Collier- Fictions of Feminist Ethnography

Fictions of Feminist Ethnography extends the discussion from last week with an analysis of the power dynamics in social science research, particularly ethnography.  Visweswaran complicates ethnography as a mode of representation, raising questions about whose histories are being reflected in ethnographic research and the relationships between fiction, ethnography, autobiography, and memory.  Similar too Tuhiwai’s critiques, she illustrates the epistemological dilemmas and imperialist assumptions that structure research.  Her account targets the discipline of anthropology and how ethnography defined itself as scientific through opposition to both amateur writings and the novel.  Visweswaran’s intention with these essays is, “to better understand the politics of representation, how different narrative strategies may be authorized at specific moments in history by complex negotiations of community, identity, and accountability”(15).  She analyzes the strengths and shortcomings of feminist and experimental ethnography, providing reflections on the implications for authority, positionality, and the problems of restoring “lost voices” in ethnography.   

Visweswaran describes difficulties of representation and power in the chapters of betrayal and refusing the subject.  She grapples with feminist assumptions of universal sisterhood, the innocence and betrayals that can arise from power differentials within a social group, and the use of silence as an act of resistance.   She builds from Haraway’s notion of situated and partial knowledges to highlight the possible ruptures in interpretation and representation brought about by difference.  She states, “in interrupting a Western (sometimes feminist) project of subject retrieval, recognition of the partially understood is not simply a strategy but accountability to my subjects; partial knowledge is not so much choice as necessity”(50).  In the discussion of Uma and Janaki, she locates silence as an important site for the power differentials between women and that refusal to speak can demonstrate a type of agency.  These themes are also examined as they relate to problems with identification, history, and the refusal of naming.

I haven’t pursued ethnographic methods at this point, but these investigations of power dynamics are relevant to other forms of qualitative research.  Visweswaran’s discussion of naming and silence brought to mind one of my interviews for my master’s project and the complexities that arise with authority of the researcher and representing my research participants.  I’d already done several interviews at this point and was struggling with trying to be accountable to my participants in representing and naming a very gender-diverse sample of gender variant folks.  When I inquired about the language this person preferred to describe their gender and identity, they expressed how they didn’t feel that any labels fit and preferred not to identify.  At the end of the interview, I came back around to this question again, to clarify their preferences for how I write about them and what terminology is best.  The participant again expressed how they didn’t really want to embrace or go by any labels at that time.  This refusal, while situated in different contexts than Viswaswaran’s ethnographic descriptions, highlighted my authority in these decisions and my role in categorization.  While I also wanted to problematize the way gender variance has been categorized and named in the sociological lit, I definitely struggled with how to represent those in my study and felt constrained by the need to coherently write about my research participants.  Visweswaran, building on Spivak reveals the, “the impossibility of saying no to the power that inheres in the anthropologist’s own subject formation”(82).  Her discussion of the limits of reflexivity is an important intervention.  I’ve thought about my own positionality as it relates to different aspects of identity and power, but could definitely reconsider the limits of representation and “knowing” those we study, the different ways power is at play in research, and the trope of “giving voice” to marginalized populations.    

Clarification Question:

I would love to have a bit more background on the epistemological shifts in anthropology, as I’m not that familiar with the discipline, and the context of Visweswaran’s intervention.

Visweswaran’s engages with both feminist theories and deconstructive critiques.   She explains: “deconstructive ethnography allows one to view the process of asserting facts, to question at every moment what is being asserted as ‘fact,’ bringing a different epistemological process to bear on ‘facticity.’ It is not that facts disappear but that their limits are exposed”(82).  What are the implications of this for recuperating or abandoning “objectivity?”  And as researchers, what are the implications for how we hope to approach representation and power dynamics with our own work?