Women's Studies International Forum 43 (2014) 1–4
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Women's Studies International Forum
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Embodied engagements: Feminist ethnography at the crossing
of knowledge production and representation — An introduction
Introduction
As the title suggests, this special issue focuses on feminist
ethnography as a particular kind of knowledge production and
mode of representation. The debate on these subjects within
feminist studies is not novel; indeed, the contrary is true. About
two decades ago, both Judith Stacey (1988) and Abu-Lughod
(1990) openly asked the question: ‘Can there be a feminist
ethnography?’ The two authors questioned the power dimen-
sion of the relationship between anthropologists and those
they engage in their research. This engagement concerns both
the ‘fieldwork period’, when friendship, intimacy and trust
often form the basis for exchanging experiences, insights and
dreams, and the return ‘home’, when writing-up means
exposing the result of that intersubjective process to the world.
Stacey and Abu-Lughod's articles were not the only publi-
cations on the possibility and premises of feminist knowledge
production. The role of the relationship between the 'self' and
'other', 'Western researcher' and 'non-Western researched',
was central in some widely read edited volumes that appeared
in the 1980s and 1990s. Notably, and without being exhaustive,
these include: This bridge called my back: Writings by radial
women of color by Moraga and Anzaldua (1981), Women in the
Field by Golde (1986),1 Arab Women in the Field. Studying Your
Own Society by Altorki and El-Sohl (1988), Life/Lines by Brodszki
and Schenck (1988), Interpreting women's lives by the Personal
Narratives Group (1989); Third world women and the politics of
feminism by Mohanty, Russo, and Torres (1991) and Women's
Words by Gluck and Patai (1991) (which featured a reprint of
Stacey's article). These were followed by some feminist,
anthropological works such as: Anthropology and Autobiography
by Okely and Callaway (1992), Gendered Fields by Bell, Caplan
and Karim (1993), and Women Writing Culture by Behar and
Gordon (1995).
In the same period, and inspired by these discussions, the
guest-editors of the current issue of WSIF, Tine Davids and Karin
Willemse, started a trajectory exploring the possibilities and
impossibilities of feminist ethnography. This endeavor started
in 1999 with the editing of a special issue for ‘The Dutch Journal
for Gender Studies’2, triggering a debate on epistemological,
methodological and conceptual issues that are still topical and
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urgent today. While the publication in 1999 was directed at a
Dutch audience, the current special issue aims to address an
international one. The editors of this volume convened a panel
on ‘responsible’ feminist ethnographic research at the 7th
Feminist Research Conference in 2009.3 This provided an
opportunity to discuss, ‘10 years later’, possible new insights
into the same dilemma with some of the authors who had
contributed to the ‘Dutch’ special issue. In addition, authors
from a newer generation allowed the panel to engage in debates
on other recent developments in the field.
Although the debates triggered by the question originally
posed by Stacey and Abu-Lughod are still relevant, most notably
in relation to issues of activism, postcoloniality and transnation-
alism,4 the contributors to this special issue have not particularly
questioned the possibility of a feminist ethnography; instead,
the notion of what constitutes a feminist ethnography was
expanded to include a diverse range of feminist representations
of knowledge production. The debates centered on the question
of how to engage in ‘doing’ feminist ethnographies at different
stages of the ethnographic research process. This endeavor led
all of the authors to produce creative conceptualizations that
were moored by different key notions: dialogical self theory
(Buitelaar), vulnerability (Davids), polyphony (Ghorashi),
pimping (Guadeloupe & de Rooij), epistemological doubts
(Nencel), longitudinal research (van Santen), self-reflection
(van Stapele), slow thinking (Straatman), and silences
(Willemse). These issues are explored in the different contribu-
tions from feminist and critical anthropology perspectives, as
well as from those of other disciplines originating in postcolonial
theory, philosophy, psychology/psychoanalysis and social sci-
ences. Notwithstanding the diversity of the reflections, some
issues proved to be important to all of the contributions. Here,
we briefly elaborate on the issues that we identified as shared
challenges: the process of embodied knowledge production, the
dynamics of agency and the politics of representation.
Engaging in embodied knowledge production
This special issue departs from the shared perspectives on
feminist academic knowledge production as being situated
and with its knowledge being partial and produced in an
2 Embodied engagements: Feminist ethnography at the crossing of knowledge production and representation — An introduction
encounter with others (see also Stanley and Wise, 2000). This
means that all authors focus on issues related to the
dynamics, conceptualization and representation of knowl-
edge as an intersubjective process. The title of this special
issue, ‘embodied engagements’, refers to this exploration of
the situated, partial and embodied nature of the different
research encounters that feminist researchers engage in,
whether physical, in the case of ethnographic research in
Cameroon, the Caribbean, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands,
Peru, and Sudan, or virtual, with respect to the life of Theresa
of Avilla in 16th century Spain. The exploration of the
implications of these encounters means that the authors are
committed to probing the limits of producing feminist and
responsible knowledge. Central in these encounters is the
question of how we relate to ‘others’5 and how this
relationship colors our understanding and knowledge
production.
Our understanding is ever more influenced by processes of
globalization given the increasing interconnectedness of our
societies. This not only brings this central question to our
doorstep and into our living room; the shifting relationships
between the so-called ‘West’ and ‘the rest’ position scholars
differently in the process of knowledge production, giving rise
to different research relationships with corresponding di-
lemmas, questions and insights. In disciplines like anthropology,
which is historically geared to ‘give a voice’ to others, the focus
was primarily on ‘the cultural other’ while being rooted in,
as Behar puts it: “an ‘I’ – understood as having a complex
psychology and history – observing a ‘we’ that, until recently,
was viewed as plural, a-historical, and non-individuated.”
(Behar, 1996, p.26). Critical studies, such as feminist, postmod-
ernist, postcolonialist, and sub-altern research, required an-
thropology, as well as other social and human sciences, to look
for ways to accommodate complex ‘selves’ and ‘others’ both
here and there.
In these neoliberal times, the inheritance of the enlight-
enment is revitalized, staging men as the center of the
universe, which it is supposed to know and control. This
postulates an almighty, but under-exposed, knower, while
the known is objectified, labeled, categorized and scrutinized.
Neoliberalism thus increasingly determines research in terms
of efficiency and ‘usefulness’, corresponding with an empha-
sis on large-scale research projects, (neo-positivist) quanti-
tative research methods and thinking in hierarchical binary
oppositions. The search for alternative voices and alternative
modes of representation that can accommodate complex
selves and others, both here and there, tends to be pushed to
the margins. Therefore, a counterbalance to these dominant
trends is not only timely, but also very much needed.
Feminist ethnography, then, aspires to be a venture into
new ways of conducting science differently.6 Apart from the
feminist project to both deconstruct hierarchical dichoto-
mous thinking and engage in (self-) reflexive processes of
knowledge production, the authors in this special issue aspire
to explore alternative ways to conduct feminist ethnography.
The main question we ask ourselves is: ‘What kind of
knowledge do we want to produce and be part of?’ If we live,
work, love, dream, fight and survive in a world that is
increasingly interconnected, then the understanding of that
world lies in researching the ways in which these connections
are made and maintained. These dynamics shape both the
relationship and the knowledge produced in this intersubjec-
tive knowledge process. Knowledge is therefore not just ‘out
there’, but the result of a particular engagement in a particular
context as a continuous way of ‘becoming’.
The dynamics of understanding mutual agency
Running through all of the contributions to this special
issue is a concern about agency, both in the way we
understand, conceptualize and represent the agency of
those we engage in our research, as well as in the way our
own agency, as researchers, is implied in the relationship
between the self and the other. The understanding of these
instances of agency involves epistemological, methodologi-
cal, conceptual and representational issues.
Agency has recently become a much-debated concept, often
evoking notions like free will and resistance to the norm,
consequently reproducing an oppositional conceptualization of
the relationships between actor and structure. Framing agency
within a dichotomy between actor and structure leads to it being
confined to the dichotomy of compliance versus resistance
(McNay, 2000). In this special issue, we propose an understand-
ing of agency that overcomes this dichotomy. As Mahmood
(2005) so eloquently demonstrated, agency is not only invested
in subverting the norm, but also in upholding it. If we resist
considering people as either cultural dupes, who only act in
accordance with dominant discourses, or as the opposite, namely
as revolutionary characters who constantly and completely resist
these discourses, we can start to recognize the effort people put
in to fitting into these discourses as part of their agency. The
conceptualization of agency thus needs to capture both compli-
ance and subversion as part of the processes of negotiating
dominant discourses.7 We think it is interesting for feminist
scholars to study this space for maneuvering and search for the
different styles that individuals in diverse contexts employ to
integrate and perform different subjectivities within and beyond
existing power hierarchies.
Agency is thus what lies at the interface of the, however
temporal, connection and interaction between the self and
other. Agency is not just articulated in the intersection of
diverse identifications like gender, class and ethnicity, but also
in the relationship between ‘ego’ and ‘alter’, and between the
‘home of the other’ and the ‘home of the self’. The contributions
to this special issue all deal with this dialogical and dynamic
process of knowledge production, trying to take into account
the fluidity and flexibility of the shifting positions and po-
sitionings of the self and other. The ways in which we, as
academics, author our texts on these engagements are crucial
to how agency as part of intersubjective knowledge production
is articulated. By doing this, we enter the arena of the politics of
contextualization and representation.
Politics of representation: (auto-) biographies and
(self-) reflexivity
As agency is the starting point of representation, it is not just
knowledge in and of itself that should be represented. Instead,
the focus should be on the shifting and changing positions of
subjects who are engaged in a dynamic, multifaceted process of:
becoming and becoming known; of belonging; and of inclusion
and exclusion. In coming to grips with these intersecting axes of
 Embodied engagements: Feminist ethnography at the crossing of knowledge production and representation — An introduction
agency of both the ‘self’ and ‘other’, several of the authors in this
special issue privilege (auto-) biography8 and/or (self-) reflex-
ivity as a means of analysis and mode of representation.
The biography constitutes one of those styles in which
diverse subjectivities are expressed and agency gets performed
and can consequently be studied. Narrating one's life can thus
be seen as ‘a speech act’ (Butler, 1997). Narratives of the self
allow us to understand how discourses confine and restrict
narrators, but also make their actions and choices possible,
rendering agency crucial in facilitating their ‘being in the
world’. As such, storytelling can be considered as: “a coping
strategy that involves making words stand for the world, and
then, by manipulating them, changing one's experience of the
world.” (Jackson, 2006, p.18, emphasis original).
Both during the research process and as a form of
representation, the biographic narrative is deemed to facilitate
a shift in the ‘I/eye’ (Trinh, 1989) from the researcher to the
narrator. This change of focus is not, however, as uncomplicat-
ed or transparent as it may seem. The question is, to what
extent is there an actual shift in the power dimension? Is it
indeed the narrator who names, defines and directs the course
of research as well as the meanings of the narratives created
in the encounter between the researcher and the narrator?
(Personal Narratives Group, 1989, p.13). In addition, since the
ethnographer is the one who testifies to this encounter and the
resulting narrated knowledge, he/she has a responsibility to
‘represent well’ this interactive process that includes multiple
relationships between the self and ‘other’. There are different
ways in which the researcher can display the diversity of
opinions of those who are involved in this process, but it at
least requires him/her to take into account or his/her influence
on the intersubjective knowledge process. As Gelya Frank has
highlighted, the biography of the narrator inherently includes
the ‘shadow’ biography of the interviewer (Frank quoted in
Behar, 1993: 320). As a consequence, the representation of
‘just’ a biography is considered here to fall short of representing
the actual process of interaction and intersubjectivity during
the engagements of the narrator and the interviewer in the
evolving of this (auto-) biography.
The contextualization of the narratives and the process of
narration are therefore not just optional, but a precondition
when it comes to considering the (auto-) biographic narrative as
a representation of the feminist intersubjective process of
knowledge production. As we, as listeners, interlocutors and
interpreters are part of these contexts, we cannot but include our
own situatedness in our analyses of these texts-in-context.
Acknowledging and taking responsibility for this situatedness
ask for a turnaround of the 'research gaze' (Schrijvers, 1991,
1993, p.144; Wasserfall, 1993), or, as Braidotti (2009, p.243)
phrased it:
“Politics of locations are cartographies of power, which
rest on a form of self-scrutiny, a critical and genealogical
self-narrative. They are relational and outside directed.
This means that ‘embodied’ accounts illuminate and
transform our knowledge of ourselves and of the world.”
Feminist scholars not only attempt to create more balanced
power relationships between the researcher and the researched
in the ‘field’, but also aspire to inscribe these into their academic
texts.
3
We subscribe to Braidotti's view that self-scrutiny is related
to a critical self-narrative. In many disciplines, critical debates
on the ways in which scholars claim authority by writing in
the last few decades have led to experiments with the style,
polyfocality/polyvocality and co-authoring of ethnographic
texts by both mainstream9 and feminist scholars. However,
the mode of representation and the way we inscribe ourselves
in these responsible ‘embodied accounts’ as academics are not
prescribed.10 This self-reflexive stance can be traced in the
contributions in diverse ways. Indeed, the contributions in this
special issue testify to the diversity of addressing this issue. In
our view, self-reflexivity broadly means taking a critical stance
that includes ourselves in the analytical plane by which we
may be able to take a step towards fulfilling the feminist desire
to create more egalitarian research relationships.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the contributors to this special
issue. Their work, creativity and belief in our joint project made
it possible and the path towards realizing it, a joyful experience.
We are grateful to Rosemarie Buikema of the Netherlands
Research School of Women's Studies at the University of
Utrecht, for supporting and endorsing this project and the
publication of this special issue. Particular thanks also go to
Dána-Ain Davis who, in her enthusiasm for this project, was
willing to write an epilogue for this special issue.
Endnotes
1
This was an extended and updated version of the 1970 publication by
Golde.
2
Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies (1999). Special Issue 'In het Lichaam
Gegrift: Feministische Antropologen op de Grens van Kennisoverdracht en
Representatie', 2(1), 3–15.
3
Organized by the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies at
the University of Utrecht. In 2012 Karin Willemse and Lorraine Nencel
organized a panel with a similar theme at the AAA in San Francisco, where
Dána-Ain Davis acted as a discussant. We are very grateful to her for
agreeing to write an Epilogue to this special issue.
4
For example, Enslin (1994), Phoenix (1994), Visweswaran (1994),
John (1996). Among more recent publications on this issue see for instance
Davis (2013).
5
The notion of ‘other’ is based upon how Edward Said has coined the
term, referring to the existential difference between what is thought in the
West to be between the Western Self and the non-Western (Oriental) Other.
Since we use it here in a slightly different way, as a reference to a subject
that may be different from the researcher but whom we want to engage in
interaction and inter-subjectivity in the research process, we use quotation
marks to indicate this notion of ‘other’.
6
See, for example, Craven and Davis, who suggest including activism in
feminist scholarly projects in order to counter neo-liberalism (2013).
7
This notion comes from Butler (1990), who refers to Derrida. See also:
Alsop et al. (2003).
8
In the context of this introduction we understand by autobiography
the story of the researcher that is sometimes explicitly told when he/she
chooses to write him or herself into the academic text or in the way the
researcher portrays ‘the other’.
9
In fact, many feminist works on experimental texts engaged, to a
greater or lesser extent, in a debate with some of the edited volumes by
‘postmodern’ anthropologists, who were referred to as the ‘ethnography-as-
text-school’. These caused the literary turn in anthropology, and the work
received ample attention from mainstream anthropology. Notably, this work
includes from 1986: Writing Culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography
by Clifford and Marcus (1986), and Anthropology as a Cultural Critique. An
experimental moment in the human sciences, by Marcus and Fischer (1986).
See, among others, for an in-depth analysis of this debate and the troubled
4 Embodied engagements: Feminist ethnography at the crossing of knowledge production and representation — An introduction
relationship between feminist anthropologists and these ethnography-as-
text anthropologists: Leonardo (1991, p.34); Mascia-Lees et al. (1989);
Moors (1991, pp. 119–122); Nencel and Pels (1991, pp.17–18); and, for a
Dutch discussion, Davids and Willemse (1999).
10
See, among others, Pillow, 2003.
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Tine Davids
Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Corresponding author at: P.O. BOX 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam,
The Netherlands. Tel: + 31 10 4082517.
E-mail address: t.davids@maw.ru.nl
Karin Willemse
Department of History, Erasmus School of History, Culture and
Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author at: P.O. BOX 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam,
The Netherlands. Tel: + 31 10 4082517.
E-mail address: k.willemse@eshcc.eur.nl