E. Harrison - Fictions of Feminist Ethnography

Positionality and the Insider/Outsider Researcher

 “Fictions of Feminist Ethnography” takes up the many ways in which traditional anthropology, and ethnography in particular, is less objective than it claims to be. The author argues that ethnographers construct the ‘world’ of another location or culture in a very similar way to how fiction writers construct the ‘world’ of a novel. A central claim of this book is laid out in the introduction, “Ethnography….remains incomplete and detached from the realms to which it points.” (p. 1).

For this blog, I will take up the issue of positionality in ethnography- that is to say, the effect of the researcher’s identities on the research. Or perhaps more accurately, how the researcher’s relationships to the community being studied affect the ethnography. Visweswaran refers to this issue throughout, but most deeply explores it in the chapter, “Identifying Ethnography”.  Visweswaran discusses three possible approaches to objectivity (or subjectivity) dependent upon the researcher’s positionalities. First, ‘traditional’ research. Second, a bicultural hybrid/”halfie”/hyphenated approach in which the researcher is simultaneously part of both researcher and researched communities. And third, the ultimate ‘subjective’ approach – the autobiography.

Traditional ethnographic approaches teach that the researcher should be distant and removed from the community being studied, to ensure maximal ‘objectivity’. This approach often produces ethnographies of indigenous people written by white, European scholars. While this approach is intended to afford objectivity, Visweswaran describes how these ethnographies are warped as they are filtered through colonial ways of knowing and seeing the world. Tuhiwai Smith would agree with Visweswaran here – scholars were not objectively viewing the indigenous world, but rather constructing a narrative that satisfied their colonial biases.

A second approach to ethnography is that of the “halfie”, the bicultural hybrid or the hyphenated identity researcher. This researcher has origins in the community being studied, but yet is distanced from the community of origin by migration, education, class and/or privilege. Visweswaran discusses this positionality at length, especially as it related to her experiences of “hyphenated identity” as an Indian-American researcher. The bicultural/hyphenated-identity researcher faces the challenge of being accountable to multiple audiences who might require different languages, customs, tones and accommodations to understand research being done (Visweswaran describes how she herself struggles with this in her Introduction). The bicultural researcher is challenged to translate their work both to the academy and to their community of origin. Visweswaran writes, “The split subjectivities of feminist and halfie anthropologists entail an uneasy traveling between ‘speaking for’ and ‘speaking from’ creating new problems and strategies of audience,” (p. 131).

Moreover, the bicultural researcher is uniquely concerned with how the academy will understand their findings. Knowing the harm that misunderstandings or reinforced stereotypes could do to the community the bicultural researcher, in the words of Abu-Lughod, speaks “with a complex awareness of and investment in reception,” (p.132). Visweswaran sees herself, at least in part, as this kind of researcher – moving between her hyphenated identities of Indian and American, Researcher and Researched, while never quite embodying both simultaneously.

A third method of research which Visweswaran begins to discuss is that of autobiography. Autobiographies are typically viewed as too subjective to be academic, but Visweswaran argues that they are extremely valuable. She writes, “Autobiography is not a mere reflection of self, but another entry point into history, of community refracted through self” (p. 137, italics mine). Visweswaran sees first person narratives as important windows into understanding “shared history”, “community memory” and the ways in which community creates identity. Although she acknowledges autobiography as a “fiction about the self”, she thinks this fiction is valuable to scholars. After all, what is an ethnography but fiction?

The concepts of positionality and objectivity are highly relevant to my work. These issues get at the core of who society authorizes to speak about certain topics, whose ideas are valued and whose words are heard. In the realm of disability studies, a primary critique is that disabled persons have frequently not been authorized to tell our own stories. We have been taught that a mental health professional is more ‘qualified’ to assess a mentally ill patient than the patient themself. Majority culture has trusted physicians’ and researchers’ accounts of disability over the first-person narratives of disabled persons. This is directly parallel to the concepts raised both in “Decolonizing Methodologies” and in “Fictions of Feminist Ethnographies”.  I often argue that persons with disabilities are more qualified to speak and decide about disability issues than so called ‘experts’ – because we have the expertise of experience. I agree with Visweswaran that our community’s first person narratives have great value, even within the academy.

I also relate strongly to the concept of the bicultural hybrid/hyphenated researcher. Two colleagues and I are currently working on a project about Occupational Therapists (OTs) with disabilities. The dominant discourse within OT refers to OTs and persons with disabilities as opposites, as two ends of a spectrum, as two distinct communities. OTs do research on persons with disabilities and are authorized to have ‘objective’ knowledge about the disability community. Disabled voices are sometimes invited for panels, but disabled persons are not seen as researchers, scholars or therapists. However, OTs with disabilities (such as myself) transgress this false dichotomy. We question the ways in which OTs research persons with disabilities. I am deeply concerned about OT research on my diagnosis, as I know that over-medicalization, misconceptions and disdain caused by such research may directly harm my community.  I truly have “a complex awareness of and investment in reception”. I am a (hyphenated) disabled-OT. I move awkwardly between the two worlds, never fully embodying both identities in one place or time.

Questions for discussion: In what ways might fiction engage the public more than science in these ‘post-fact’ times? How could fiction be political, productive and (maybe even) scientific? Can autobiographies, anecdotes and first-person narratives be valuable tools for the scholar-activist?