Reflection on me as embodied researcher

This section reflects upon the ways in which my deaf, gendered positionality and embodiment influenced the research and my relationships with participants, as well as how the research in turn has impacted upon me. In doing so I locate my biography within the research as well as within the principles and values to which I adhere.

Stanley and Wise are emphatic about the need for feminist research to ensure

“experience and feeling” (1993: 60) is embedded in the core of the research as part of the practice of integrating feminist principles within the research.

I have discussed my positionality in chapter one and here I reflect more on what my positionality means for this. My perspective is not a culturally Deaf perspective. I do not claim to have or fully understand any other perspectives than my own. I use my lens as a deaf, female, heterosexual, middle class, white researcher to position myself in relation to the experiences of the research participants and to gain insight into these experiences. As a young person I attended mainstream school at primary and secondary

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level. I attended intensive speech and language classes to improve my access to speech and first language, English. I regularly attended audiology clinics to maximise my hearing potential. I did not learn ISL until my mid 20’s and rarely met or mixed with other young deaf people, nor did I attend Deaf Community events until this time either.

Upon reflection I grew up with a biased view of the Deaf Community and people who used ISL. I had no understanding of the beauty of ISL or how much it could potentially have enhanced my life and access. “Hearingness was the (my) goal” (Harmon, 2013:

168) and for years I made many efforts to ‘pass as a hearing person’ by disguising my deaf embodiment through actions such as ‘improving’ my voice, wearing my hair down to cover my hearing aids, and refusing to learn ISL (Goffman, 1959; Bruggeman, 1997).

My positionality opened up opportunities, relational connections and challenges for me.

Research participants have made themselves vulnerable. I strongly side with the argument of Stanley and Wise (1993: 177) that if participants are prepared to do so, so must I. I found it difficult to be vulnerable during interviews and I found it even harder to be and feel vulnerable on paper. Behar (1996: 14) contends that such exposure “has to be essential to the argument, not a decorative flourish, not exposure for its own sake”.

This tension provoked anxiety in me and required constant reflexivity to track whether I was contributing to the research by doing so, was it “self-serving, and superficial, full of unnecessary guilt or excessive bravado…or lead(ing) the reader not into miniature bubbles of navel-gazing, but into the enormous sea of serious social issues”.

This research raised considerations and dilemmas in relation to the concept of

‘insider/outsider’ research. I have discussed the fluidity of deaf identity and how my own deaf identity has developed. This highlights the reality that there is no monolithic insider view – “there are multiple insider views, multiple outsider views. Every view is a way of seeing, not the way” (Wolcott, 1999: 137). DeMeulder (2017) discusses this idea in relation to deaf researchers and contends that, to some extent, deaf researchers who carry out research into the groups to which we belong are ‘insider’ researchers

“based on deaf ontologies and employing deaf capital”. In contrast, embodied aspects such as linguistic capital in English, and being a member of the academy extends privilege. This means we are not quite insider which is also shaped by our other markers such as sexuality, class and ethnicity. DeMeulder contends (2017: 123) that it “is vitally important that deaf scholars display awareness of this privileged status and remain

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reflective practitioners; otherwise they risk simply reinforcing hegemonic structures and perceptions of oppression”.

Regarding this I found Hill Collins’ work (1986) on the ‘outsider within’ and the

“connected knower” (2000) instructive. While I related to some experiences of deaf women, I have not grown up within the Deaf Community and do not use ISL as my first language. In these ways I felt an outsider while feeling an insider in other ways. It was important I paid attention to my own constantly evolving language and social ideologies and their potential influence on me and the research. Additionally, as Lynch (1999) reminds us, as academics we are still part of the cultural elite through freedom to write and discuss.

There is emotion work/emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) involved in interviewing and transcribing. I use emotional labour to mean management of my own emotions - “to be there for subjects…and for the research” (emerald and Carpenter, 2015). Participants shared stark insights as well as joyous ones. Both sides of the spectrum comprised

“emotion-generating situations’ (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009). I felt connected to participants during and after interviews and I have continued valued friendships from this process as an outcome. In terms of the emotional management of the research Dickson-Swift et al., (2009) note that many researchers manage this emotion work through informal network support of trusted friends and family as well as de-briefing sessions with a supervisor - both of which I also engaged with.

Reflexivity is integral to and valuable in the research process. This is described as a more abstract way of understanding and articulating the impact of the researcher (their values, experiences, interests, beliefs, ethics) on the research (Ransome, 2013), as well as the impact of the research on the researcher. I have described how engaging in this research process has given me a deeper understanding of deaf culture and this has shaped the research as it proceeded. Simultaneously, it has shaped me – I have engaged in reflexive thinking about my values, principles, ethical research, and this has challenged me to disrupt my own thinking in order to rethink and reimagine. Young and Temple (2014: 44) rightfully point out that there are “different consequences in the choices made about who should do research with d/Deaf people, not just what the author might or might not reveal of herself”. Consequences occur on various levels –

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epistemological and ethical, and this demands consistent engagement in reflexivity. I have drawn out my reflections upon these points in earlier sections of this chapter – this meant I had to clearly draw together my epistemological stance and this had consequences for power dynamics and the relationship building process. It had consequences for how knowledge was co-constructed and negotiated and how I designed research materials.

4.14 Building relationships, power relations and foregrounding the voice of