Ghostly Mirroring: How Taxidermy Could Teach us Something Important About Current Attempts to Inspire STEM Aspirations in Young Women

This chapter develops a hauntological methodology apt to explore effectively saturated moments, where distant pasts suddenly seem capable of evoking intensities and raising questions about the present. We develop and illustrate this methodology in relation to current policy narratives aiming to inspire young women to become interested in educations and careers in the STEM fields. We begin in one particular ethnographic moment, where a group of school children enter a classroom for a natural science lesson and encounter some old, dusty taxidermy moulds. We dwell in this moment to lure out many different histories, effects, material techniques, epistemic regimes and desires to know and master knowledge that come together in this moment. With an open mind and a methodological ambition of adding layers to our understanding of current STEM narratives, we ask the speculative question of how particular practices, power, ideas, normativities, politics, effects and techniques have been embedded in these taxidermies over time. The chapter offers a methodological approach, we term ghostly mirroring as a way to catch glimpses of other and maybe less innocent tales, than those apparently told by current glittery STEM narratives. This methodology does not aim to settle or resolve questions. Instead, it aims to open new inquiries of underlying assumptions in current policy narratives and to enrich conversations about gender and aspiration in educational leadership.