Collier- Transnationalism and Diaspora

            In Muddying the Waters, Nagar addresses “situated solidarities” and the politics of scholarship.  Like many other pieces we’ve read this semester, Nagar is similarly concerned with questions of location, power, translation, and representation in research, and she argues for, “the necessity and inevitability of becoming radically vulnerable in and through critically self-reflexive collaborations, translations, and coauthorship”(15).  She describes the limits of reflexivity and the required textual performance of positionality in feminist academic research.  She calls this a “speaking-with” model of feminist reflexivity that privileges and reinforces essentialist notions identity in transnational research and often evades deeper engagement with power relations.  She explains, “we must discuss more explicitly the economic, political, and institutional processes and structures that provide the context for the fieldwork encounter and shape its effects”(85).  Nagar uses storytelling and dialogue, as well as pointed questions to help develop a transnational and postcolonial feminist praxis. 

            Nagar’s response to the impasse of the “politics of representation” is in part a move towards more transparency in the political investments of research, moving towards a potential for dialogue and shared agenda.   She reflects on the constraints of academia and the ways that knowledge is produced and legitimated in the academy.  Her discussion in Chapter 3 about the various responses to her research paper really illustrate the limits of nodding to positionality without adequately acknowledging power dynamics and the academic constraints that can structure research.  The privileging of theoretical interventions over collaborative and accessible research can and does limit possibilities for what she phrases as talking across worlds.  In attempting to make the research useful for Vanangana readers, navigate discrepant audiences, and political struggles, Nagar shifts the discussion to, “what kind of struggles did my analysis make possible for them?”(94). Nagar’s focus on situated solidarities raises important questions about what we owe our research subjects, who we are writing for, and how theory might look different if rooted in collaborative struggles.

            In thinking about my recent research project, I’ve been reflecting on the who am I writing for question, as well as usefulness of my research for political struggles.  While my project really took shape inductively and from what the folks in my study spoke about, my write up of the work totally speaks to existing academic literature, and intervenes in missing academic representations and discussions about gender variance. How might my own theorizing change if it centered on accessibility of knowledge and engaged more directly with collaborative struggles? 

Nagar’s methodological suggestions seem most clear in her discussion of pairing with activists to engage in more productive dialogues and coalitions.  How might this methodology shift depending on one’s object of study?  And could it be similarly implemented in other qualitative settings besides fieldwork?