like literally going, ooh, when he when he turned into a real boy, because he was really good looking and I was 13 when he was 13. Anyway, um Casper, what happened to Casper? He like disappeared. But the idea that the haunting can literally shape the structure of your life, where you can move, how you can move. And in some ways, that's what I, if I'm hearing you correctly, that's what these large social structures do. They put in place, there's a it it it almost seems like it's impossible to act against because there are these forces you can't see that are invisible somehow that just shape everything. Um and you can see it's wrong, right? But you somehow are sucked into it as well.

Kathryn Gillespie 42:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and so the work is, you know, uh there is, you know, to recognize, you know, we're haunted by by the past, and we can, you know, often see that quite clearly if we look at it with sort of intention and and critical engagement. You know, we can see the you know, genocide of indigenous communities in, you know, North America is, you know, key to the settler colonial project, impacts on, you know, on free living species and and ecologies and you know, and in different ways, and that those are like, as you mentioned, those are some of the um themes I I look at in different kind of empirical contexts in the in the book. Um, but so we're haunted by the past. And so looking one of the reasons I keep going to history in the in the book to understand these hauntings is because that is such an that's a that's such a legible way to think about haunting. I mean, that's you know, something bad happened and we're haunted by it, like familiar kind of concept, or someone died, and that's so it's their afterlife. So it's very pest oriented. But then we can also think about, and I think this is where um this work of of attentiveness comes in is how are we we're haunted, we're haunted in the present. by the past, but also by the present. And so the all those sort of invisible structures that are, you know, conditioning us into often fraught relationships of of of harm and violence, attending to those and the and the the those like kind of haunting the yeah that like haunting element in the present can I think be really like power you know powerful as a as a different way of knowing and then also thinking about sort of what's to come. So there's then haunting in the past haunting in the present by the past and by the present and then could think about future hauntings. And so and you know in the book I was thinking about that in a diff like you know a few different ways. One is that if we keep going on the trajectory that we're going, you know, the climate crisis, the world, you know, the world is dying and going to be unrecognizable and you know that's cause that's you know caused by by us. And uh you know like this question of sort of like what does it mean to live in a dying world and sort of seeing these the like predictions for what this future is likely going to to look like. That there's this yeah like haunted by the future right we look back at at the past what we've done what we're doing now and then this this uh you know imaginary future of of more you know destruction and and alienation from from each other um from you know the multi-species world we live in um and so there's that that's kind of like dark future to come haunting but then I I also was playing around with thinking about haunting as as this like sort of a like ethereal or yeah potential like what what what could what could the future be? How could our relationships now and the way we live be be transformed and um and certainly you know using that negative the sort of negative sense of of haunting but also like you know how um yeah this kind of positive how what futures to come um are possible ones where you know we're you know living much more in a state of multi-species flourishing and one of the one of the pieces in in the book um one of the chapters is on biomedical research and like anchored to my experience living with three beagles who'd we'd adopted from from the lab at University of Washington. And so and there was so much haunting in that like in that whole experience. I mean certainly the sort of historical elements of of biomedical research on humans on animals the just absolutely kind of haunting ghostly quality of going into the lab and seeing you know the animals who were there hearing their you know their their voices and then almost more disturbingly seeing all of these empty cages um that you know that those ghosts of all of the animals who'd been you know killed instrumentalized and then killed for for um for research but and so that was just a natural like thinking about like haunting like in that space the sort of historical stuff and then trauma as a form of haunting you know witnessing and and trying to help these beagles who'd been severely traumatized by this experience heal from that and and so you know trauma like trauma is I mean I think it's it's different it's different than haunting but there's this element of haunting in um in persistent kind of experiences of trauma.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 48:15

Yeah it's like it's what you can't quite shake I feel uh in some ways you know so I see there's there's kind of material hauntings and then there's the ephemeral hauntings I suppose and they're connected but you know the one is kind of thinking without necessarily you know thinking about ghosts walking in a different dimension to us just trying to be attentive to and thinking about the absolute scale of death in any one of these places. If you were to just add up the number of animals that had died in that lab, how much space would they take up? How many would there be? I mean we tend to people often have this way of thinking when they talk about food animals they're like what would they do? Like hang on you're talking about animal upon animal upon animal being reproduced raised killed start adding up those animals year on year on year and there's a lot of death right there's a lot of animals that once lived that are now dead and I know you've got that fantastic paper about animals afterlives right uh and but then there's also like you say this emotional hauntings and I think all of us have these emotional hauntings in some respects it shows up in your personality and the way you you know things you can't quite things you don't quite like about yourself or whatever that you wish you could let go of or emotional reactions to things where you find yourself defensive when you shouldn't be or you know it's it's a it's residue almost from from past experience and yeah I wonder this with Linus as well he's he had a whole life before me. So there's there's these things that I don't know that happen to him but every now and then something will happen. There'll be a loud sound or something and he will react in a way that is clear that he's haunted right he's haunted by something that happened in his past he's he's troubled by something that happened in his his past uh but I'm quite taken also by your switch to the positive and and I'm I'm always cautious about this because uh sometimes in our moves to try and be positive it can seem like we're trying to diminitize the the the the severity of how terrible the stuff is we're talking about but I also think it's absolutely necessary to foster these more positive imaginaries. And I find that whenever I look at historical stuff I'm compelled to realize that everything wasn't set in stone. We've got this idea of path dependency that we were always on track to be here. This was always supposed to be where we would end up um and and it can seem determined because this is where we are now but that wasn't always the case. There were multitudes of small decisions along the way where a decision was made to go this way out of like five different ways and that means that there are multitudes of decisions in front of us where the future is indeterminate right there is it's it's not as predetermined as we we like to think but that's not cause to sit back down now and say okay well anything could happen right now. Yeah yeah no I mean it's and and because we took so many of those uh well I'd say maybe wrong turns along the way like it does you know things get more and more entrenched the more the more we've taken you know that that particular same with our imaginings like the the neural net neural networks right the more you think a particular way the more that the easier that way of thinking becomes do you know what I mean? Yeah yeah so it's it it's built into so you have to actually foster and I think this is where work like yours work like Sue Donaldson and Will Kimlicker is really important because it's not easy to create these new imaginaries because it requires different thinking a different attentiveness. Yeah just and I mean a stunning level of creativity and imagination that I certainly don't have um I like you know and and I think a lot of times conversations about you know sort of how to build different futures include like a consideration certainly of past of past wrongs right those wrong those wrong turns and the sort of like okay we know what we know we what we don't want here but then there's a like oh if we could just get back to a time before that or there's a lot of like nostalgia yeah nostalgia and um for for for something but in a lot of ways I I don't think the past has those those kinds of imaginaries um and in and thinking about sort of reverting to like a different time like pre-colonialism pre-capitalism or whatever sort of nostalgic um kind of time scale um you know you're thinking of uh I don't think I I think there's just so many things we haven't imagined yet that are that are possible and maybe it's you know I think where this is where this kind of like multi like multi-species kind of attentiveness or ways way of ways of knowing are you know can be so important because humans probably don't have the answer you know on our own like we've you know it we we this needs to be I think a collaborative kind of imaginative project in which we're really humble about what we don't know what we've gotten so wrong um and and sort of what what others need um to to sort of help determine or you know take part in determining a different future but I think that's really difficult you know it's it's just so difficult because if we don't have a past model then we have to make a model but we're so like entrenched in our in our thinking in our living in our way of knowing to like shaped by these like harmful structures that it's like yeah it's just a it's a it's a really radical yeah then unmaking and then back to that just the material necessities of life right so like you can see you can see the even the university static like I'm I'm working hours that are way too long and I've completely been captured by the productivity machine that is academia and I know it's wrong. I'm like I'm straight up for like slow scholarship blah blah blah but the material demands of where you are in life kind of compel you you you find yourself getting on the trademark and doing the thing even though you're but it's it's you know you have to pay the bills and you find yourself doing you know you there's there's knowing the thing and then doing the thing and then trying to feel like it's out of your control and then just throwing up your hands and like we're entering psych psychology here I suppose but yeah I just I mean haunting I think is analytically useful because it kind of taps into those ambivalent feelings in some ways right it it captures that ambivalence of of not only the human experience of trying to do good and trying to create good in a world that is preconditioned not for that while at the same time you know I'm it it decenters the human okay like and I've been like old woo-woo with the ghost but because I I don't believe in ghosts let me put it out there I don't believe that ghosts exist. I have no proof to the contrary or not but I'm not I'm not part of that um that crew of people but um I think what haunting does is it it de-centers humans as well as a concept it it brings up all these ambivalent feelings it it asks questions about where your attention is at it asks questions about the ephemeral what is visible what is uninvisible but it also decenters the human which I think is quite interesting. And have you ever had concerns that hauntings yeah like that it does end up sounding uh not academic enough or anything like that um that's a good question I I've I had sort of thought about it as I think initially as uh in relation to this as a as an academic concept and actually and you know uh I uh you know learned so much from Avery Gordon's ghostly ghostly matters and there's like this sort of small but interesting literature on like spectralities and um and so that was that was where I first started thinking about there's a lot of scholarship being done in this I mean obviously there is there's a there's stuff being done in this realm.

Kathryn Gillespie 57:12

I wouldn't say a lot I see it's a niche niche uh field or subfield but but really cool and like in ways of and really what it does is is um gives a a framework for understanding you know structural structural violence and the way it touches down generative. Yeah yeah and so that that's where that kind of came from because I hadn't really been yeah thinking about ghosts and you know I was kind of like oh I don't bel believe in ghosts and thinking about it as Casper and that kind of thing you know or like so sort of more literal. But yeah I mean like uh let's see the I had two things I want to say um ghosts I think are just are figures out of place. Um and one of the one of the things that was instructive for me on thinking about ghosts were um Jenny Odell's how to do nothing um what is it resisting the attention economy um the uh she talks about in uh in the introduction I think um this pair of black crowned night I think black crowned night herons who as she she's walking in um her neighborhood uh in Oakland California and passes this KFC the Kentucky fried chicken you know every every night on her way home and these herons um are always standing outside of the KFC and they're so out of place in this kind of concrete you know jungle and but they're they they persist there they and and and what's sort of thinking about the like haunting element and and them as ghosts like looking back to the you know longer history of that place it was a marshland and this was their you know ancestral lands and then it was covered over by you know cement and human infrastructure and um but somehow they're they're still there and so it's so the the go so in that sense like on one side they're they're figures out of place. They're why are these like water birds these yeah they're like ghostly reminders of a time that's gone. Exactly exactly and so there's like that that haunting element but then actually looking at these herons as ghosts as figures out of place you actually realize they're in place that we're out like that that place has become out of place because of how humans have have so thoroughly um trans transformed it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:00:06

And so you know I I like so ghosts are those who sort of persist in the face of their attempted erasure or or annihilation and so are you know are sort of living reminders living specters of what violence has been done of those haunted histories and and presence but I also like want to be careful about kind of reducing those like ghosts to ghosts because they're very you know it these like these figures so-called out of place are are live like those herons live they exist yeah yeah so yeah so there's like a tension there I think with the but it is that's a helpful I think that hopefully captures you know like even thinking about what you wrote about your dogs uh and about the the roads as well that there's often like a kind of scrubbing that's happening uh and I think that it's a psychological scrubbing and it's a material scrubbing where we try to scrub things from our imaginaries and we try to scrub things from our environments because we don't want to see them, right? So we create roads and then animals get hit by cars and then we kind of have a built-in inattentiveness to not seeing that death because we it's caused by us, right? So there's it's kind of tied to um what's the word everyone uses when they speak about factory farming uh uh consciousness raising the opposite of consciousness raising is when you when you can't see the thing that's right in front of you um what is it called um oh god it's gonna drive me up the wall I'm gonna be haunted by this um god people are listening now and they're like I know that word when you oh my god it's so irritating anyway um yeah you know we like to literally gotta block like I can't continue the thought until I've got the until I've got the word but they they they remind they remind you no oftentimes they don't remind you I think so we try to scrub these things from our memory we try to not see we try to actively not see and sometimes it's not even active we just don't see but every now and then it comes into our field of vision right um and I think where ghost and haunting is perhaps useful and and you brought this up quite well on the Rhodes chapter is you know the one time you do take notice of that dead body or that animal you then think how many have I not seen right there's there's so much that we don't see that is happening. Those herons are there where were the other herons who whose lives were lost whose lives were taken um who have nowhere else to go how are those herons in relationship to the other birds that are busy being eaten in the KFC um you know there's there's the ones we see and then there's the ones we don't see and to your point we have to be mindful of how we see the animals in focus as well that they don't get lost to metaphors because we're very quick to doing that as well right um yeah yeah it's tricky but I I again I think it's generative I think there could be problems with haunting if if it's done um perhaps in too like a posthumanist way and in a way where everything has agency and activity.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:03:31

But I do think it it's also potentially very generative for trying to straddle how death and life come together for I mean all of us but in in very visceral ways for many animals right yeah yeah yeah absolutely and you got us talking the oh the other um the other thing on hunting so uh I wanted to say was that in the um beagles and what bit of dissonance sorry got it hey there you go that's awesome okay sorry beagles yeah um I'm sorry I couldn't think of that word that's ironic of that's not anyway um yeah so just one other like little element of um of haunting um in the the beagles and biomedical chapter um you know clearly there's all of this sort of like negative sense of haunting of trauma of like of you know this historical um context in so Searsha she was um she was the first beagle we'd adopted from the lab and she was the most traumatized I mean her like it was yeah she was just um broken you know really broke broken by this experience and and you know they be animals in biomedical research have you know never typically never been outside like these dogs had never been outside they'd never seen the sky they'd never walked upstairs or stepped in the grass and yeah you said you told them you taught them how to walk upstairs. Yeah we had to teach them like lift their little paws up and um and so that was just a you know totally overwhelming experience for her you know coming out of this lab but but it was experiencing the world largely through scent um that that helped sort of like open up her world and and and help her her heal. And one of the one of the more helpful than than my ex husband and I were we had an old um elder uh yellow lab named Maisie and she was just such a guide and like for for Cersha in terms of how to live in the World, how to be a dog in you know, in the world. And um, so Circia would watch Maisie do all of these things. Like Maisie as a lab loved swimming, and so she'd just like jump with total abandon into the lake. And Circe was like, Oh, do I like jumping in the lake? And she would like stuck one paw in the water and was like, no, don't like that. And then, you know, all the other things Maisie liked to do, like, you know, chase balls, Sertia did not like that, or you know, playing with other dogs. She didn't she didn't like to play with other dogs. But the one thing that Maisie taught her that she loved was rolling on her back in the grass. And um, and it she just always would, you know, every time we'd go out for a walk, um, do that. And there was something Maisie, Maisie taught her. And then Maisie died not long after we um uh had, you know, Circia joined, joined our family. Um, but every time she rolls in the grass, like would roll in the grass, there would be this kind of like ghost of Maisie, like, you know, just as a form of like a kind of haunting as a form of care that here was this thing that was like so integral to to Searsha adapting to to life outside the lab and finding what was meaningful and what brought her joy and pleasure. And um, and that so like I don't know, I I had this sort of sense of like Maisie as a ghost kind of persisting um in this really loving way. And I had workshopped that chapter with a with an animal studies group um years ago now, and one of the participants um in the workshop really had a problem with that like framing that like, no, this is not haunting. This is you know, not a go, like not ghostliness or a specter.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:07:53

Like that's reserved for you know these kind of negative, um, like violent, violent histories and um and actually it makes me think about the phrase like hauntingly beautiful, like yeah, yeah. There's there's something terribly beautiful about X. It's there's an ache to a haunt as well, isn't there? And I guess for you, there's an ache to losing Macy. Like that makes perfect sense to me because there's a longing for her. She's not there, but she's there, right?

Kathryn Gillespie 1:08:24

And there's lot, it's it's it's loss, you know. It it it yeah, it calls up that that sort of lot like loss and longing for you know her presence. And um, but anyway, the uh his I guess he and his wife had quite a big argument about that after the workout. And uh I I kept that in the book, but um, but it was an interesting, just like it was very helpful to have that feedback because you know I was like, oh, is this can't like can we think about like haunting or ghostliness in these different ways? Like, does it just become too much of a like loose can be applied in any context metaphor if we extend it to sort of like future possibility or hope or sort of positive traces left by the past or our relationships and those kinds of things? And so, yeah, I wouldn't be. I think all of this is actually why I didn't maybe develop haunting more like overturned.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:09:32

I mean, many concepts are messy the closer you look at them. Democracy. Like, do you know what I mean? It's like development. We we we think we have shared understanding of these and we look at them. And I think haunting is a bit more experimental, especially because it kind of it hedges close to um uh the I was gonna say the phenomenon. The um what's the word for mystery and fantasy? And there's a word with a P. Clearly I'm not doing well today. Never mind helping. Um you know, haunting hedges closer to the fantastic. And I think yeah, I mean I think I think it should be used with caution because it is, as we've said multiple times. Um, you know, it can, like any and many concepts, be misused. But I think there is a great deal of generative potential there to try and hold in presence those who are in front of you and those who were once there at the same time. And I think that there is something useful in that, right? So even in that description uh of you talking there about um Macy and Sershi, I can't say her name. I'm sorry. Um, you know, you said things like loss, uh, made me think about memory, uh loss, memory, longing. These are all, like we said earlier, ephemeral feelings. And I think haunting does do a good job of kind of stepping away from the constant focus on um commercialization, commodification, which is an important part of why these things are there, but it taps more into the I do think that paying attention to those feelings and that discomfort uh at being on a tourist boat or seeing a dead animal on the side of the road or having to save a dog, um, and both seeing the joy in in helping an animal and paying attention to those ambivalent feelings, I have a feeling is what will get us to a different place. Because, like you said, we we don't really know where we're going. So, at the very least, I think what haunting is doing is pushing us to pay attention to the ambivalence. And uh, yeah, in that I think it's remarkable. Um, so thank you so much for workshopping with me on on this today, because it's um I really so much enjoyed the book. Um, I mean, we focused on the concept today, but I enjoyed it also from your story. I mean, you've gone through one hell of a journey, right? Like you moved from Seattle to a place with 35 people, um, which is like bonkers. You you've gone through a whole host of you know personal life changes. Uh, and and yeah, it was just a beautiful book about you, but at the same time bringing into view the stories of so many other animals. And I think uh, yeah, thank you for for sharing it. Oh do you want to read your your quotes? Do you I know you've got a quote that might bring us back down the haunting path.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:12:31

Yes, so this is um from Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters um book. They write, haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life. Haunting is not the same as being exploited, traumatized, or oppressed, although it usually involves these experiences or is produced by them. What's distinctive about haunting is that is that it is an animated state in which repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known, sometimes very directly, sometimes more obliquely. I used the term haunting to describe those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over and done with comes alive, when what's been in your blind spot comes into view. Haunting raises specters and it alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future. These specters or ghosts appear when the trouble they represent and symptomize is no longer being contained or repressed or blocked from view. The ghost, as I understand it, is not the invisible or some ineffable excess. The whole essence, if you can use that word, of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demand it demands its due your attention. What the ghost represents is usually a loss, sometimes of life, sometimes of a path not taken. From a certain vantage point, the ghost also simultaneously represents a future possibility, a hope.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:14:16

Wow. I think that captured everything. Um I think so. That really went from what a quote. Maybe if we had started with that, we would have. Yeah, that's super helpful. Uh and and I think, I mean, I use the word invisible a lot throughout, and I I think yeah, I think what that makes me realize is that it's not about it not being seen or felt, it's actually about when what is not seen or felt is felt. Yes, yeah. Will you be using um are you working on anything more with haunting at the moment?

Kathryn Gillespie 1:14:59

Um so actually in a very roundabout way. Um I'm working on a historical fiction novel. Oh great. Yeah, that I'm I have an idea for actually like a series, but um, but just just trying to work on this. And I've been um reading uh for the last couple of years, um really studying the genre of like historical, historical fiction, strong, independent women as main characters, multiple characters moving back and forth, like moves of multiple time frames. Yeah. So I've and and with a witchy vibe. That's the genre I've been I've been reading is you know, sounds amazing. Persecuted and misunderstood women throughout history and in their times. And I think I've gotten to the point of saturation on research where like I've read not getting any new insights about the the genre. So I start anyway.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:16:06

When are you setting it? Like is it in a fictional time frame or are you setting it in an actual time in history and place?

Kathryn Gillespie 1:16:14

No, actual, actual time frame. So there's a contemporary, so it's it's set in sort of a variation of the place that that I'm living now, old gold mining um outpost, uh, you know, the late 1890s, boom and bust, all these small towns, you know, boomed and bust, busted um in in the gold rush. And um, so there'll be one character um who's in the 1890s, and then a contemporary character in the same place. And what got me on this was um, and I'm trying to keep in mind I somehow referenced haunting in this, but uh what got me on this was I was reading um some history of the area when I first moved up here, and there's not very much written, written history um that's publicly available at least, but they, you know, were listing like for the all these little towns, they'll list like, oh, this had a, you know, at the height of the gold rush, there was a three hotels and two saloons and a brothel, and you know, they sort of just list with commas what what the town is made up of. And um, you know, doctor, assay office, and one of them mentioned lady lawyer. And I was like, who is this lady lawyer? Like in the 1890s, in this like complete like remote, you know, frontier town. Um, and so I I tracked her down, and she was the second woman in Washington State to pass the bar and lived in this place called the Twin Cabins, a little out of town, uh, with a school teacher. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This like, you know, um, this this love affair, you know, between a lady lawyer and uh um and a school teacher. Then I discovered it was her sister.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:18:11

Um but even more amazing. Yes, love affair between a lady lawyer and her sister. 1890s were a saucy time. Yeah.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:18:25

They sure were. Um uh no, so uh so oh yes, on the hunting thing. So so I'm thinking about, you know, very different context than than the kind of nonfiction or academic um stuff, but what I've felt living in this region is just is such a like visceral sense of of haunting, of like all the violence of like of of gold mining, of the of ranching, of just this um I guess for different spaces, right? Yeah, it feels so present, um, even as as it's not, but it is, but it's you know, and and part of it is that like families who were um who you know came here for um for mining, those same families are here now. Like there's and there's so there's that consistency like across generations, like I don't know. So thinking about how like how moving back and forth in in time can you know illuminate, yeah. I think just some of like the way the way that things persist, can be transformed, maybe aren't transformed as much as we um think they are. And of course she's gonna the contemporary characters finding a um a journal under of the 1890s character because my dream as a kid and adult has been to find a uh historical, a journal under the floorboards.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:20:08

I'm guessing you're meaning like an academic journal, you're meaning like a diary, right?

Kathryn Gillespie 1:20:11

A diary, yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:20:14

I found this journal from 1890 on the academics of taxation. Like, no, that's not what I was looking for.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:20:24

Yeah. Um no, a journal journal under the floorboards. And actually, James, uh my partner grew up here, and there there were more when he was growing up, but still are all of these like dilapidated um structure, like houses and structures from um the late 1890s. And there was actually a little like town almost next to where he was growing up, like in the property over. Um, and as a kid, he found under the floorboards this like cast iron uh stove, like old-fashioned stove that was about like this big, and it's a music box. And it was like wrapped in this cloth under the floorboards. And I mean, like literally like a hidden story.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:21:10

Yeah, I mean, this is one of the joys about going into the archives, is you um, and I mean it makes me think about like archives, haunting is as well. Like you want to talk about spaces of hauntings, right? Archives, museums, these are spaces. Everyone uses the word memory, but they're also hauntings, right? Because not everything is said and not everything is done. But yeah, these like abandoned towns are uh there's a reason hauntings also capture our imagination. I think there is there's something in that that's powerful, and you go to a place we want to imagine. And I think this is what your book is doing, is you is you there are some spaces that prompt us to realize that things were at some point different, right? They they weren't quite what they are now, and um, there's something really exciting in letting your mind go to like I'm a big big fan of um like historical genres of stuff, and yeah, I'm ashamed to say that I got super super into outlander.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:22:07

Um I yes, I love outlander. I guess it's kind of embarrassing, but I think it's like I'm just vampire diaries.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:22:17

I'm like a cloud eclectic. Um I don't know, yeah. Anyway, um I'm always like a literally, and then my husband bought me the books, and I was like, oh my god. And then of course I read them all and I absolutely love them because now I'm like, I know about the Jacobite uprising, and there's something really cool about learning about history with the story and being able to kind of imagine these different times.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:22:38

So there's books, there's out in the same one I'm getting from the library this afternoon.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:22:49

Okay, I won't skip anything away. Um it remains annoying. Um, but it's uh it's it's yeah, anyway, Jacobite Uprising. We've gone astray. Um but that's totally fine.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:23:05

I think last time we're gonna be able to do that fiction book stuff too, if you want. I know that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:23:10

No, I think it's absolutely amazing. Um you're a wonderful writer. I'm very keen to read it when it comes out, and maybe we'll have you on the show in a couple of years' time again. Um, thank you so much for sharing uh so generously in the book and also for the the podcast today. It's always great to connect with you and to talk. And um yeah, just it sounds like you've been on an adventure and that life is full. So uh it's been really, really lovely to connect with you again.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:23:39

Oh, thank you so much, Claudia. It's been yeah, great, obviously great, great to be here. And uh, you know, talking talking through this has really um yeah, helped me think much more intentionally um about about haunting of something I hadn't I sort of dropped and hadn't thought about and um you know in a while. And yeah, this is I don't know, it's it's been really generative uh talking, like talking with you about it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:24:07

I expect there's gonna be a little footnote acknowledgement when you write inevitably a journal article about this, and we'll be like, and to Claudia, here's your haunting uh that we had a conversation about this and uh and I expect it, okay?

Kathryn Gillespie 1:24:20

Absolutely, unless you want to just actually co-author something on that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:24:27

I'm all about the footnotes, that's fine. All about the footnote. All right, Katie. Have a lovely, lovely, lovely day.

Kathryn Gillespie 1:24:33

Thank you, you too.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:24:38

Thank you to Catherine Gillespie for being so generous with her time and ideas over the course of this interview today. Thank you also to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring this podcast. Uh, as always, thank you to Gordon Clark for the bad music and Jeremy John for the logo. And finally, thank you to Rebecca Shen, Christian Menz, Hera De Bont, and Carlo Silzani for their support and content creation behind the scenes. This episode was edited and produced by myself. This is The Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hertenfelder.

Siobhan O'Sullivan 1:25:36

For more great IRU podcasts, visit irall pod dot com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.