Ghost species: spectral geographies of biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of spectral metaphors, the spectral quality of debates about extinction is little remarked by researchers in conservation science. In this article, we ask the following question: does a sense of the spectral create the conditions for hopeful thoughts and actions about biodiversity? Does becoming ‘haunted’ by species loss accomplish anything? Our intervention is timely because the field of biodiversity conservation reflects the power of ghosts, haunting, and absence in framing the crisis of biodiversity loss and in the moral tales that it uses to justify urgent conservation action. These spectral ideas have power to shape the way conservationists think and act. Yet, crucially, the connections between ghosts, haunting and conservation are not much acknowledged or discussed in conservation itself. Here, we explore the hopeful potential for conservation’s ghostly engagement by drawing on the literature on the spectral turn in cultural geography.