Paper short abstract:

This paper describes when and how I comprehended the ways in which my interlocutors, Chechen war refugees in Poland, remade their worlds. The main aim of the paper is to discuss what role researcher's life experience can play in the ethnography of violence, as defined by Veena Das.

Paper long abstract:

In a highly acclaimed work on research ethics and methods in the ethnography of violence, Veena Das proposes that ethnographers study the lived experiences of the survivors of violent events in such a way that the interlocutors' knowledge marks the ethnographers. Das's approach raises the problem of the subject positionality of the researcher. If the ethnography of violence entails allowing others' pain to be inscribed on the researcher, how do ethnographers inexperienced in profound loss study others' remaking of their worlds? Based on the method of autoethnography, this paper describes my own positionality before, during and after ethnographic field research among Chechen war refugees in eastern Poland. The paper draws on Renato Rosaldo's concept of the positioned and repositioned subject to discuss the ways in which I comprehended the anthropological knowledge inscribed on me in the field.