Methodological Tensions – Working the Hyphen

According to Fine (1998) the hyphen between Self-Other both separates and merges personal identities with framings and inventions of Others. Working the hyphen entails unpacking scientific neutrality, universal truths, and researcher dispassion, where qualitative researchers are called to bring critical and contextual struggle back into the research process and produced texts. Fine (1998) states the importance of working the hyphen between Self and Other in qualitative inquiry:

Qualitative researchers need to recognize that our work stands in some relation to Othering. We may self-consciously or not decide how to work the hyphen of Self and Other, how to gloss the boundaries between, and within, slippery

constructions of Others. But when we look, get involved, demur, analyze,

interpret, probe, speak, remain silent, walk away, organize for outrage, or sanitize our stories, and when we construct our texts in or on their words, we decide how to nuance our relations with/for/despite those who have been deemed Others. When we write essays about subjugated Others as if they were a homogeneous mass (of vice or virtue), free-floating and severed from contexts of oppression, and as if we were neutral transmitters of voices and stories, we tilt toward a narrative strategy that reproduces Othering on, despite, or even “for.” When we construct texts collaboratively, self-consciously examining our relations

with/for/despite those who have been contained as Others, we move against, we enable resistance to, Othering. (p.139)

This quote troubles my position as author to represent and write on behalf of others, to capture and reflect their voices. I necessarily shape who they are, and how they matter

173

through writing and sharing the stories of Others. I knowingly took part in (re)writing these stories through recording and interpreting participants’ lived experiences. I knowingly entered a terrain of responsibilities and ethics between Self and Other, researcher and participants, where I constitute and represent subjugated knowledges. In my writing, I avoided homogenous representations, where I viewed each participants’ mad and dis/abled experiences as particular and unique. I left spaces in the profile chapter for them to write about themselves, constituting themselves in their own words. Some participants were and some became my friends throughout the research process and this required effort on my behalf to critically and ethically question, unpack their words.

As a researcher, I understand that writing on behalf of Others and drawing on their knowledges becomes a responsibility to participants. I sought to adequately and accurately represent them, their ideas, identities, knowledges and desires throughout the research process. Thus, I viewed participants’ knowledge as sites of learning about my own material embodiment, identity, and the spatio-temporal norms and values in which I function, operate and inhabit in certain situated settings. Working the hyphen reveals structures of Othering and allows researchers opportunities to engage in those struggles with people who have been exploited and subjugated. According to Fine (1998) studying the “relations between” helps a researcher to understand complexity, interpret contexts and multiple realities with informants and negotiate: “whose story is being told, why, to whom, with what interpretation, and whose story is being shadowed, why, for whom, and with what consequence” (p.135).

Hansen and Philo (2007) state the importance of appreciating different spaces we all occupy where the embodied reality of disability sometimes entails doing things

174

differently, in spaces and timings. Avoiding normalizing space and time patterns of conduct was, therefore, an important consideration when thinking about my own ableism and developing an understanding of how people experience various times/spaces (Hansen & Philo, 1997). Fontana and Frey (2005), for instance, assert that questions of access to the setting emerge where researchers may sometimes struggle to gain access. This also entailed understanding the language and culture of respondents to communicate effectively and avoid misunderstandings. Other important considerations included

deciding how to present myself, establish rapport, and gain trust (Fontana & Frey, 2005). To do so, I shared stories, about my experiences with dis/ability. I sought to be open and transparent about my life and spoke about my mom, a special education teacher who taught me about disability issues in education, my best friend who is blind, my academic work, and other personal and professional disability-related experiences. Different stories resonated at different times, I instantiated stories about my Italian-cultural up bringing when it made sense and helped forge connections. I also reflected on salient facets of my lived experiences shaping my interpretive onto-epistemological lenses. I went back to theory, interview data, and literature often.

To work the hyphen, I engaged in dialogue in interviews with research participants while being cognizant of my temporary abled-bodied position. I opened myself up to participants’ questions about my lived experiences, purposes and rationale for this research. I maintained a research journal throughout the course of this study. As interviews began I listened and reflected on participants’ perspectives, and revisited relevant disability studies literature. A key phrase in disability research “nothing about us, without us” (Charlton, 1998, p.3) permitted me to reflect on how in my writing I am

175

representing the views and ideas of disabled people. As an example of how I tried to work at working the hyphen I include a passage from my post-interview research journaling with Annie C who identifies as Death Fat:

Annie identifies as ‘death fat’. I was immediately taken back by this term, asking for clarification originally thinking it was def fat, (in my mind meaning definitely fat). She proudly stated that she was unashamed of being fat, that critical fat studies brought her to this point. Her identity tied to her academic life and perhaps vice versa. I struggled to use her language. Do I have the right to use it? Can I resonate what she was saying, repeat those words? Words such as fat, represented a derogatory way of speaking of another individual, to call her fat would be rude (wouldn’t it?). My skinniness became obvious, my skinny male white embodied self felt odd sitting in this chair that was crafted for my body, made for people like me. I felt uncomfortable, yet I knew that this was a palatable discomfort, one that was likely fleeting, temporary, and a confrontation with my own privilege that would likely soon go away. She told me how certain chairs with arms leave little space for her body, that she was ridiculed infront of an entire lecture hall, that spaces are not designed for her in mind, and that people actively create campaigns to eliminate her body type. Her devalued embodied existence, which became known to me through her words, was one that she valued.

In this way, I worked at understanding, thinking about constituting language, my own beliefs and attitudes and ways of (de)valuing certain material-embodied subjectivities. I had to learn to sit in discomfort with others when I felt my own body fitting too easy in

176

place. Some of my unquestioned layers privilege became apparent through my participants’ knowledges.

Fine (1998) asserts that researchers need to work the hyphen when engaging in social struggles with marginalized individuals and groups:

When we opt…to engage in social struggles with those who have been exploited and subjugated, we work the hyphen, revealing far more about ourselves, and far more about structures of Othering. Eroding the fixedness of categories, we and they enter and play with the blurred boundaries that proliferate. (p.135)

This points to the limits of working the hyphen and in engaging in struggle with others, as my research project and process enters this terrain of struggle. Yet, I as a researcher may not fully comprehend the depths of struggle encountered by my participants, nor feel their true struggles. Thus, I attempted to fore-ground the voices and views of mad and disabled students. This was reflected in my study design and research questions that sought to critically examine institutional practices by highlighting the knowledge(s) of mad and disabled students. Data collection, analysis and writing reflected this goal by maintaining the integrity of students’ views by offering full text quotations, with interpretations sensitive to issues of representation. Through highlighting the socio- spatial knowledge(s) of mad and disabled students I was conscious of the need to be attentive to the voices and experiences of my research participants.

In researching struggle in relation to the experiences of mad and disabled students, I first tried to understand and map out struggle, I questioned the struggle and pondered where, what and why, I shared information back with participants and I hope this enables sustained efforts to address oppression and marginalization. In this regard, I

177

am somewhat at a loss in questioning whether I engaged truly and properly with my participants’ struggles. I shared my own stories of loss, grief, and struggle that at times may border with dis/abling and mad resonances. We talked about strategies, tactics, and ways to counter-oppression. In my teaching efforts, I learned from one participant to disseminate mad knowledge through library books, so I requested them to be purchased and these mad texts identified by my participant are now at the library Disability Studies program at King’s College at the Western University. In this way, I learned a bit about the politics of struggle, and how to operationalize resources available to me to hopefully engage in better mad teaching-researching against ableism-sanism. In the authoring process and understanding of co-construction of knowledge I drew on participants’ quotes and knowledges to make sense of their struggles, describing and unpacking socio- spatial temporal university norms of conduct, governance, policies and practices as relating to their experiences with discrimination, alienation, and oppression.

The current neoliberal governance of universities along with constraints and requirements associated with completing a doctorate meant that the time commitments and investments to doing the type of participatory research required to truly commit to co-construction of knowledge as I hoped was greatly hampered. Institutional power relations at play mediated the research process and placed time constraints and financial pressures on me as a researcher to complete within a four-year timeline and limited my choices as a researcher. Nevertheless, through open conversational interviews, dialogues, and ethically representing participants through this research, I remained committed to synergistic knowledge production between participants and myself even if only occurring at these fleeting moments. Together we own those moments, and the shared knowledges

178

that emerged from those moments. Participants helped me learn a language of interpretation, and sustained ethics guiding my interpretations.

Disability researchers need to consider power relations and authority when writing about others. This entails reflexive practice by the researcher in choice of theory, methodology, writing, language, and representation of others, authorship, who is in and left out, what is written about and left out, and sustained attention to power in the research process.

Drawing on Trihn (1989) hooks (1990) describes importance of considering the power and authority in the research-writing process as follows:

no need to hear your voice when I talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I rewrite myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still the colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now the centre of my talk. (p.151-152)

The above paragraph speaks to the power and authority of writing, authoring and

representing the views of disabled students and others in the research process. I aimed to strike a balance between participatory research designs and retaining control over the research process in my research, some of these decisions are based on career stage, program requirements, and wanting to show openness in the research process in order to balance the needs and wants of respondents. In authoring, I asked participants how they wanted to be represented, why they wanted to be part of this particular research, what were their hopes in being included in dissemination of findings. We spoke about the

179

research process and products where participants expressed a desire to have their true authentic thoughts and voices operationalized and circulated for change. We discussed my role as a research as providing potential platforms, venues, and avenues for their voices to be heard by different audiences. In promising to give back findings, I decidedly have made a commitment as an author to share my interpretations and demonstrate listening to their ideas and knowledges through my analytic writing. I do not relinquish the author function or my role and power as author to write and interpret the stories of others, but I may function as a more responsible, humble, pensive, listening author. Writing on others needs to be approached thoughtfully and with earnest concern to adequately speak with and not just about research participants. I wrote and listened about the issues that mattered to my mad and disabled participants, issues of access, disclosure, negative attitudes, architectural barriers, and ways to challenge dominant norms.

Ultimately, mad and disabled research subjects were not involved in the writing up or data, interpretation of data, or critiquing my interpretations, and thus processes of co- construction of knowledge were quite constrained and limited to moments within the interview process. Participants will be able to provide critiques after I share the complete dissertation with them.

This study also engaged with perspectives of persons who identified as non- disabled in the academy. University instructors and disability office workers offered insights into the ways in which disability is understood, constructed, and socio-spatially treated in university settings. According to Tregaskis (2000):

What seems to be missing from existing disability studies analyses is what is happening on ‘the other side of the coin’, as it were: namely, an investigation of

180

the individual and collective ways in which non-disabled people’s attitudes, beliefs and perspectives on disability and impairment are constructed and maintained. (p.344)

Thus, by examining the views of disability office workers and university instructors it was thought that insights into dominant and potentially ableist attitudes, beliefs, and related practices could be illuminated particularly with regards to the generating

knowledge about conditions that exclude and deny access to disabled and mad persons. As a researcher who identifies as temporarily able-bodied, adopted, white, middle class, heterosexual male from the global north I was conscious of occupying a societal position of privilege. Critically reflecting on privilege was an important aspect of this study. Through reflexive research practice I hoped to develop a critical gaze when

examining experiences of disabled students, to learn from their voices and consider issues of power/knowledge in university settings. I wanted to position myself not as an expert, rather as a co-constructor of knowledge.

For me, participants represented experts having detailed socio-spatial knowledge about dis/ability and the workings of universities. I shared with them my theoretical insights and asked them to help me refine, hone in my theorizing about space,

knowledge, and power. I grounded and contextualized experiences checking back with them, sometimes asking quite overtly does this relate to surveillance, dividing practices, normalization? Am I on the right track with my questions, ideas, and analysis? How would you want me to write this up and reflect your thoughts and ideas? How do you feel disabled persons are treated and understood in comparison to able-bodied individuals? How do you disclose disability, where do you disclose, and with whom? My questioning

181

shifted and changed where I began to unpack knowledge-power relations at the institution, asking more detailed and specific questions about the actual policies and workings of universities. Things got grittier and together with participants we dug deeper. I questioned, does it really represent an accommodation if you are placed in a separate room, is that not segregation or alienation? I shared some tactics and strategies

participants told me with others, and information about the universities obligations and responsibilities to provide accommodations. In this way, I restated that access to accommodations represented a fundamental right. We co-constructed knowledge by theorizing together, working empirical ideas and observations in with socio-spatial theories, kneading them together, sharing ideas, refining and sometimes rejecting

theorizing when it did not fit or adequately explain experience. Sometimes Foucault was not enough, and other spatial-theorists such as Lefebvre or Soja added nuanced insights explaining the uneven distribution of resources in spaces, and ways of enabling spatial justice.

The relationship between researcher and research subjects has been characterized as a relationship between the oppressor and oppressed as it is the oppressor who defines the problem, nature of research, and interactions between researcher and subjects (Fine, 1998). According to Fine (1998) speech about the “Other” often masks oppressive talk and erases voices. Forcing subjugated voices in the fore of texts and by exploiting privileged voices to uncover and scrutinize technologies of othering qualitative researchers may disrupt othering and highlight struggles of social injustice opening a sense of possibility (Fine, 1998).

182

[w]hile it may be the case that geographers achieve particular understandings of the spatial world by theorizing it, we cannot claim to ‘know’ intimately another person’s experiential spatial world, whatever approach we take – these

knowledges are always going to be partial. (p.175)

Thus, both the researcher and research subject share expertise and knowledge in

understanding how disability is experienced and situated particulars spaces and times. I drew on my knowledges of university policies, disability literature, and personal

experiences and also learned about these issues, other resources, and readings, refined my theorizing and gained also nuanced empirical experiential socio-spatial knowledges from participants.

I positioned myself as curious to learn about and from my participants’

experiences. I asked participants to teach me about how they self-defined and understood disability, what conditions, attitudes, policies, practices, and institutional factors were dis/abling for them? As an example, I learned about my own interview techniques from a participant who identified with short-term memory issues. I sometimes asked several questions consecutively without listening to a response. My participant informed me that