la rhume, la grippe, whatever

[jawnbc]

I spent most of last week at the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network's national research conference here in Vancouver. Which amounts to yet another opportunity given to me for shooting my mouth off. CAAN co-hosted a satellite meeting on community-based research (CBR) at the big AIDS shindig in Toronto last August. There were a number of academics espousing their commitment to CBR, so I sez "oh yeah? Well CBR remains ancillary to your larger research agenda, and I haven't come across many academics whose research agenda is primarily CBR. Or at least not tenured ones." Yeah, I'm good at either shutting everyone up or getting them howling. In this instance all but one of the academics glared at me: the one who was trying to get tenure via CBR acknowledged my point.

And a guy from CAAN approached and said put your post-structural wanking where your mouth is "great! we're always looking for folks like you to support our work!? " So I was asked along this week for the first team meeting of a research project in development. Really valuable, interesting stuff--you'll have to trust me, confidentiality dotcha know. So I sat in on another team's meeting (meeting another queer academic whose work I really admire, super cool-ça), attended some sessions, and rode shotgun for 1.5 training sessions on Atlas.ti, a qualitiative data analysis package. Mostly because I'm giving a workshop on the software in 5 weeks and wanted to get a sense of what might be good to, uh, workshop.

I went into the week with a fair bit of "I'm ostensibly not as fucking clueless as most white guys, OK" anxiety. But that fell away (for the most part) as soon as we got into things. It was a great conference!

Friday morning was a rare opportunity to hear someone speak whose scholarship moved me...and moved my thinking, forward. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Director of International Research Insitute for Mäori and Indigenous Education, published a book a few years ago called Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999).

I don't think it overstatement to say that if Said's Orientalism shattered the complacency of many Western scholars, Tuhiwai Smith's book made the next great leap forward: how to wrest control of research on Indigenous communities out of the hands of those whose interests are colonization and marginalization (and stereotypification and...). It is by no means a perfect book, but Tuhiwai Smith takes on a lot and accomplishes nearly all of it very well. I loathe the cult of personality in academia, so I wasn't there as a drooling fanboy. But her writing is clear and comprehensible--usually when dealing with subtle, complex and even paradoxical subjects. So I wondered how her interpersonal skills jived with her writing. And they're quite nicely aligned I'm pleased to say. She speaks among, rather than to, an audience.

I didn't stay behind because I woke up feeling rough. Within a couple of hours I was splayed on the sofa, watching Ireland select this winner of this year's Eurovision.

Comments

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Have you read Robert Irwin's "For Lust of Knowing" ? It's a pretty devastating critique of Said's scholarship.
And I still haven't been able to finish Tuhiwai-Smith's book - tried a couple of times, but it didn't work for me the way it has for you.

[jawnbc]

What's the gist of his critique? And who is he?

I read Tuhiwai's book over about 6 months; not because the topic was too intense, but because there's so many substantive ideas/issues. And I'm no longer able to read a single book, all the time, for weeks because of that damned job thing. The flight to and fro NZ/Oz were where I put it to rest finally. I think the sum is worth more than its parts: it moves a conversation along in leaps in bounds, rather than answers every question.

In her talk she was very transparent about her positionality: she works the border realm of Maori/mainstream research, which not all Indigenous researchers do.

It's funny: most progressive Canadians aboriginal persons in Canada look to NZ as what Indigenous/mainstream co-habitation could be (with Aus, the US and South Africa the other extreme)...but I've encountered few Kiwis/Maori with similar enthuasism.

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Irwin is a British Islamicist and arabicist. He really takes Said pieces for not knowing the field in his attacks on orientalist scholars, and puts up a very convincing argument. Argues that Said didn't konw enough about the field, or its history and distorted a lot to suit his agenda.

It seems here that we often look to Canada as a good example of cohabitation. Strange the way each country looks admiringly at the other.

[jawnbc]

I find that dubious. Irwin, not you of course. Every single humanities scholar I know, while they might critique specific aspects of Said's work, none questions his expertise in the sources he analyzed. Interesting.

Is Irwin Arab?

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

No Irwin's English ( I think...), but don't forget, Said's area was modern lit, not historical analysis. He did get a number of facts wrong it would seem. I'd suggest it's worth a look.

[jawnbc]

Aside from (perhaps) Foucault, who hasn't gotten a few facts wrong when taking on an entire cultural discourse? His analysis was discursive and wholly within the realm of literary theory and cultural studies. I don't recall Said claiming Orientalism was a historical work. But he did say this:

“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’ Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelist, philosophers, political theorists, economists and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on....without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively” (pp. 2-3)


I am knee-jerk suspicious when anyone tries to undermine the credibility of someone whose work so roundly critiques the establishment. Unless someone can make a compelling argument that Said's work is substantively flawed (rather than imperfect), I've not much interest in working it into my workload.

Have you read both? What are you reflections?

[jawnbc]

I didn't mean my last reply to come out as snarky as it reads :(

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

I'm not that easily offended ;-)Besides, I like you.

[jawnbc]

feeling is mutual :D

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

Hah! Don't be fooled! Intolerable wench, that one is :)