Fictions of Feminist Ethnography

Like Tuhiwai Smith, Visweswaran discusses how research, and in this case, ethnography uses language as a tool of domination and conquest whether subtly or explicitly to become all-knowing and maintain control of what is constructed as the ‘Other.’ More specifically, the woman she came to work with refused to be the subject of her research and instead her silence and resistance because the subject of inquiry. It is through this process that Visweswaran came to question the role of silence and how the researcher negotiates its construction and remains accountable to it throughout their research and in its presentation. She poses interesting questions regarding the name of a subject- using pseudonyms and calls into question the implications of fiction within ethnographical research. In my experience, naming the subject and naming an experience has been used as part of an ‘ethical’ process of identification and giving voice to private realities. The language of visibility and ‘voice’ is used within activist and and organizing spaces as tools of deconstructing dominant narratives/histories and confronting systems of power (and oppression).

Another key point that Jody mentions in their post is the concept of ‘home’ and the ‘impossibility of being home.” I would include too, that community and home have at times become synonyms of each other and used interchangeably to define belonging as well as identity, ‘voice’ and therefore visibility (existence).

Naming the subject (identity/identifying) has been historically (although upon further reading, may have been connected to colonial ideologies) connected to community/home, specifically within the context of social justice movements. So I am asking myself, how powerful (as a different type of resistance) can silence and anonymity be in challenging systems of power and dominant narratives/histories. I am reminded of how suicide (as a deliberate action of not complying or participating within a space, system, or counter-narrative) which could arguably be connected to silence, has been used as a way of resistance.

“One group of Kalinagos was cornered while making a final stand on the now famous headland at Sauteurs and they leaped over the cliff edge to their deaths rather than surrender.” <http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/BNCCde/grenada/conference/papers/LH.html>

Several questions I am asking myself:
The role of theory (identifying silence, suicide and alternative methods of resistance) within research and more specifically ethnography?
The construction of a fictitious subject based on perceived/represented reality and the consideration of how those subjects are understood and replicated in other spaces.