Does feminist research perpetuate patriarchal relationships?
One of the weekly assignments for my Research Methods course is to bring at least one discussion question to class. The structure of the class is very cool: instead of one professor lecturing all semester, we have a different "expert" faculty member come in every week to talk about their specific area of research. It is truly a survey (which I haven't really had the opportunity to get before) and the lecturers have all spent a number of years researching and publishing in their area, so they really know what they're talking about. And you get to give your research question to someone who's rather eminent in the field and get an answer back from them.
Anyway. Last week was Historical Research, and this week is Feminist Research. I consider myself both a feminist and a researcher, but not necessarily a Feminist Researcher, although I do think aspects of the field are both applicable and valuable to my work. One of the readings for last week had to do with "decolonizing" our research subjects/participants, which I did quite a bit of arguing with privately. I think the concept certainly comes from a well-meant place, but any true application is impossible. (Your mileage may vary.) This informs my question for this week. I'm asking this not because I want to be combative, but because I'm really trying to figure it out:
In light of last week’s discussion about decolonizing our subjects, I wonder now about the ethics of researching participants whose experiences we ourselves are necessarily excluded from. Obviously such lack of commensurate experience does not affect the quality of scholarship (I’m thinking here of Cushman’s “The Struggle and The Tools.”) However, I can’t help but wonder about the ethics involved.Since we’re reading studies of the rhetoric surrounding maternity this week, I’ll draw on that. Suppose the female researcher examining rhetorics of maternity is childless. (I'm not even going to touch on the issues of male researchers here.) That researcher obviously shares experiences of aspects of “womanhood” with her participants. However, she does not share a personal understanding of the experience at the focus of the study, maternity. Can she ever, then, construct her participants as anything other than The Other? And if she further embraces the advocacy stance that Lay notes as characteristic of feminist research and applies to her participants the subjectivity of “one who needs help/advocacy," isn’t she setting up an oddly paternalistic relationship: researcher as Advocate of the Misunderstood, Oppressed Other? Researcher as Savior, of sorts? Doesn’t this replicate the patriarchal power structure that feminist research struggles against? Was Foucault right, and all resistance eventually replicates that which it struggles against?
On the other hand, it’s positively silly to expect the researcher to research only those things that she already has experience of. If we only study that which we already know, then what have we gained? Why not just sit around and write autobiographies all day? (Not that there's anything wrong with autobiographies.) Why not just affirm and re-affirm what we each already know and occasionally ask others for supporting views? Heck, except for T&P requirements, why not just sit around on the porch and make the young'uns listen to our stories/theories/whatevers?
So you see my dilemma. Surely, I think, the ethical answer lies somewhere in the middle. I'm just not sure what that answer will be.
I have no idea what Eminent Feminist Researcher's response will be to this question. But I am curious as to what your thoughts are.
Comments
Does the feminist scholar's role as advocate necessitate the construction of the subject as needing help? Perhaps she could be an advocate for the value of women's history more generally? Or for the importance of the particular subject but in a celebratory way, rather than a paternalistic one?
As for the appropriation issue, I think it needs to be renegotiated in each instance.
You are sure to get the conversation going!
Posted by: mjones | October 5, 2004 6:01 PM
Reminds me of Swift's Hack in The Tale of the Tub who argued that only those who lived in a garret, broke, mad, and sleepless could read his work properly since that was his condition when he wrote it. "The Other" is a cliche, 25 years old. You weren't even born when it was coined. The guy who did is mouldering in grave. Get over it! We marry the other, our kids are the other, we sell products to the other, we form alliances, armies, corporations, and governments with the others. The left has splintered itself to smithereens and now the Other (Mistress Candidia) will let you kiss her boot. Yes, we are colonized by the other, the other's jargon.
We are other even to ourselves, as Emerson noted, our own thoughts return to us in alienated majesty. Try, before it hardens, to write several paragraphs without using any pomo jargon. Try reading it aloud to the woman next door, or on sales clerk selling papers at the newstand, or the hair dresser. Write like yourself. Keep this up and you will become the Educated-Other - a ghastly fate. Remember, after your MA or Phd, the odds are you work in a cubicle. Try to stay sane. You will need above all else a sense of humor. Actually, I do understand - the conformity and meekness learned in academics, the mindless recirculating of cliches, is an education for business. Show humility to your teachers. Good practice.
Subaltern studies - graduate students studying themselves?
Posted by: The Happy Tutor | October 9, 2004 8:17 PM
My dearest Tutor, I know that your position as "Other" to the Academy is a state of grace for you, one that you cherish deeply. But really!
I am a bit - although not a lot - older than the notion of The Other, and both of us are still very much around today. The essays I was responding to are all post-millennial. What may not have been clear despite my best efforts is the fact that I was responding to these notions out of incredulity. And as you and I have discussed before, in order to be taken seriously within the Academy I have to write in reified terms. (Master's tools and master's house, although I suspect that concept is also too PoMo for you.)
I agree with you that such language is generally awful, and do my best to "write like myself" as often as I think I can get away with it - see my previous entry on Aristotle. And I would also think that you of all people would give me points for not swallowing the predominant feminist viewpoint whole, but instead questioning it and asking what good it really is when applied as a research method.
Posted by: Krista | October 10, 2004 7:54 PM
Just checking. Good answer. If you are in need of more starch and stuffing you might go here:
http://cc.cumberlandcollege.edu/acad/english/litcritweb/glossary.htm#O
Posted by: The Happy Tutor | October 11, 2004 9:24 AM
At times, you've evinced sufficient empathy with me, as a friend who is part of the "Other," to demonstrate that simply knowing your subject can enable you to adequately represent them adequately in research, regardless of different experiences.
Posted by: Michelle | October 12, 2004 2:55 PM
what a tortured sentence. i need an editor.
Posted by: michelle | October 12, 2004 11:19 PM
Michelle: Thanks! I appreciate that. However:
Representation isn't the issue here, colonization is. If I were to write, say, an article for the Demozette on "Michelle Palmer, graduate student and mother" and how those are hard jobs but I did not call for any social measures to improve your situation, that would be representation in the sense you're referring to. Many feminist researchers claim that advocacy is central to the feminist stance, which would mean that if you were my subject I would examine the rhetoric of your situation, situate it within larger social and/or power structure(s), and then advocate a possible societal solution for you - i.e. more publically funded day spas or something. (OK, I'm being silly. But still.)
Do you see how our relationship changes there? In one, you are the end itself and in the other you are the means to an end. When I adopt the stance of an advocate, I am using you to make my point (and to have something to publish about and thus increase my odds for P&T.) Thus, according to Tierney, I have colonized you for my purposes and set up an stereotypically patriarchal relationship.
Posted by: Krista | October 13, 2004 12:48 PM
Ah-ha. Yes, I understand now. I think I disagree with the feminist argument for advocacy in that sense. What you have described is absolutely patriarchal because it assumes that illumination of the problems isn't enough. A stance assumed to rectify the situation suggests the subject basically can't come up with an answer and needs help. How can that possibly not be considered patriarchal? I just switched to the other side of your argument.
Thanks for explaining it for me. I like knowing what you're up to. ;)
Posted by: Michelle | October 13, 2004 11:31 PM
No problem. But here's the flip side that I wonder about: if nobody ever advocates anything, then how can things change? And is there any way for the subversive to eventually avoid stepping into the role of the oppressor, a la Foucault?
Posted by: Krista | October 14, 2004 8:19 AM