Spectral kinship

Abstract

Endurance is a key term used by women in contemporary Vietnam to characterize the moral persistence that their marital lives demand. Accounting for women's endurance requires, as fieldwork in Hanoi indicates, ethnographic attention to how kinship can be temporally and spatially capricious, exceeding the immediately manifest. The concept of spectral kinship aims to capture these latent aspects of kinship and their groundings in people's imaginative lives. Defining relatedness as an imaginal accomplishment, an analytic of spectral kinship draws attention to aspects of social existence that are neither “real” nor “delusional” yet socially powerful nevertheless. Approaching Vietnamese women's endurance through the lens of spectral kinship highlights the invisible, imaginal efforts that women make to cope with the vulnerabilities and contingencies of kinship, thereby bringing into analysis crucial yet often undervalued forms of gendered kin‐work. [domestic distress, endurance, gender, imaginal, hauntology, kinship, spectrality, Vietnam]

Special Issue Introduction: Intimate Belongings—Kinship and State Relatedness in Migrant Families in Denmark

“…The article argues that the state takes on a family-like resemblance, which causes ambiguity for families who, on the one hand, appreciate protection and care from the state but on the other hand fear its repercussions and sometimes feel that the family private space is invaded. Inspired by Gammeltoft's (2021) and Desjarlais' (2018) work on spectrality, Bregnbaek uses the notion of the 'spectral state' to account for not only the tangible and manifest but also the latent and subdued dimensions of this family-state relationship. The article shows the deep anxieties that are animated by refugees' fundamental lack of belonging as well as by images of child removals that are haunting the parents in their everyday practices and interactions with the state.…”