ethnography against autobiography, then, Probyn asserts the importance of ontological self-reflexivity as well, that is, of questioning not only how to tell stories or ...
Ien Ang
Beyond Self-Reflexivity
Elspeth Probyn suggests that what she calls &dquo;postmodern ethnography&dquo; has overcome the epistemological weakness of traditional conceptions of ethnography in its rejection of naturalism and empiricism, in its recognition of the ethnographic project as a question of production of the real rather than its transparent discovery, that ethnography is a practice not of revealing but of writing culture, in short, of story telling. However, Probyn also suggests that in its preoccupation with the difficulties of cultural representation, with the politics of poetics, this epistemological self-reflexivity generally leads to a lack of interest in the ontological position occupied by the ethnographer. In playing off ethnography against autobiography, then, Probyn asserts the importance of ontological self-reflexivity as well, that is, of questioning not only how to tell stories or which stories to tell, but also who is telling whose stories. Of course, the distinction between epistemological and ontological self-reflexivity should not be seen as an absolute dichotomy, but as a difference in emphasis, as the two are intricately related to each other: the production of knowledge about the other cannot be separated out from construction of a self-other relationship. Still, Probyn’s analytical dissection of the issue is extremely helpful for an examination of the politics of self reflexivity-and it is to some of the problems of these politics that I will now attend. While the &dquo;I&dquo; of the ethnographer is in constant interrogation in these essays, the ethnographer’s identity can be conceived in different ways: she can take up the position of professional intellectual (Radway), or see herself primarily as a member of a cultural community (Valaskakis). The epistemological and ontological repercussions of the differences between these positions highlight the problematic nature of the aspiration of postmodern ethnography to overcome the reification of the dichotomy between &dquo;us&dquo; and &dquo;them.&dquo; Too often the terms &dquo;us&dquo; and &dquo;them,&dquo; or &dquo;self’ and &dquo;other,&dquo; remain abstract categories, defined rather sweepingly as ‘&dquo;The West&dquo; or, for that matter, the ideal typical &dquo;white middle class male.&dquo; The high level of abstraction in which the debate is often conducted tends to obscure the real and practical stake of the politics of self-reflexivity, which is to deconstruct the power relationship that is inherent in the ethnographic process itself.
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Therefore I find Janice Radway’s attempt to concretize the definition of &dquo;us,&dquo; and to put it firmly in a specific sociopolitical context to be especially useful. In
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her proposal for a comparative ethnography, a space is opened up for a more direct confrontation between &dquo;us&dquo; and &dquo;them&dquo; in which ethnographer and informant figure as each other’s other. Such a confrontation is a potentially threatening activity, according to Radway, because it &dquo;necessitates a fundamental challenge to one’s own subjectivity.&dquo; Although I find Radway’s proposal suggestive and stimulating, I can also see some problems. First, in foregrounding the confrontation between two groups, the struggles within the groups are in danger of being neglected, as if both academic intellectuals and Book-of-the-Month-Club editors were two monolithic groups with a fixed identity. The very kind of postmodern ethnography we are discussing here, however, can only be seen in the light of some struggles within the academic community: it is against the self-appointed authority and privileged access to truth held by the academic establishment that the recent self-reflective turn in the human sciences is directed. In other words, as an epistemological intervention postmodern ethnography is part of a struggle internal to the Academic apparatus, not outside it. A second, more important problem is Radway’s presumption that selfreflexivity-the questioning of one’s own subjectivity in the process of trying to understand the other--is threatening in and of itself. But is this really so? Intellectuals have learned to enjoy the pleasures of destabilizing the self by appropriating the unknown- just think, for instance, of the popularity of Barthes’ celebration of jouissance or Deaida’s idea of deconstruction; and the whole canon of modernist art and literature which is premised on unsettling the subject. Therefore, self-destabilization may not at all be necessarily disruptive. On the contrary, it may be a form of confirming the intellectual’s sense of self. Self-reflexivity itself then becomes a hidden form of self-indulgence, a form of reinforcing a secure sense of &dquo;us&dquo; rather than deconstructing it! As a consequence, I am more pessimistic than Radway concerning the possibility of understanding &dquo;ourselves&dquo; through the eyes of others. What we need to keep in mind, then, is that the call for self-reflexivity is at least in part a strategy to find new legitimizations for our own institutionalized practice: academic research and writing. Overemphasis on self-reflexivity could prevent us from asking more disturbing questions: why did we engage in this practice in the first place, and why do we continue to do so (beyond the fact that this is our job and we get paid for it)? This is not to say that postmodem ethnography’s political intent, namely the de-objectification of the other in its representations, is not worth pursuing. It is doubtful, however, whether the context of academic research and writing is the best place to do this. We need to develop a more structural self-critical attitude, one that is directed to more than the destabilization of subjectivity alone. There is also a romantic edge to the whole call for self-reflexivity, a sense that it is possible to develop an ethnographic practice in which the relationship between ethnographer and informant is characterized by equality. As we know, postmodern ethnography generally attempts to embody this utopian vision through new and experimental techniques of writing, in which the self-other split is discursively mitigated and subverted by attempting to work multiple perspectives into the text. Here again, I see a certain yielding to the formal canons of modernism, characterized by anti-realism, textual self-consciousness, and the shattering of linear narrative. However, to expect that these new forms of writing would automatically lead to equality in social practice would at best be a case of textual determinism. Furthermore, it should be noted that the calls for more heteroglossic texts, for the dissolution of the absolute identity of self, come from a position of subjective
certainty in the first place, that is, from a position that can afford being unsettled. For the subaltern others ethnographers are trying so hard to represent, however, the situation might be radically different. From their perspective, it is often the firm construction and representation of a strong sense of collective identity that demands priority. And to this end, modernist writing strategies may be quite unsuitable, not to say wholly inappropriate. What I have tried to show here is that there is
a
tension between the
epistemological and ontological thrusts of ethnography, as well as a mutual dependency between them. It may even be that, for an ethnographic practice to be radically self-reflective in the complexly social and political meaning of that word, it is time to foreground its ontological assumptions and conditions of existence more ruthlessly, in order to problematize and contextualize its epistemological statements even further. The question of how to tell stories and which stories to tell cannot be answered formally, and only acquires its political significance in the multiple contexts of whose stories are told, not only by whom, but also for whom. This brings me to
last question: the question of the audience of I who is going to read this work, and to what wonder ethnographic writing. effect. Let me offer a personal illustration: When I first read Gail Valaskakis’ text, I did not read it as an academic paper but as an epi~a text which puts into discourse the constructed biography of a subaltern &dquo;us,&dquo; an autobiographic/ethnographic enterprise which is subversive in that it inverts the usual hierarchy of subject and object of study in anthropology. I was moved by Valaskakis’ passionate and militant narration of the Chippewa sense of &dquo;us,&dquo; an &dquo;us&dquo; however which is not a matter of immediate experience, not a static and unproblematic &dquo;us,&dquo; but one that is conflicted, historically changing, moulded and devastated by the institutional and practical interactions with the dominant &dquo;other.&dquo; I was moved because I identified with the subordinate position from which the narrative was told. However, my response was also filled with a slight sense of envy, an ambivalence which reveals the distance between us: sometimes I wish I could speak as strongly and vigorously from so certain a position of &dquo;us,&dquo; based upon a collective memory and a codified cultural heritage. Yet, as one whose ethnic history is thoroughly mixed up by a multiplicity of geographical, cultural, and biographical movements, it seems both impossible and unwarranted for me to construct a clear sense of &dquo;us.&dquo; For me, then, individualism is both a necessity and a solution, and this ultimately distanced me from the subject position inhabited by Valaskakis. It was the alternation of this distanciing with the identification I mentioned earlier that made her text effective for me. In other words, I connected to the text primarily through its ontological claims: its ontological discourse formed the basis for a dramatization of its epistemological discourse. But I think I am hardly a &dquo;typical&dquo; reader in this respect. What will happen to this text now that it is being presented in an academic journal with a mainly academic readership-an one
institutional context which by definition foregrounds epistemology over ontology? If anything, these questions highlight the necessity for us to be selfreflective not only about the writing of ethnography, but also its reading, not only about whose stories we tell, but also whom we address with our stories. Perhaps what we need is a reception theory of ethnography.
Communication
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University of Amsterdam
