- blackcirclerecords
- Jul 30, 2022
- 17 min read
Well, you lucky people, here is another draft chapter from my thesis. This chapter discusses issues surrounding ethnography/ auto ethnography and objectivity within academia.
Part of this has been shared before but this is the almost-complete chapter. Warning: it may contain some post-structural feminist writing. This chapter will discuss the interpretation of data (for want of a better term.) I chose a model of critical autoethnography[1] for this as it became obvious that the position of the artist needed to be critiqued and that this should be front and centre in my methodology.
In this chapter I discuss why a model of autoethnography that is aware of wider philosophical and political issues is necessary. This is an issue not only for ethnographic and auto ethnographic work but for all critical engagement as we can be unaware of issues which impinge upon our work.[2]
Given that this chapter deals with critical reflection on the self I have chosen to begin my discussion with a history of my engagement with critical theory as a liberatory practice. This section uses the work of bell hooks, Judith Butler and Hélén Cixous as a tool to enable critical reflection. This section is written in a more personal and reflective way than the rest of the chapter (and indeed my thesis as a whole.) I then discuss the dangers of the subjective/ objective dichotomy in ethnography and show how this devalues autoethnography before offering a critique of this dichotomy. I then discuss how I have chosen to interpret critical autoethnography and the components of my own methodology. This last section draws on the work of Hélèn Cixous and Elizabeth MacKinley in the fields of critical autoethnography and self-embodiment within critical study as well as Jeanette Monaco’s models for critiquing the objectivity of the academic within ethnography and autoethnography.
Why read theory when we are hungry: Reading with and through bell hooks and Hélène Cixous.
This is a narrative of my first exposures to critical theory. This is not a narrative confined to academic settings. This is a narrative which is set on trains, in the waiting rooms of Gender Identity Clinics and in dark corners of public houses which constituted some of the few places where I and those like me where told explicitly that we where safe. This is a narrative of theory as liberation, as the measuring out of my (and other’s) confinement and the search for a way out.
In ‘Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom’ bell hooks[3] states that ‘I came to theory because I was hurting-the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend-to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location of healing.’ (Hooks 1994, 59) I was desperate, I was hurting and I came to theory and found a way to understand the forms of violence that surrounded me. I found in theory a way to become the subject of my own analysis.[4] Theory allowed me to move beyond the condition of ‘living under the sign of the ‘unliveable’ (Butler 1993, xiii) and to create a space in which I could be, in which I could live.
‘The pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living.’
Theory gave me the tools to fashion an identity which stood in opposition to that which was forced on me as a Genderqueer person, an identity enforced by medical gatekeepers who withheld treatment for those who were not deemed to be performing their gender properly. Butler allowed me to understand that gender is an ontology without a core, an ontology sustained through its performance, a series of ‘fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.’ (Butler 1990, 185) I was being asked to enact and enforce a boundary which constituted me as other, as non-subject. Butler gave me a way to form an identity which forsook ‘a sense of ‘the normal’ (Butler 1990, 189) to ask ‘what kind of gender performance will enact and reveal the performativity of gender itself’ (Butler 1990, 189) and to enact my own subversive performance of gender.
For people living with oppression theory becomes not an abstract tool but a way to ‘name our pain and to theorise from that location.’ (hooks 1994, 74) To read in hooks of a woman who found release in theory and who told hooks that before this point ‘there has been so much hurt in me’ (hooks 1994, 73) is to see myself finding a model for not only the pain but the radical possibilities that had been formulating within myself.
To reiterate: theory gave me the tools which allowed me to understand that I was living within a system of oppression and the tools to critique these systems, to escape their control and to form a stable sense of self which sits in opposition to them. Theory gave me life.
There is a tension in the examination of my own relationship to theory. This tension arises when moving from a discussion of self to a discussion of others. A critical understanding which frees me but not others fails to fulfil the ‘radical requirement’ (Freire 2017, 24) Freire identifies as a central component to liberation, the need for the systems that create oppression to be overthrown.[5] This is something I have tried to do in my life, the real lesson of critical theory, and something that I knew before I read Freire. As bell hooks states: ‘When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice’ (hooks 1994, 61) the separation of theory and praxis only exists if we see theory as a discrete process which comes into being by the process of naming and learning[6] (hooks 1994, 61/62) but, as Cixous makes plain ‘We are in the burning bush. We are born in the burning bush…We are nailed fast by events.’ (Cixous 2005, xvi) To exist within systems of oppression is to be ensnared with or without recourse to theory. Theory is not a practice which occurs within academia and which academics must somehow find a way to translate into action out with the academy, it is a process and a way of being which liberates us as both individuals and as a collective. It is a process, a way of being, which allows us to see that we are constructed and to call to those who would oppress us and demand that they acknowledge ‘the seams and sutures in yourself.’ (Stryker 2011, 86)
Ethnography and autoethnography: Definitions and problems.
In the act of defining Ethnography and seeking to understand its relationship to autoethnography we can begin to see how it embodies hierarchical models and how it relies upon an objective/ subjective split.
On Princeton University's anthropology page ethnography is defined as ‘a research method central to knowing the world from the standpoint of its social relations. It is a qualitative research method predicated on the diversity of culture at home (wherever that may be) and abroad. (Department of Anthropology, 2022) This data heavy nature of anthropology is embedded within understandings of it as a methodology (Hoey, No Date and Butler, 2009) and as such needs to be examined as a defining principle of the methodology. The questions this raises in relation to its embodiment of hierarchies is best examined in relation to the ways in which autoethnography attempts to negotiate the objectivity/ subjectivity dichotomy and how the positivism[7] which is an inherent part of methodologies which treasure objectivity is negotiated within autoethnography.
If Ethnography is the systematised study of others then autoethnography is the inclusion of the self within ethnographic study, the systematised study of the self as situated within culture. In her book 'Autoethnography as Method' Heewon Chang details an exchange with her sister-in-law over a meal where she is asked to define autoethnography. She describes it as 'a research method the utilizes the researcher's autobiographical data to analyze and interpret their cultural assumptions.' (Chang 2008, 9) In 'Critical Writing for Embodied Approaches: Autoethnography, Feminism and Decoloniality' Elizabeth MacKinlay counters this reliance on ‘data’ by arguing that Autoethnography arises from the mess and detritus of life, from 'Diaries and rooms, ordinary affects, dreams I tell you and the troubling secret lives of them' (MacKinlay 2019, 6) If Chang offers us data and analysis them MacKinley offers us an emersion in the self which forgoes the collection of recognisable, ‘objective’ forms of data.
These two positions in relation to what autoethnographic study may constitute and what may count as autoethnographic data exhibit the issues within autoethnography regarding positivism and objectivity. The examination of these issues within autoethnography can also help elucidate how they play out within ethnography.
The Problems With/ Within Autoethnography: Objectivity/ Subjectivity and Power.
Given the claims to scientific rigour employed by ethnography how can the subjective nature of autoethnography also embrace the positivism which lies at the conceptual centre of ethnography. Since autoethnography relies on subjectivity is autoethnography somehow a less worthy companion to the more rigorous methodology of ethnography?
This is an issue Sue Butler addresses in her review of Chang's 'Autoethnography as Method.' If the objective/ subjective split is an issue in the writing of and on autoethnography then how can one achieve what Chang attempts, that is a general textbook on autoethnographic models? Butler asks if it is even 'possible to follow rigorous methodological processes...while embracing opposing philosophical, theoretical and epistemological stances?' (Butler 2009, 297) Butler argues that the method Chang uses is to not define a position within this debate and to present both objective and subjective traditions and epistemological positions as possibilities for autoethnographic researchers. This position, however, raises an important question and butler asks why Chang ‘does not take a clear and substantial position’ (Butler 2009, 298) regarding the objectivity/ subjectivity dichotomy.
The problem that persists within Chang’s decision not to take a position on this dichotomy is not a simple issue of how one gathers autoethnographic data and what data one collects but how one envisages the purpose and scope of autoethnographic data and what one considers a worthy subject of discourse. To understand this we must return to ethnography.
As stated before objectivity is foregrounded within ethnographic study (Department of Anthropology, 2022) to a degree which masks the power relationships inherent within this form. Bonellia Silva, commenting on how Whiteness operates within sociology argues that objectivity among white academics creates a ‘sense of superiority, a sense they [white academics] know things’ (Bonilla-Silva 2008, 22) while Georgina Boyes highlights the misogyny and Aryan supremacist thinking which data gathered from the English folk revival was used to justify. Boyes argues that ‘through the study of folklore, in particular, imperialism and the existence of class stratification could be shown to be justified on the basis of detailed research and empirical evidence.’ (Boyes 2010, 9) I would argue that objectivity and subjectivity cannot easily coexist and that some position must be taken.
Within the first stage of deconstructionism Derrida critiqued the idea of dualities and dichotomies, pointing to their hierarchal nature 'with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other.' (Lawlor, 2021) By applying this critical lense to the objective/ subjective dichotomy then it becomes plain that by engaging with this dichotomy we are embodying a discourse that already ensnares us within the objective. If we allow our autoethnography to be framed by this discourse then we have already privileged an objective and positivist position, we have effectively made out autoethnography the pale shadow of the more rigorous field of ethnography.
If we choose not to embody this hierarchy then we allow our methodological approaches to provide an equal grounding for both rigorous methodology and the insights to be gained through an immersion in self.
Towards a non-hierarchal methodology.
In her discussion on 'How to find Research Topics' Heewon Chang discusses the work of Kim Foster who examined the experiences of her Mother's mental illness. She shares a list of questions that Foster used to promote introspection and some of these are relevant to my own autoethnographic study, particularly the following: 'How Does your life experience shape the theory that will frame your method? What 'cultural baggage' do you bring to the research encounter?... How will your identity place limitations on your research?' (Chang 2008, 60)
This led me to question what I brought to my research, particularly my place as a practitioner who is both within and out with the tradition I was studying and the directly and unapologetically politicised nature of my research. If I did not engage with the political in my work and instead chose to focus on the sense impressions and associations that came to mind during my playing or the process by which I arrived at the point of being able to play then I would betray the purpose of my improvisations, I would leave my praxis half formed.
This led to the main focus of my self reflection becoming a study of how self is constructed through the interactions of oppressive systems operating within society. The focus of my autoethnography became the hierarchal nature of performance, the problem of labour and my position as the instigator of a framework in which I could easily inhabit a hierarchal role.
In my discussion of Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra[8] I spoke of the pitfalls of the centring of self within activism. Critiquing and guarding against this centring of self, the assumption of the role of ‘some socialist Napoleon,’ (Kropotkin 1913, 4) became one of the goals of my autoethnographic model. It is towards the nature of this model that I now turn.
Critical autoethnography and the Development of a methodology.
'There is no solution. One can only decide, cut, sever, and everything is bad. There is no exit nor entrance. We are in the burning bush. We were born in the burning bush.' (Cixous 1998, xv1)
The autoethnographic model I developed for this study is critical in nature, in that it was about 'telling stories about theory and theorising through the autoethnographic stories we [I] tell.' (MacKinlay 2019, 194) We cannot practice critical theory without that practice being political in nature, as bell hooks argues ‘theory emerges from the concrete, from my efforts to intervene critically in my life and the lives of others.’ (hooks 1994, 70) Critical theory helps give form to our activism and our activism helps give form to critical theory therefore approaching autoethnography through critical theory is approaching autoethnography through an overtly political lens. As such for us to engage in critical autoethnography is for us, for me, to centre issues of hierarchies and labour in my autoethnography as I have centred them in my wider critical theory.
The central issue that I engaged with in my autoethnography was the subjective/ objective dichotomy and how this creates a hierarchy which threatens to overwhelm the efforts to collapse the artist/ audience hierarchy. In ‘Memory work, autoethnography and the construction of a fan-ethnography’ Jeanette Monaco calls for us to consider the ‘moral dualisms that often align “us,” the fantasised “rational” academics, against “them,” the fantasised “deficient” or “selfabsent” fans.’ (Monaco 2010, 103) The mythological self-absence of those we study within our ethnography is exemplified by the examples of racial and folkloric studies I discussed[9] but it exhibits a deeper problem within academia.
For the formation of an objective academic we need the subjective ethnographic subject, this aligns with the rational academic as opposed to the ‘selfabsent’ subject in Monaco’s paper. This leads us towards Butler’s theory of performativity and the use of foreclosures to form a stable sense of the self and how this can be mapped onto discussions of the creation of objective academic selfhood.
Performativity and Foreclosures With the Formation of Academic Selfhood.
In ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity’ (Butler, 1990) and ‘Bodies That Matter: on the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Butler, 1993) Judith Butler discusses the processes by which gendered and sexed bodies are constructed as discursive subjects. They argue that ‘the boundary of the body as well as the distinction between internal and external is established through the ejection of and transvaluation of something originally part of identity into a defiling otherness’ (Butler 1990, 181-182) and these boundaries are ’tenuously maintained for the purposes of social regulation and control.’ (Butler 1990, 182) The self is constructed by the expulsion of the not-self, by the creation of the other and this process is used to regulate and control bodies and senses of self, for the control of society. This is the process of foreclosures discussed explicitly in ‘Bodies that Matter’ where Butler discusses how this creates ‘a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet ‘subjects,’ but who form the constructive outside to the domain of the subject.’ (Butler 1993, xii) The self is constructed by the expulsion of the not-self and the not-self is given the status of non-subject, that is a state of being in which they are not allowed their own subjectivity. Finally, this process becomes used in the practice of ‘social regulation and control.’
This process, which I discussed in relation to the formation of the identity of ‘improvisor,’ can easily be utilised in relation to the formation of an identity as an academic where the internal which constituted ‘improvisor’ in that application of this model becomes ‘the academic’ in the present application. Butler argues that these identities are regulated by the performance of these identities and that the identities are ‘fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive acts’ which are performative in nature, that is that they gave form to that which they refer to. (Butler 1990, 185) Within academia, and in particular the field of ethnography, objectivity evokes this performative role: to position oneself as ‘objective’ is to position oneself as having ‘a sense of superiority, a sense [that you] know things,’ (Bonilla-Silva 2008, 22) and therefore embodying the ‘rational academic’ Monaco discusses.
To engage with a form of autoethnography which champions objectivity is to enact the power relationship that can so often lie at the heart of ethnography. As such any model that does so is useless for the purposes of my study.
Monaco’s fan ethnography offers a more useful tool as it asks us to foreground our inclusion within the groups we are studying and to ‘make visible the reflexive voice of the writer while foregrounding the theoretical implications of subjective/ objective dualisms.’ (Monaco 2010, 103) I am present within the groupings of artists, improvisors, audience members and subjects of analysis both as practitioner and fan. This is also found in Hélène Cixous’ discussion of her childhood realisation regarding the impossibility of providing a resolution to the very issues autoethnography gives rise to, the 'inexorability' of any tidy and clean solution. Her argument that 'one can only decide, cut, sever, and everything is bad' (Cixous 1998, xvi) provides a way to begin to move away from positivist positions that can threaten to overwhelm our autoethnography, away from data gathering and objectivity. To recognise that we are ‘in the burning bush’ is to recognise that we are present within the process of forming our ethnographic stories and 'the ways in which locations of identity and emotional registers inform research choices and processes.' (Monaco 2010, 102) This allows us to recognise that 'subjectivity is the wealth we have in common.' (Cixous 1994, 18)
This presence of the self within the field of study must be made obvious both theoretically and literally.
The Red Staircase and the Interior Bible: Embodiment as a Theme in Autoethnography.
In her essay 'Bathsheba or the Interior Bible.' (Cixous 1993) Cixous discusses 'Bathsheba Bathing' and 'The Slaughtered Ox' by Rembrandt and constructs the metaphor of a journey into self/ flesh. She discusses Van Gogh's argument that 'we must get inside the country' and contrasts it with Rembrandt's painting of Bathsheba's interior life, 'the interior Bible' as she phrases it: 'And to get inside the interior Bible? One must take the stairs, and plunge into the flesh. Down to the farthest Country...Taking the red staircase, down to the bottom of ourselves, under the earth's crust.' (Cixous 1993, 6-7) To ‘get inside the country’ of oneself you need to be aware of your physical embodiment. The I who possesses the body which is present with in the playing of the piano, who is present in the act of playing, is present within the world and the boundaries of embodied selfhood are no more permanent and meaningful than the boundaries of academic and non-academic self. 'I and the world are never separate.' (Cixous 1994, 16)
Within the process of autoethnography is the person, the body, the 'embodied auto ethnographer' (MacKinley 2019, 60) and that which effects the self both as a constructed embodiment of societal/ oppressive forces and the body in which that self negotiates the act of being are subject to and vital subjects of autoethnography: ‘I decern for the first time, I recognise. The world, before me, so great, is inside, it is the immense limitless life hidden behind restricted life.’ (Cixous 1993, 22)
In Conclusion.
The purpose of this chapter has been to apply the theoretical framework I developed in my first chapter to my methodology in much the same way as I applied this framework to free improvisation. In doing so I have exposed many of the hierarchies that exist within academic practice and shown how to overcome these. Common themes have emerged including the ways in which power relationships and hierarchies can exist unchallenged in the art and music we make. I have shown that this is also true of our methodologies and that the hierarchies present within our methodologies can continue to embody hierarchal thinking and practices.
[1] I discuss critical autoethnography in more detail but a simplified definition might be that it is a form of autoethnography that discusses the self through a lens of critical theory. [2] An example of this is this insight the composer J Diaz provided regarding the colonial nature of music software. Sadly, I have not had the time to fully investigate this due to time constraints imposed by my own studies but useful resources include ‘Listening to and Sampling the Land: On the Decolonization of Electronic Music Pedagogy’ by Kate Galloway (Galloway, 2022) and Jon Silpayamanant’s ‘DAW, Music Production, and Colonialism, A Bibliography.’ (Silpayamanant, 2022) [3] In both the body of the text of this chapter and in my references I have chosen to respect the form bell hooks asks for her name to be written. I feel that there is a degree to which I must apologise for being a white academic using her writing without reference to the community she specifically addresses. This would be compounded by misrepresenting her identity. [4] ‘This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet ‘subjects’ but who form the constructive outside to the domain of the subject.’ (Butler 1993, xiii) [5] I am reminded of an act of radical liberation pedagogy. I was unemployed and applied for a temporary loan while waiting on benefits, knowing I would spend hours in this process I took a copy of ‘Gender Trouble’ with me to read again. While waiting with a group of women one asked what I was reading and when I told her she asked what it was about. I explained Butler’s theories, and this sparked a truly radical conversation which resulted in several of them women vowing to change how they brought up their children in response to Butler’s work. Theory is a tool of the oppressed to achieve liberation and that ‘any theory that cannot be shared in everyday conversation cannot be used to educate the public (hooks 1994, 64) [6] Of importance here is hooks’ observation that the act of naming is a privileged act which ‘may obscure what is really taking place’ and can be said to constitute part of the structure of white supremacy. (hooks 1994, 62-63) [7] ‘Positivism is a philosophical position which argues that social sciences should follow the methodologies of what can be called ‘’the natural sciences’’ (that is physics, chemistry, biology and so forth.)’ ( Warwick University Department of Education Studies, 2018) Additionally Positivism can be seen as a position which treasures objectivity. [8] In the chapter ‘The Problem with Improvisation 1’ [9] See Bonilla-Vilva’s discussion of race within Social Sciences (Bonilla-Silva, 2008) and Boyes’ discussion of misogyny and Aryan Supremacy within the English Folk Revival. (Boyes, 2010)
References. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2008) On White Logic and White Methods, in Zuberi, T. and Bonilla Silva, E. (eds.) White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Boyes, G. (2010) The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the English Folk Revival. Revised Edition. Leeds: No Masters Co-Operative Limited.
Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ New York and London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge Classics
Butler, S. (2009) Possibilities in Autoethnography: A Critique of Heewon Chang’s Autoethnography as Method.’ The Weekly Qualitive Report, 2(51), pp. 295-299
Chang, H. (2008) Autoethnography as Method. New York and London: Routedge.
Cixous, H. (1993) Bathsheba or the Interior Bible, in Cixous, H. (1994)Stigmata Translated from the French by Catherine A.F. MacGillivray. London and New York: Routledge Classics Cixous, H. (1994) Preface, in S. Sellers (ed) The Hélène Cixous Reader. New York: Routledge
Cixous, H. (1994) Preface: On Stigmatexts by Hélène Cixous, in Cixous, H. (1994) Stigmata Translated from the French by Eric Prenowitz. London and New York: Routledge Classics
Department of Anthropology (2022) What is Ethnography? Available at: https://anthropology.princeton.edu/undergraduate/what-ethnography(Accessed on 29th March, 2022)
Galloway, K. (2022) Listening to and Sampling the Land: On the Decolonization of Electronic Music. In Stevens, B. (ed) Teaching Electronic Music: Cultural, Creative, and Analytical Perspectives. New York and London; Routledge.
Hoey, B. A. (No Date) Research Project Summaries: What Is Ethnography? Available at: https://brianhoey.com/research/ethnography/ (Accessed: 19th June, 2022)
Kropotkin, P. (1892) The Conquest of Bread. UK: Penguin Classics.
Lawlor, L. (2021) Jacques Derrida. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Zalta, E. N. (ed.) Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/derrida/ (Accessed 29th November 2021)
MacKinley, E. (2019) Critical Writing for Embodied Approaches: Autoethnography, Feminism and Decoloniality. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.
Monaco, J. (2010) Memory work, Autoethnography and the Construction of a Fan-Ethnography. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 7(1) pp. 102-146
Silpayamanant, J. (2022) DAW, Music Production, and Colonialism, a Bibliography. Available at: https://silpayamanant.wordpress.com/bibliography/daw-colonialism/ (Accessed on 21st of June, 2022)
Stryker, S. (2011) My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning Nr 3(4), pp. 83-96
Warwick University Department of Education Studies (2018) Positivism. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ces/research/current/socialtheory/maps/positivism/ (Accessed: 19thof June, 2020)
