For today's blog, I want to reflect on the discussion of life
histories from chapter 5. If have always enjoyed reading life histories more
than any other type of academic material. Just as fiction can be a powerful
tool for change as it conveys emotion and nuance, I think life histories have
the potential to critically engage in debates in unique ways through bringing
nuance and the range of human emotion into a given issue.
For my dissertation, I am interested in studying the crossing
experience of immigrants at the Mexican-American border. While an entire life
history is unnecessary in understanding this process which is confined to a
relatively short length of time, the use of story telling I think could be
tremendously helpful in understanding two of the main issues. I like that
Cotera uses the word testimonios as I
think this better reflects the short time frame and type of stories that I
would request from my participants. Through these testimonios, I hope to
reveal two things: first, the changing experience of human smuggling in
relation to larger political tides; and second, the varying experiences of
individuals crossing based on multiple intersections of social locations (so,
looking at women, youth, and Central Americans in particular).
Cotera suggests that life histories are useful for
"personal contextualization’s of women's lives that not only deconstruct
patriarchal misrepresentations of them, but also prevent facile generalizations
about the universality of women's oppression" (179). As I conduct my
literature review, I find many contradictory accounts of border crossing
experience. Part of the problem I see arising is that the accounts do not come
from first hand sources of information. Border enforcement officials are
telling the stories of immigrants and, perhaps, misrepresenting the experience,
specifically in relation to the role of the coyote, for political reasons (if
crossing the border is dangerous because of corrupt smuggling networks, border
enforcement is painted as the hero saving immigrants--not the reason for
immigrant fatalities). Secondly, the work on border crossing, as it is minimal,
paints a broad picture that assumes that all immigrants have similar
experiences. The work that has been done leaves very little room for nuance and
a variety of experience--something that a collection of testimonios would surely do.
Cotera brings up the idea that life histories struggle to gain
full legitimacy in anthropological circles (the same can be said for
sociological circles): "While life histories could add dimension and color
to ethnographic accounts, as forms of raw data they were seen as far too subjective
and susceptible to feelings of nostalgia and misplaced writerly desire on the
part of ethnographic investigators to be entirely trustworthy sources of
ethnographic knowledge" (175). As I mentioned earlier, Cotero suggests
moving from a "simple recounting of life events" to telling a
"testimony": "testimony is storytelling with a purpose... it
comes equipped with relatively visible rhetorical objectives that, in the words
of Shari Stone-Mediatore, have the capacity to 'transform obscure experience
into critical knowledge.'" (179). She suggests that a powerful tool is the
"melding together of personal and collective histories" (179). For my
work, I need to come up with strong guiding questions for my research
participants that would help them to frame their testimonios for the specific
purpose. Then, I imagine presenting each of these testimonios in its original
words so that they speak for themselves, but then following with an analysis
that helps to “meld the collective histories,” pointing out their commonalities
and aspects that distinguish individual experience.
Finally, I appreciate the advice that comes from Janie's story.
As a collector of life history and testimonios, I need to be an "active
listener," a "conduit" between individual experience and the
"'mouth almighty'" of the community (180). Again, I think the format
of allowing the testimonios to stand alone helps in this regard—although it
also requires that any readers of my research be active listeners.
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