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Accepted Paper:
Invading Methodologies: (Auto)Ethnographic Inscriptions Between Berlin, Beirut and Puebla (Mexico)
Carolin Loysa
(Freie Universitaet Berlin)
This paper tackles questions on positionality as experienced by a Mexicanized Lebanese-German in the area of tension that is living, teaching and doing ethnogaphy between Global North and South, highlighting questions of access and proximity, and the responsibilities these experiences trail behind.
Paper long abstract:
As Mexicanized Lebanese-German researcher who teaches and lives in Berlin, my biography has been intrinsically connected to my choice of research. This should be reflected upon and developed further to keep decolonizing a discipline that started its history being nurtured through imperial colonial systems of thought and institutions. This paper tackles questions on positionality in the area of tension that is living and teaching in the global north while doing research in the global south. It starts by questioning how our positionality not only has an influence in the way we do research but actually co-constitutes the field itself, highlighting questions of access, responsibility and the accountabilites these experiences of access (should) trail behind, especially for white global-north researchers. In her famous essay, Gayatri Spivak was pushing for the transformation of the colonial gaze in the social sciences and asked the -often overlooked second- question: 'What must the elites do to watch out for the continuing construction of the subaltern?' (Spivak, 1993, p.90). As a a consequence and reflexive practice, ethnography should focus on (white) embodiment and its implications for our research much more thoroughly. Focusing on queer of color scholars like Ahmed, Adjepong or Hooks, this paper delivers a reflection and outlook on ethnographic inscriptions and positionality and the role they should have in contemporary ethnographic research. Furthermore, in a last step, it expands on ethnographic positionality as a pedagogical approach that highlights the creative writing process as structure through which we can challenge assumptions about the world.