Decolonizing Fieldwork: Examining Extractivism and the Visualization of Hermeneutic Injustice
Urmi Bhattacharyya
(Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi)
Through this contribution, I intend to draw attention to the relation between colonially-rooted practices of extractivist research and the production of hermeneutic injustice in anthropology, and thereupon reflect on the decolonial visualities of lived experience and multiple temporalities.
Paper long abstract:
With increasing scholarship on mobility, the traditional understanding of a bounded and spatio-temporally restricted field ‘out there’ in anthropological research, along with the presumed sedentariness of the subject and the supposed mobility of the anthropologist, has been thoroughly challenged. But this has also been accompanied by the need to critically reexamine the idea of coevalness in research narratives, so as to instead harp on the existence of multiple temporalities that in turn direct our attention to questions of power, social invisibility and injustice. Rethinking the conventional idea of field in a spatial sense and also in an epistemological sense as a site of injustice, my contribution seeks to critically reflect on the incidence of extractivist research in anthropology concealed through ethnographic ‘encounters’ that not only carry with it the colonial proclivities of subject formation but also the notion of unexpected contact. The recognition of the exclusive tendencies of such extractivist research, also turn our attention to the connection between extractivism (concerning labour as well as knowledge formation) and its discursive reproduction that constitute practices of othering. Building on how the visualization of difference has been central to the project of colonial domination, knowledge production and the construction of the distanced subject, I suggest that an attempt to decolonize academic scholarship in general and anthropological research in particular, then requires a visualization of how such exclusivist and extractivist practices have resulted in and continue to contribute towards the production of hermeneutic injustice and social invisibility. This does not refer to mere pictorial representations of domination, but the visualization and epistemological recognition of injustice through an accentuation on lived experience and social exclusion. Recognizing the incidence of hermeneutic injustice in extractivist anthropological research through the problematic definition of the field and the distinction of the ‘subject’ of knowledge-production, also reveals how such exclusivist tendencies denies the existence of multiple temporalities and contributes to the social invisibility of the marginalized. Reflecting on the politics of meaning-making implicit in extractivist research/ 'encounters', I intend to highlight the importance of seeing, through the lens of the interlocutors, and interpreting their lived experiences as crucial in challenging colonial remnants of relative elitism in academia. Dwelling on the possibility of alternative decolonial pedagogic practices, I wish to draw attention to the need of recognizing field-based interactions between the researcher and the interlocutors as reflective of their interconnectedness, embeddedness and the acknowledgment of multiple temporalities, and consider its potential in being viewed as a practice similar to weaving rather than encounter.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
With increasing scholarship on mobility, the traditional understanding of a bounded and spatio-temporally restricted field ‘out there’ in anthropological research, along with the presumed sedentariness of the subject and the supposed mobility of the anthropologist, has been thoroughly challenged. But this has also been accompanied by the need to critically reexamine the idea of coevalness in research narratives, so as to instead harp on the existence of multiple temporalities that in turn direct our attention to questions of power, social invisibility and injustice. Rethinking the conventional idea of field in a spatial sense and also in an epistemological sense as a site of injustice, my contribution seeks to critically reflect on the incidence of extractivist research in anthropology concealed through ethnographic ‘encounters’ that not only carry with it the colonial proclivities of subject formation but also the notion of unexpected contact. The recognition of the exclusive tendencies of such extractivist research, also turn our attention to the connection between extractivism (concerning labour as well as knowledge formation) and its discursive reproduction that constitute practices of othering. Building on how the visualization of difference has been central to the project of colonial domination, knowledge production and the construction of the distanced subject, I suggest that an attempt to decolonize academic scholarship in general and anthropological research in particular, then requires a visualization of how such exclusivist and extractivist practices have resulted in and continue to contribute towards the production of hermeneutic injustice and social invisibility. This does not refer to mere pictorial representations of domination, but the visualization and epistemological recognition of injustice through an accentuation on lived experience and social exclusion. Recognizing the incidence of hermeneutic injustice in extractivist anthropological research through the problematic definition of the field and the distinction of the ‘subject’ of knowledge-production, also reveals how such exclusivist tendencies denies the existence of multiple temporalities and contributes to the social invisibility of the marginalized. Reflecting on the politics of meaning-making implicit in extractivist research/ 'encounters', I intend to highlight the importance of seeing, through the lens of the interlocutors, and interpreting their lived experiences as crucial in challenging colonial remnants of relative elitism in academia. Dwelling on the possibility of alternative decolonial pedagogic practices, I wish to draw attention to the need of recognizing field-based interactions between the researcher and the interlocutors as reflective of their interconnectedness, embeddedness and the acknowledgment of multiple temporalities, and consider its potential in being viewed as a practice similar to weaving rather than encounter.
Decolonising the academy?
Session 1