Short Abstract:

This panel examines the transformation of researchers through anthropological writing and the reflection of their positionality. We focus on language's role in knowledge creation, challenging the primacy of academic English,provoking discussions on fluid identities and 'homeless' language practices.

Long Abstract:

In this panel we wish to explore whether anthropologists, as writers, find a sense of belonging (‘making ourselves at home') through our writing (Helena Wulff) or if we perceive the act of writing rather as a nomadic endeavour. We aim to reflect on how anthropological writing process may transform a researcher from a person who collects experience into a person who shapes a sort of self-knowledge, and how these moments of transformation are conditioned by the writer’s positionality. We are interested in the multi-layered nature of this process, as there are more transitions than just between the reality (and languages) in which we conduct research and the text that invites a reader to draw the knowledge.

We take into account the multiplicity of languages, their powerfulness (James Clifford) or weakness, their universality or limited reach, various connections with positionalities, ways of thinking and acting. We encourage discussion about transitions between languages, where the standard of academic English becomes both an opportunity for common knowledge and a threat to other epistemologies and sensitivities. Thus, we intend to provoke thinking about the practice of writing as ‘Wanderers across Language’ (Trinh Minh-Ha), which requires abandoning assumptions about coherence between identity (professional, national, class), home and language, where the idea of professional language constructs ‘an illusory secure and fixed place’ (ibidem). Instead, we propose a discussion about writing experiments that begin from a ‘homeless’ language.

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