Ulysse’s point of entry is the perspective of a
graduate student, and she maintains a self-reflective point of view in Downtown Ladies. While her
book is about the ICI ladies of Jamaica, it is also about a budding
anthropologist struggling to negotiate the requirements of the discipline while
remaining true to herself and to her purpose. She shares the lessons she had to
learn, the compromises she had to make, the mistakes she made, while trying to
complete her dissertation fieldwork.
The academy has its own
hierarchy of privilege, codes of conduct, and blindness with regard to graduate
students and fieldwork. Be reflexive, but don’t reflect your position as a
minority trying to make your way through the department. Don’t reflect your
position as a small black woman attempting field-work in a site where presentation of
a non-privileged self can get you not only shut out, but put you in harm’s way.
The researcher has to be conscious of her identity, her identification by
others, and the congruity of her self-presentation with that identity. She
needs to look and act like an American student, or she will be mistaken for a
Jamaican misfit both by people to whom she needs access and some who might
view her as prey.
I found myself relating to her story, with some clear differences. First, there is the
work you want to do, and there is the career you need to make. If you fail to
make your career, the work you do will not matter. If you propose the work you
believe needs doing, you may not make it past the gatekeepers, and if you
report anything too offensive, you may not get it published. On the other hand, you can find out
what kind of fieldwork is being funded, being called for, and put together a
proposal that is in your general area of interest, yet will gain their
attention and approval. Find someone you trust to proof your proposals, because
there are words you cannot use and names you cannot reference. No doubt, this is a dilemma for every idealist in the real world, where compromise is usually the way to get anything at all accomplished.
What is an
anthropologist, and what does the anthropologist do? When I entered this
discipline at an age past mid-life, I had to quickly reassure all of my loved
ones that I had no intention of going out into the bush with a notebook and
pencil. Since then, I have had to buck an expectation that I would choose a
field site overseas, or at least in some exotic North American setting. Most
people have not shared my concern that there might be cultural issues right
here at home worth examination. However, I am not the first person to wonder
whether it is really appropriate for an American anthropologist to visit a
foreign land, gather some impressions, and then report them to the academy –
this is the problem of representation that Ulysse refers to in her
introduction, and it is an issue raised in many anthropology classrooms.
Unlike Ulysse, I do not
carry the identity of a black Haitian woman. I am aware that my status as a
white American woman has meant a certain degree of privilege and access, made
better by an upbringing that taught me moderate skills for negotiating potential social obstacles. Yet I carry an
identity that is different from the identity of the Americans I will be studying,
and in terms of gaining entry into the field site and population I have
chosen, it could be a serious handicap. Who am I, after all, to think that I
have any right to start asking questions? Why should they tell me anything?
What can I promise they could get in return? How do I handle my own
presentation of self, not only with regard to the academy, but to the people
whose situations I wish to understand? These are questions I have already begun
struggling with as I think about preparing my proposal, and I am grateful to
Ulysse for sharing her experience. It is very interesting, very helpful, to
read about the problems she encountered and the advice she received.
No comments:
Post a Comment