‘On His Return, The Vicar Found the Devil at Home’[1] Me, Ethnography and Sławomir Mrożek.
‘Coming Home’ and ‘Home’ are Never Neutral: An Introduction of Sorts.
This study surveys some of the problems inherent within ethnography and discusses the ethical implications of these issue. In previous writings I have discussed some of the issues with Ethnography and will recap and expand on those here, moving beyond my positions regarding the Objectivity/ Subjectivity dichotomy and the Positivism inherent within the field (Veldon, 2022a; Veldon, 2022b)[2]to encompass the colonialist basis of ethnography, the positivism inherent within ethnography and the ethnical implications of these issues.
As part of research I wish to carry out into art and liberation pedagogy I will have to engage in some form of ethnography however, given the issues with ethnography, this is an ethically challenging situation to negotiate. Indeed, the situation I find myself in is reminiscent of the vicar in Sławomir Mrożek’s ‘Co-Existence’ (Mrożek, 1996) who, upon returning home, finds the devil sitting at his table[3]. With this in mind this study will use Mrożek’s short story as a model for investigating some of the problems that arise in the practice of ethnography and within its history as part of a colonial project. (Bejarano, 2019; Smith, 2019; McKenna and Woods, 2012; Marcus, 2001) I will contend that, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues, we must decolonise our methodologies to ‘confront the Western academic canon in its entirety, in its philosophy, pedagogy, ethics, organizational practices, paradigms, methodologies and discourses.’ (Smith 2019, 11-12) I will, moreover, contend that the practices instilled in ethnography during the colonial period still operate and can be found in ethnography’s willingness to cast the object of study as ‘abject beings, those who are not yet “subjects” but who form the constructive outside to the domain of the subject.’ (Butler 2011, 16) This perspective is vital to problematizing our position as academics who possess knowledge in opposition to our subjects who do not (Veldon, 2022a; Monaco, 2010) as ‘knowledge and power to define what counts as real knowledge lie at the epistemic core of colonialism.’ (Smith 2019, 11)
When faced with the devil Mrożek’s protagonist chooses to delay, first by taking his shoes off and putting on his slippers before remarking ‘if only I where younger…I’m not as quick as I used to be.’ (Mrożek 1996, 14) Let us then be speedy in our work, we can keep our shoes on for now.
‘Strange thing, he doesn’t bother me:’[4] Objectivity, Subjectivity and Positivism Within Ethnography.
Ethnography has a long history of engaging with dichotomies and hierarchies including researcher and subject (Piché, Graucher and Walby, 2014) and qualitative and quantitive. (Taylor et al., 2014; Atkinson, 2015) I will focus on the Objectivity/ Subjectivity dichotomy and the tendency towards positivism within much of the writing on Ethnography. Interpreted through the lens of Derrida’s deconstructivist model, this constitutes an unequal power relationship in which the ethnographer is empowered and the ‘subject’ of their ethnography is constructed as ‘Other’[5] and external where ‘the distinction between internal and external is established through the ejection and transvaluation of something originally part of identity into a defiling other.’ (Butler, 2014: 231) This construction, this redesignation of others as ‘Other,’ constitutes ‘a border and boundary tenuously maintained for the purposes of social regulation and control,’ (Butler, 2014: 231) where the maintaining of these boundaries and hierarchies are vital in the construction of a sense of academic selfhood (Veldon, 2022b) and that this opens up the possibilities for ethical problems to arise. ‘You can’t be too careful with the devil.’ (Mrożek, 1996: 14)
This section explicitly accepts the nature of dichotomies from the first stage of Derrida’s deconstructionism. Within this system dichotomies express a power relationship in which the first part of the dichotomy (man in man/ woman, heterosexual in heterosexual/ homosexual and ethnographer in ethnographer/ subject) is granted agency, where ‘one side of the opposition [is] more valuable than the other.’ (Lawlor, 2021) and where the position granted by the power relationship of the dichotomy allows the group or individual possessing it to ‘stand as the very possibility of systematicity or seriality.’[6] (Derrida 2021a: 103)
The expression of the objectivity/ subjectivity dichotomy within ethnography can not be discussed without discussing the tendency towards positivity and scientificity[7] within the field. The data heavy nature of much ethnography cannot be avoided: Princeton University’s anthropology page defines ethnography in terms of its data gathering methods (Department of Anthropology, 2022) while Sue Butler foregrounds the nature of the ‘rigorous methodological processes of data collection’ (Butler, 2009: 298) which constitutes an important part of many approaches to ethnography and autoethnography. Indeed, this data led approach is so vital to many writings on ethnography that methodologies connected to and developed for colonial governance are used without question[8](Atkinson, 2015) and even fields that foreground liberation and political engagement such as Critical Ethnography rely on the collection and interpretation of data while the act of interpretation itself remains unquestioned and beyond problematisation (Thomas, 1993) to the extent that, when discussing prisoner ethnography, Pinché, Gaucher and Walby point out that Critical and Collaborative Ethnography (where the work is co-authored by the ethnographer and those they study) ‘continue[s] to privilege the standpoint of the academic as knower’ (Piché, Graucher and Walby, 2014: 450) in that it is the academic, the ethnographer, who is given the final choice of what is included and how it is interpreted.
By asserting a grounding for ethnography within an ‘objective,’ data gathering tradition ethnography asserts its own objectivity as a function of its methodology and this act of assuming objectivity helps bring the objectivity of ethnography into being as a performative act.[9] (Butler, 2014) This performance of objectivity brings into being the objectivity of the ethnographer and, more generally, the identity of ‘academic.’ (Veldon, 2022b)
In light of the first stage of Derrida’s deconstructionism and its insights into the hierarchies underlying dichotomies such as those offered by ethnography it is possible to argue that ethnographic study positions the ethnographer as the possessor of knowledge and selfhood, the rational academic in opposition to the ‘self-absent’ subject (Hills quoted in Monaco, 2010: 103) and that by enacting this hierarchy other hierarchies become possible. By enacting this hierarchy, it becomes possible for the ethnographer/ academic to assume ‘a sense of superiority, a sense they know things’ (Bonilla-Silva 2008, 22) and to assume the status of subject in relation to ‘those who do not enjoy the status of the subject.’ (Butler 2011: 16) Through this assumption of the position of ‘knowing’ the act of interpretation becomes possible, the possibility of continuing ‘to privilege the standpoint of the academic as knower.’ (Piché, Graucher and Walby, 2014: 450)
We have allowed the devil into our methodology.
‘He Always Returned Home Tired, Always Found the Devil in his Place, and they Never Spoke to Each Other:’[10] Colonialism as a Function of Ethnography.
I will begin by prefacing this section with the recognition that I approach Colonialism from an understanding of my own positionality as a white, minority world[11] academic who has the privilege to speak on this topic. I have white privilege and I live in a country which participated in and profited from not only Britain’s colonial project but also slavery. (Mullen, 2022; Devine (ed), 2015) As such my place is not to theorise on the nature of Ethnography’s colonial past (and present) but to follow where the voices of those impacted by imperialism lead[12]. Where I take a position regarding the history of Othering and Orientalism[13] (Said 2003; Marcus, 2001) and how it impacts on ethnography as it is practiced today this position was reached in consultation with the Academic and Composer J. Diaz.[14] Stating my own positionality and refusing the impulse to speak for majority world peoples is, for me, a necessary part of decolonialism. Where Linda Tuhiwai Smith states that ‘in positioning myself as an Indigenous woman, I am claiming a genealogical, cultural and political set of experiences’ (Smith 2019, 44) by claiming my place as an inheritor of the benefits of colonialism and slavery I am claiming that history, making my own place within the history of the dehumanisation of others a part of my research and a position from which I must view not only the history of colonialism but my own privilege.
The history of Ethnography is the history of colonialism. (Bejarano et al., 2019; Smith, 2019) Without colonialism the opportunity for the study of peoples subjugated by colonial rule would never have arisen as the violent suppression of Indigenous peoples made it not only possible but also safe for anthropologists to operate within their societies. (Asad quoted in Bejerno et al. 2019, 18) As the colonial anthropological project progressed ‘the people in these territories became anthropology’s objects of analysis, and anthropology became the discipline in the Western scientific academy dedicated to the study of non-Western people.’[15] (Bejerno et al. 2019, 15) This new field of study was informed by colonialist ideas of the ‘primitive’ nature of majority world peoples (Bejarano et al., 2019; Smith, 2019; McKenna and Woods, 2012) and served to legitimise colonial rule. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith observes: the establishment of research institutions in colonised countries helped to cement the relationship between colonialisation and ethnographic research (Smith 2019, 40) even when they where staffed by untrained individuals whose work amounted to little more than ‘Traveller’s stories’ which where ‘generally the experiences and observations of white men whose interactions with Indigenous “societies” or “Peoples” where constructed around their own cultural views of gender and sexuality.’ (Smith 2019, 40) As a result Indigenous women where discussed not as fellow humans but as animals, ‘skittish as unbroken fillies’ (Banks quoted in Smith 2019, 41) and, as the First Nation Canadian woman Lee Maracle remarked, women within societies that became the subject of colonial anthropological study where not allowed their humanity: ‘a female horse, a female native, but everyone else gets to be called a man or woman.’ (Maracle quoted in Smith 2019, 41)
Within the colonial ethnographic model the dehumanisation of Indigenous women constituted part of a wider practice of Othering and dehumanisation. In ‘Orientalism’ Said describes this practice as ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient’ through ‘making statements about it [the Orient], authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it.’ (Said 2003, 27) This Othering, this process of viewing the Other through a Western lens resulted in a colonial system of anthropology in which the colonised where seen to be violating european[16] norms, particularly gender norms, in which ‘colonized men…where regarded as sexual predators, a menace especially to white women by virtue of their out-of-control sexuality.’ (Bejarano et al. 2019, 25) This, combined with assumptions of the natural superiority of Europeans, allowed the construction of the colonised as ‘savage,’ as ‘the ultimate locus of inferiority’ (Bejarano et al. 2019, 23) Within Said’s construction of Orientalism the Orient is constructed in opposition to the West where ‘Orientalists are elusive, given to perverse sexual and moral codes, languid and traditional’ (Marcus 2001, 109) in opposition to ‘a “West” which is energetic, inventive, progressing and “Westerners” who are open, sexually normal, monogamous and Christian.’ (Marcus 2001, 109-110) As such the objectivity, presence and ‘self-presence’ (Hills quoted in Monaco, 2010) of the Ethnographer is positioned as scientific and rational[17], the act of filling skulls of Indigenous people with millet seeds in an effort to determine their capacity for thought (Smith 2019, 33) becomes ‘the very concept of science.’ (Derrida 2021b, 15)
Ethnography began as a colonial project which was facilitated by colonial power and violence, ethnography constructed the colonised subjects of its study as an inferior and ‘savage’ Other and even as less than human. Given this, given that ethnography still exists as a colonial project (Bejarano, 2019; Smith, 2019; McKenna and Woods, 2012; Marcus, 2001) and given that ethnography still exhibits the positivism and scientificity which was used to construct its opposition to the irrationality and savagery of the colonial and/ or Oriental Other then it becomes obvious that ‘it is surely difficult to discuss research methodology and Indigenous peoples together, in the same breath, without having an analysis of imperialism, without understanding the complex ways in which the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices.’ (Smith 2019, 34)
If this Othering is a feature of Ethnography and one that majority world and Indigenous people still experience to this day (Smith, 2019) then can this be seen in the type of ethnography I intend to do, a study of people within the ethnographer’s own country, the ethnographer’s own ethnic group? Does racialised Othering and Orientalism have an analogue in other forms of ethnography?
If we return to the process of enacting academic selfhood then we see an analogue for the processes that still drive the colonial ethnographic model[18]: the creation of an academic self which studies the non-academic, ‘”us,” the fantasised “rational” academics, against “them,” the fantasised “deficient” or “selfabsent” fans.’ (Hills quoted in Monaco 2010, 103) This is the academic who possesses ‘a sense of superiority, a sense they know things.’ (Bonilla-Silva 2008, 22) Within this model we can see an analogue for how ‘The West’ positioned its rationality in opposition to a constructed irrational ‘Oriental’ (Marcus 2001) where the academic self positions their own objectivity in opposition to the fantasy of the purely subjective non-self located within the idea/ body of the non-academic[19]. To ‘know things’ (Bonilla-Silva 2008, 22) is to position the other as not knowing as, in constructing a dichotomy, we can allow only one voice to speak.
In conclusion it is worthwhile to leave the last word to an Indigenous scholar: ‘Whose research is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit from it? Who has designed the questions and framed its scope? Who will carry it out? Who will write it up? How will its results be disseminated?’ (Smith 2019, 42)
When the Vicar was Finally Alone, the Devil came out of the Wardrobe Where he had hidden. He walked up to the Priest, his Ugly Visage Contorted in a Sickening Smile of Triumph:’[20] the Ethics of Ethnography.
We have reached a point where we can review some of the issues with/ within ethnography and ask what effects these have on the ethics of ethnography. Ethics must be central to our ethnography so that we do not become an oppressor, so that we do not construct a hierarchy where our (assumed) objectivity places us as ‘the very concept of science.’ (Derrida 2021b, 15) while our subjects are ‘abject beings, those who are not yet “subjects” but who form the constructive outside to the domain of the subject.’ (Butler 2011, 16) We must construct an ethnography which recognises the personhood of those we choose to study. It would, I suggest, be helpful to think of the relationship between ethnographer and subject not as who studies and who is studied but rather as a dialogic system whereby we work alongside those we study, where we are (to paraphrase Freire) ‘ethnographer subjects’ and those we study are ‘subject ethnographers’ sharing in the process of learning, discovery and liberation.
It should be obvious that ethnography presents problems to anyone wishing to engage with it as a liberatory practice as, within ethnographic practice, even liberatory forms are themselves bound up with an epistemology which argues that ‘knowing’ is possible and desirable rather than being itself a contested field within ethnography linked to issues of social power and injustice[21]. (Frinker et al., 2020; Frinker, 2008) If the act of interpretation, organisation and presenting data can be left to the privileged voice of the ethnographer even within these liberatory forms of ethnography (Piché, Graucher and Walby, 2014) then ethnography itself faces substantive challenges if it wishes to work with the oppressed so that ‘the concrete situation which begets oppression may be transformed.’ (Freire 2017, 24) In addition to the issue of objectivity the positivism and scientificity inherent within ethnography also problematise the ethnographic project. This can be seen in the reluctance of many ethnographers to engage with the political reality of their studies, preferring a false neutrality in the face of human suffering (Avishai, Gerber and Randles, 2013) or when ethnographers find themselves surprised that their ethnographic subjects may make demands of them regarding their material situation which (to their understanding as ethnographers) problematises data gathering and objectivity. (Davis, 2014)
By treasuring objectivity and data gathering ethnography finds itself in an Ontology which instrumentalises its ‘subjects,’ making them data points which can be used rather than people who need their housing issues resolved (Davis, 2014) or who’s children are being subjected to the torture of ‘gay conversion therapy’[22] (Avishai, Gerber and Randles, 2013) and in doing so reconstitutes individuals as possessions of the ethnographer where ‘possession is the mode by which a thing, while existing, is partially denied. It is not merely the fact that the being is an instrument and a tool – that is to say, a means; it is also an end – consumable, it is food.’ (Levinas 2017b, 8) The individual reduced to the level of ‘that which can be consumed’ becomes the individual whose cry of pain can be ignored but only when their humanity is ignored, only when the act of negation is complete.[23] To ignore the face of the other, their humanity, is to ignore their status as co-member of the community but ‘to be in relation with the other face to face – is to be unable to kill,’ (Levinas 2017b. 9) to face the other is to decentralise the self through a relationship with the world in its totality[24] (Deleuze and Guattari, 2021) To face the other, to admit the humanity of our subject-ethnographers and to engage with them as ethnographer-subjects is to refuse the devil.
‘Coming Home’ and ‘Home’ are Never Neutral: A Conclusion of Sorts.
In his moral fable ‘Co-Existence’ Sławomir Mrożek presents us with a good man, a man who’s ‘cure of souls [was] exemplary,’ (Mrożek 1996, 16) who becomes corrupted by his acceptance of evil. It should be our task, when considering ethnography, to keep in mind that ‘the devil doesn’t get tired and so he doesn’t need sleep’ (Mrożek 1996, 15) and to keep the devil’s ways in mind.
This study has presented the problems inherent with and within ethnography and does not propose to offer solutions, that is the business of another study and one that each person engaging in an ethnographic project must produce and perhaps reproduce afresh for each study. It is tempting, given the problems with ethnography to refuse to engage with it but we are engaged with the world and ‘there is no solution. One can only decide, cut, sever, and everything is bad. There is no exit nor any entrance. We are in the burning bush. We are born in the burning bush. There is no response. We are elected for responsibility. We are nailed fast by events.’ (Cixoux 2005, 14-15)
References
Atkinson, A. (2014) For Ethnography. [ePub] Los Angeles, London; Sage.
AvIshai, O., Gerber, L. and Randles, J. (2013) Toward a Feminist Ethnography of Feminist Ethnography: a Response. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 42(2) pp. 501-520
Bejarano, C. A. (et al.) (2019) Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Durham and London; Duke University Press.
Butler, J. (2011) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ [ePub] Abington and New York; Routledge Classics.
Butler, J. (2014) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. [ePub] Abington and New York; Routledge Classics.
Butler, S. (2009) Possibilities in Autoethnography: A critique of Heewong Chang’s Autoethnography as Method.’ The Weekly Qualitive Report, 2(51), pp. 295-299.
Cixous, H. (2005) Stigmata: Escaping Texts. [ePub] Translated from the French by Eric Prenowitz. Abbington and New York; Routledge Classics
Davis, D. A. (2014) ‘What is a Feminist Ethnographer to Do?’ in Checker, M., Davis, D. A. and Schuller, M. (2014) The Conflicts of Crisis: Critical Reflections on Feminist Ethnography and Anthropological Activism. American Anthropologist, 116(2) pp. 408-420.
Department of Anthropology (2022) What is Ethnography? Available at: https://anthropology.princeton.edu/undergraduate/what-ethnography(Accessed on 25th of October, 2022.)
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2021) Anti-Oedipus. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations.
Deridda, J. (2021a) ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ in Derrida, J. (2021) ‘Dissemination.’ Translated from the French by Barbara Johnson. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations
Derrida, J. (2021b) ‘Outworks, Prefacing’ in Derrida, J. (2021) ‘Dissemination.’ Translated from the French by Barbara Johnson. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations
Devine, T.M. (ed) (2015) Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press.
Foucault, M. (2020) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. [ePub] Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. UK; Penguin Classics.
Freire, P. (2017) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated from the Portuguese by Myra Bergman Ramos. UK; Penguin Classics.
Frinker, M. (2008) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford and New York; Oxford University Press.
Frinker, M. (et al.) (2020) The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. [ePub] Abingdon and New York; Routledge.
Levinas, E. (2017a) ‘Useless Suffering’ in Levinas, E. (2017) Entre Dos. Translated from the French by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshaw. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations.
Levinas, E. (2017b) ‘Is Ontology Fundamental?’ in Levinas, E. (2017) Entre Dos. Translated from the French by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshaw. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations.
Markus, J. (2001) Orientalism. In Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffer et al. (eds) Handbook of Ethnography. London and Thousand Oaks; Sage. Pp. 109-117.
McKenna, T. and Woods, D. (2012) An Indigenous Conversation: Artful Ethnography: A Pre-Colonial Collaborative Research Model? Available at: https://vuir.vu.edu.au/22800/ (Accessed 18th Oct. 2022)
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
Mrożek, S. (1996) Co-Existence. Translated from the Polish by Wiesiek Powaga. In Wiesiek Powaga (ed.) [ePub] The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy. Sawtry; Dedalus.
Mullen, S. (2022) Centring Transatlantic Slavery in Scottish Historiography. History Compass, 20(1) Available at: https://compass-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.napier.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1111/hic3.12707 (Accessed on the 1st 11th 2022)
Piché, J., Gaucher, B. and Walby, K. (2014) Facilitating Prisoner Ethnography: An Alternative Approach to ‘Doing Prison Research Differently.’ Qualitative Enquiry, 20(4), pp. 449-460
Said, E. W. (2003) Orientalism. [ePub] Penguin
Smith, L. T. (2019) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 3rd edn. [ePub] Bloomsbury.
Thomas, J. (1993) Doing Critical Ethnography. Los Angeles, London; Sage.
Veldon, E. (2022a) What We Hold in Common: Hierarchies in (Auto)Ethnography and the Formulation of a New Methodology. Available at: https://elizabethveldon.wixsite.com/elizabethveldon/my-research-blog (Accessed on the 18th of Oct. 2022)
Veldon, E. (2022b) Towards a Discussion of Harsh Noise (and Academic) Communities: A Study of Harsh Noise Communities as a Case Study in Academic Selfhood. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRBnyd4Mtyo&t=9s (Accessed on the 18th of Oct. 2022)
[1] Mrożek 1996, 13 [2] I have chosen to reference publicly available materials at this point rather than my Masters thesis. [3] In this story the vicar, when confronted with the presence of satan in his house, chooses to not act to cast him out and instead finds excuses for not confronting the devil until, during a visit by his bishop, the devil leaves a sign of is presence on the table (a red cap) and the vicar lies about it, claiming it belongs to his nephew. In doing so he seals his own fate and completes his corruption. [4] Mrożek 1996, 14) [5] The term ‘other’ will serve more than one purpose in this study and as such I will use two different formulations: when discussing ‘othering’ – that is the casting out of those not a member of the group to wish a subject (person) belong I will use ‘Other,’ when discussing ‘the other’ as that which is external to the self I will use ‘other.’ Though this formulation may be grammatically problematic it will allow a reader to more easily track changes in meaning. [6] I quote here from Derrida’s essay on Plato where he discusses the primacy of the spoken word over the written in Plato’s writing. Only one partner within a dichotomy can be said to have power within the dichotomy be that the spoken word or the position of ethnographer. [7] By this I mean that much writing on ethnography wishes to take upon itself the status of ‘science’ and the scientific method. This is discussed by Derrida in ‘Outwork/ Prefacing’ (Derrida, 2021b) in relation to the place of logic within the philosophical tradition. He points out that the tendency towards logic produces a thinking which tends towards scientificity as ‘logic has as its object nothing other than scientificity in general, the very concept of science.’ (Derrida 2021b, 15) [8] Within this text Paul Atkinson praises the work of the anthropologist Marcel Mauss who explicitly published ‘instructions…for administrators or colonialists who lack professional training.’ (Mauss quoted in Atkinson, 2014: 10) Mauss is excused due to his work on classification (Atkinson 2014, 11) but I would assert that the colonial history of this methodological approach renders it, at the very least, deeply problematic. Issues relating to colonialism and ethnography will be delt with in more detail at a later point in this study. [9] ‘Such acts, gestures, enactments…are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise proport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.’ (Butler 2014, 244) Emphasis author’s own. [10] Mrożek 1996, 16 [11] I use the terms ‘majority world’ and ‘minority world’ where ‘majority world’ refers to what may be called ‘non-western peoples.’ [12] As an autistic researcher I have experience of this ‘talking over’ in the ways that research into autistic people is often conducted without their input. Additionally, as a Genderqueer person, I experience this on an almost daily basis. My experience of white privilege makes me ill equipped to discuss the history of colonialism while my experience of oppression allows me the opportunity to empathise with those who suffered and still suffer from colonialism and its after effects. [13] My use of an ePub edition of Said’s work presents a problem for my reference list as it does not have any publication data included. This has been inferred from the date of the print copy of the same edition. Sadly I do not have a date of publication for this exact edition. [14] J. Diaz’ work can be found at: https://diazsounds.wixsite.com/my-site/home [15] The terminology associated with the discussion of those who were (and still are) subject to the invasion and domination of ‘western’ nations will be reproduced as found within the texts quoted. As already stated, I use the term ‘majority world’ in my own language but to impose a single, simplified, language upon all sources is to replicate processes inherent to Othering and Colonialism. [16] I find it interesting that I am being prompted to capitalise ‘european’ but was asked to consider the capitalisation of other designations of nationhood and identity. I have chosen to not do so as I do not wish to privilege the minority world over the majority world. [17] I have deliberately evoked the hierarchical dichotomies of Derrida’s deconstructionism here to show how ethnography constructed itself as a technology of power (Foucault, 2013) used against Indigenous and majority world peoples. [18] I do not propose here that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the colonialist ethnographic model and the construction of an ethnographic model such as I will discuss here but rather that Othering and Orientalism that was so much a part of the colonial ethnographic model can be seen being enacted in similar forms in contemporary ethnographic practice. [19] Just as the consequences of the colonial ethnographic project’s use of language had (and still has) direct effects on the lives and bodies of Indigenous and majority world people so the effects of our own ethnographic models can have effects that exist out with the academy. [20] Mrożek 1996, 17 [21] Though I discuss ethics within this study I have chosen not to discuss the field of Social Epistemology for the sake of brevity. [22] I am reminded here of Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘Useless Suffering where he asserts that ‘the justification of the neighbour’s pain is certainly the source of all immorality.’ (Levinas 2017a, 88) [23] ‘The other is the only being whose negation can be declared only as total; a murder. The other is the only being I can want to kill.’ (Levinas 2017b, 8) [24] ‘A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2021, 12)
Comentários