Emily Ruehs

DISCLAIMER: I recently received some difficult feedback from a journal about an article that I wrote, and I am using this blog post to debrief and reflect on these comments as they overlap quite well with the reading. I apologize if this verges on a stream-of-conscious diatribe!

While I thoroughly enjoyed Visweswaran’s book as a creative and academic endeavor, I am having a difficult time understanding how to apply her epistemological questions to my own research. Like many feminist writings on epistemology and methodology, I find the arguments compelling but far from practical in my understanding of how to proceed in my own work. The most “practical” area that the author discusses is perhaps her reflection on positionality. Starting on page 24, Visweswaran explains that issues of positionality, suggesting that women researchers might more often confront issues of their personal identity interfering with the stories that they are able to observe or the stories that they are told. Reflecting on three different stories of women anthropologists, Viswewwaran suggests that these narratives be read as fables of rapport or fables of imperfect rapport, and she praises them for understanding “fieldwork experience in terms of its disjunctions and gendered misunderstanding” (29).

                In research that I conducted for my MA (and have since sent to journals for publication), I found that using my own “fable of (imperfect) rapport” was helpful in the overall analysis. In fact, many of my conclusions are based upon my understanding of myself as researcher in relation to the men I interviewed. As I researched young Latino men who immigrated to the United States as unaccompanied minors, I understood my positionality as a white, American young woman as influencing what they were willing to share with me. Like in Shostak’s research (27) where the women were more likely to talk with her about sex then their  emotional relationships with women, I found that the young men were much more likely to share with me their experiences of “adventure” than their experiences of fear (although this was not always the case). Using a gendered analysis, I understood this to be a show of masculinity, based in the gendered relations of the interview, as well as specific points, quotes and phrases that reoccurred throughout the interviews. Turning in this project for review, I felt that I had adequately expressed how my positionality impacted my entire analysis, and I believed that I had done a good job of producing a feminist analysis on young men and immigration. However, based on the reviewer comments, I seem to have been mistaken. One reviewer in particular, felt that my understanding of my positionality and subsequent analysis was “shallow,” “patronizing,” and even “self-serving.” These comments obviously have been difficult to hear (especially as I work very hard and very consciously to not be those things), but I am going to try to use this week’s reading to debrief these comments and see where it is that I have gone wrong and how I should proceed.

One way in which my article varied from the work highlighted in the reading was the fact that my positionality was a section of the article that was discussed prior to the main points of analyses. The anthropologists in Visweswaran’s book immersed themselves in the entire analysis, never truly separating themselves from their work. Visweswaran reflects: “Thus when the ‘other’ drops out of anthropology, becomes subject, participant, and sole author, not “object” then, in Kevin Dwyer’s words, we will have established a ‘hermeneutics of vlunerability’ and an ‘anthropology which calls itself into question.’” In my piece, the young men are still the other. I place myself into my discussion of methods, and then I exit the piece, becoming the omniscient narrator in the analysis section rather than first-person narrator that is representative of much early feminist ethnography (33).  I wonder, though, if I could ever publish this piece if I were to place myself in the entire analysis. This is still not a particularly acceptable genre in the journal in which I hope to publish (Gender and Society). Furthermore, I wonder if the style of my research (qualitative interviews rather than ethnography and participant observation) prevents me from entering my analysis in the same way. I certainly can discuss how I contacted the participants, but unlike the anthropologists in the article, I have not lived with and been in community with the majority of the men I interviewed. So, perhaps the foundation of my data collection methods prevent me from having a fully feminist ethnography.

Next is the issue of representation. “The question is not really whether anthropologists can represent people better, but whether we can be accountable to people’s own struggles for self-representation and self-determination.” (32). I also think that this is where I may have gone wrong. For me, the difference between “representing people better” and being “accountable to people’s own struggles for self-representation” is a confusing distinction on a practical level. Philosophically, I understand what that means. Practically, though, I do not. How could I have been more accountable to my participant’s struggles for self-representation? I discussed this idea, in a way, with a couple of the men. Some seemed delighted, even relieved, to tell their stories to me, asking for a copy of the transcript. Yet, how do I translate that transcript to an article to allow their words to continue to represent their experiences (and, furthermore, how do I publish something out of that?). As it is now, I have chosen parts of their words to highlight, which in and of itself, gives me the power of representing them instead of them representing themselves.

Finally, I want to address the stinging critique I received which centered around the idea of self-indulgence. Is the foundation of an epistemology that understands the positionality of the knower in itself self-indulgent? On one hand, positionality addresses the idea that the knower is limited by his or her social location. Yet, it places what is known around the knower and any analysis or knowledge that is developed is always developed within the sphere of the researcher. To me, it seems that we can’t really escape being in the center of the knowledge, whether or not we address that we are. But, maybe the issue of self-indulgence isn’t so much about where we are in relationship to the production of knowledge but rather our acknowledgement of issues of power. If my analysis was “patronizing,” perhaps I did not adequately address the “relationships of power not only within culture, but also between cultures” (38-9).

While this blog entry has been quite helpful in debriefing my own thoughts and feelings, I am not sure that I have come to any real conclusions or points of action—really, I have more questions now. Also, the final question I have: if I am to write a better—and truly “feminist”—article, is that something that will ever be publishable considering my position as a graduate student?