Go and ask your mother what your name is.

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Accepted Paper:

Go and ask your mother what your name is.
Adjoa Armah (Royal College of Art)

Paper short abstract:

How does one learn to listen past words? How is the ethnographer to address questions that are not directed to the anthropologist subject but to the diasporic returnee? Where in the research shall we place the answers of questions meant for the participant of here, not the observer from there?

Paper long abstract:

"Meda w'ase."

"What is your name?"

"Lucy Adjoa."

"That's not a name."

"Lucy Adjoa Armah."

"No."

"It's the name in my passport."

*Pause*

"...Ask your mother what your name is!"

***

I include this exchange to remind myself, and you, of three things:

1.What is on paper, particularly the text, is not necessarily the correct, appropriate or only truth.

2.One needs to understand themselves on different terms in the field. Fieldwork tells you who you need to be, you do not get to insist on who you are.

3.Any question can be a blink or a wink.

Twitch

What is your name?

Wink

What is your tribe?

What language do you speak?

Explain your accent?

Where are you from?

No. Where are you really from?

Tell me about your family.

What do you know of your history?

How do you see me?

How do you see you?

How are we different?

How are we the same?

Do you see yourself in me?

How am I to engage with you?

What are you doing here?

Panel Nar03
To narrate narrators: a "making of"
Session 1 Wednesday 17 April, 2019, 9:00-10:45