Paper short abstract:

This paper explores my relationship with an education social entrepreneur in Delhi – a key ‘informant’ – and how, in my attempts to write a ‘valuable’ PhD thesis, I reshaped him into an ideal ‘neoliberal subject’ which I could analyse as an ethnographic object.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation I explore my relationship with an education social entrepreneur in Delhi who became a key research collaborator during my PhD fieldwork. My aim is to show that introspection and self-reflection – conducted both in the field and post-fieldwork – has been instrumental in the development of my conclusions and ethnographic contribution. This paper reveals how I, the anthropologist, produced Prashant as my ethnographic object par excellence, in part as a way of defending myself from doubt at career choice, and in part as a response to the academy’s demand to produce a ‘valuable’ thesis.

I provide an itinerary of my reflection that foregrounds how my ethico-political history as a subject of patriarchal schooling, and active critic of this discourse, oriented me to both identify with and abject Prashant as other. I conclude by suggesting that it is conceptually productive to position my ethnography as not one that studies Prashant, but instead the Prashant-I assemblage that has appeared as object produced by both my relationship with Prashant the person and with Prashant the ethnographic object in my mind’s-eye.

I argue that my introspective reflections on my own desire and subjectification have been crucial to developing this new framing of the production of ethnographic objects. I suggest that such sincere reflection on how ethnographers produce objects helps throw light back on the hierarchies that allow members of the academy to speak and write about others.