Commitment to Critical Research Paradigm

Is a commitment to social justice through research necessary and more importantly is it possible? The point of my class on performance is to say yes to both of these questions as the simple and easy response. Do I want to believe-yes...do I commit with faith-not yet-I want to but my cynicism compels me to investigate further. Supposedly performance, understanding that all of life is performance and thus a careful negotiation and also presenting results of research through performance is a way to commit to a social justice, or critical paradigm. I so desire to see-to believe.

This weekend for my qualitative research methods class (not to be confused with my performance ethnography class) I had to read an article on incest and the supposed way that research interviews can be a transfomative process and thus, create social justice. I don't like to compare, I don' think it is an extremely useful tool in the toolbox to have as it does not allow a thing to be a thing on its own, but only has validity through the way it looks juxtaposed with other things. This only reifies binary ways of thinking and looking at things (i.e. we know what man is by understanding what a woman is not-a complex comparison but a comparison nonetheless). Given my current context, two methods courses; one trying to teach me ways of doing that are somewhat normative while still allowing some freedom for creativity and expression and the other, a complete break-down of traditional methods, ways of seeing, and ways of presenting materials found. I bring up the article on incest because I do not think the way it was presented did it the justice it really and truly needed. This article would have benefited much from an engagement with performance ethnography, a combination of both performative writing and actual performance of the women and men's stories dealing with incest. That would have been social justice or at least an attempt. Instead the researchers provided us with some mail in questionaire data about interviews they conducted previously. In this process I saw little commitment to a co-constructed co-performance. The researchers portrayed little connection to their subjects, there was little bodily connection and no bodily responsibility. All things that dealing with social justice and especially something so traumatic involving the body should have present.

As it was the article was presented as a typical research study, but said that it was an attempt to create social justice because it gave victims a voice, a place to speak and be heard by a researcher who had experienced incest herself. Sounds good right? I thought so too at first. But I kept waiting for the bodily interactions, kept waiting to hear the stories. I didn't. Granted I think this piece specifically focused on methods (focus group and individual interviews) and not so much the content-but given the content something as traumatic as incest how can the researcher simply allude to this pain, this awful experience, but use the data as material to publish a methods article. This makes it seem as though the researcher has no responsibility to the people she interviewed to use their testimonies in the way they wanted it to be used-to help people (to really do social justice.)

On top of this the idea of transformation of the research participant, the abused, the victim, the survivor was made apparently clear. Interviews done to give voice to the participants was a "transformative experience." Was it not also transformative for the researcher who had also survived incest, or those researchers who did not suffer incest abuse-weren't they transformed? Seems that it would be hard for those stories, those testimonies not to make any sort of impact. This methodological process seemed to lack lack reflexivity and definitely did not view the knowledge gained as contingent upon both researcher and researched. And this process really seemed to other the victims. While I would never want to imply that something like speaking wouldn't be transformative, when it is presented as so grotesquely one-sided (that only the researched people are transformed) they become othered-taboo, social pariahs, something to avoid. And it seems to imply that the researched need to be transformed, instead of meeting people somewhere in a contingent middle or grey space, the expectation seemed to be that healing needed to happen on the part of the researched in order for them to somehow be whole. It seems an experience with incest would be transformative in itself-I know my own experiences with abuse have been. I would hate it to be implied that I needed to be further transformed through a research interview process in order to be whole. Although I still at the same time respect that it could be-what about those that did not feel the process was transformative?

So I turn to performance-since this article I feel lacked a bodily sense of responsibility to the "other" the incest survivor, the research participant. What may have better served them? First in performance studies one does not physicially have to get on a stage and perform-using performative writing techniques can also suffice. Being committed to social justice in langage choice, and other forms of presentation where power relations are minimized is helpful.

Using both physical performance and performative writing can create the ultimate amalgamation of re presentation methods to engage in ethnography and the construction of the other. But it takes the responsibility of the researcher and a commitment to the other to use their words as they desire and to research them in the most ethical way possible. This means bodies involved in trauma have to be accountable to one another and even if a researcher s body has not been subjected that they approach the situation as Pollock says, with "empathic empathy." The researcher must approach the subject with empathy, that both the futures of the researcher and researched are contingent upon one another, thus the researcher can no longer approach situations with an objective lens but must approach with a critical mindset to do social justice. Especially with trauma survivors. Do use my words to tell a social justice story, do be reflexive about the work, do recognize limitations in research methods and data, but do not use my words to imply I need to be transformed. My transformation will be personal and social in my own time on my own terms, I don't care how caring the interview situation supposedly is.

And part of the researcher's responsibility is to write in their own bodily knowledge. Not to make the entire piece about the self of the researcher(Madison)-but to understand the complex relationship between participants and researchers, between self and other (Corey). This is where Tami Spry's words about the "performative-I" really seem to ring true. She says, "I offer the phrase performative-I as a researcher positionality that seeks to embody the copresence of performance and ethnography as these practices have informed, reformed, and coperformed one another..."(340). She then goes on to detail the performative-I position is a positionality affected both by her personal life and her research but that it explicates her inability to either live inside or escape her physical body. Part of her healing was to write from that space between-the only space she could, which was her body. She writes about the knowledge she learned from her body when dealing with her study of healing among the Mapuche people as well as the bodily knowledge needed to survive the death of her child. The body is for the most part void in the article on incest, which is suprising given the content, which is placing the body and bodily harm as the focal point of research. How can the researchers forget their own body, their own sites of pain, grief and frustration with reading about others' pain and trauma. we must write from our bodies as we cannot escape them as much as we might truly wish to. Is it not the responsibility of the researcher to not maintain neutrality since this is absolutely never possible. We can never rid ourselves of our bodies and thus we cannot rid ourselves of our positionalities, so shouldn't we use those things to our advantage. I do not want to tell someone my stories of abuse and assault to someone cold and stone-faced with no reaction. I want someone to want to know my story in a way that they try to feel my pain and that they are upset with the ways I was treated. I want to hear the anger at such injustice. I want to hear that the socially constructed sexism, patriarchy, and domination that men hold over women is something the researcher is not ok with. If I can't hear this I will not want to share. And I do not want as a reader to see this kind of neglect for the body, this neglect to the humans who have shared the intimate portraits of their lives-it is unfair and it is not right.