Luca - Fictions of Feminist Ethnography

Fictions of Feminist Ethnography deals with how anthropology and methodology have worked in

Western academia, making claims of an objectivity which, most of the time, it was a way to cover an ideological stance from a Western/privileged position, to protect a bias. Visweswaran reveals how the power dynamics and relationships that the researcher creates with the “subject” of study might work to hinder a correct explanation of the phenomena observed. The tensions between autobiography and ethnography can be useful if carefully studied, she argues, to show different paths to how identities are historically and socially created and situated.

In discussing the ways in which a certain community can be affected by the results of ethnography, Visweswaran shows different approaches. The traditional one, the hybrid one and a third one related to the autobiography, centered on the researcher’s positionality. The traditional one tends to be the one that aspires to a definite objectivity, which is usually performed by European scholars, in search of a confirmation of a bias, that stems from their personal point of view but that seeks to aspire to universal law. The second one, the hybrid one, is a mix, as the word suggests, of a study done by a researcher in her own community that is, nonetheless, separated by it on the grounds of education, class or migration.

This type of research is what we discussed in class for the case of Tuhiwai Smith, it’s the interplay of a researcher who is, at the same time, part and stranger of the community she wants to study. It reminded me of the discussion we had because Visweswaran asks important questions of who this research is this done for and who is the main audience, can I analyze a community to convey a message to, basically, another one?

The third type of research, the autobiography one, Visweswaran argues, looks instead at “a larger frame.” She rejects the hypothesis of Clifford Greetz for which autobiographies are “too personal” to be part of an academic research, and at the same time claims that a personal history can be a port of entry to the history of a community. Then it becomes, as the title suggests, a fiction which tells a story that can be of particular use to that community itself.

I think this book speaks specifically to the question of subject-object, and the dichotomy of particular-universal. Is the object I am looking at changing because I simply look at it? This is one of the ontological questions stemming from this work. It’s an important step taken to doing ethnography in a community that is outside of the academic setting, where objectivity is, in itself, a fictional goal. So the idea at the base is “why don’t we use the power of fiction to convey a type of truth?” It’s a fascinating idea, and I believe in the explanatory power that narrations have as an art form to tell a truth. As a matter of fact, I do think that the greatest “research works” are also works of art, works of “creation.” My only doubts and questions are here below.

Questions:

How can the researcher avoid the risk of being too “subjectivist” in writing an autobiography and wanting to “speak” for a community, even if it’s the researcher’s “community”? What tools could we use?

Given that, admittedly, communities are not fixed entities, as she herself argues, much like identities, changing through time, how can the researcher’s historical experience still reflect actual concrete conditions? Or is the researcher’s story an account of the past?