Problems of the Modern Academic Researcher

 

Respecting the Repugnant

The rule says that when interviewing persons for research purposes the researcher must disclose his or her purposes and treat the person being interviewed with respect. But what if the subject of the research project is the mind of a rapist, a murderer or a terrorist? Is not disguising who one is and what one’s purposes are justified for the researcher? Surely you don’t want me to respect such a mind or person or ideology? To treat such a person objectively is immoral.

 

Casual Encounters and Personal Experience in Research

The rule says that the researcher must give the subject ample notice, gain his or her permission, and allow them to read, edit and approve of what has been recorded in the interview.  But what if, in the course of travel, one meets a person of interest, converses with them and later writes out detailed notes on what was said? The history of that encounter is a proper subject of analysis, interpretation and evaluation.  If possible, one can send the person a transcript of the conversation and then request permission and give them an opportunity to make changes. Should the subject decline permission to publish the conversation, do they have the right to object that the encounter never took place? Even if the conversation per se cannot be published, can what is learned therein be part of the researcher’s understanding and evaluation of the topics covered? If the researcher subsequently writes his or her own personal memoirs of the trip and includes the encounter, is it necessary to obtain permission to include what happened and heard? Is it necessary to censor one’s life experiences and maturing of thought to satisfy external regulations? Autobiographies, as well as scholarly interpretations of people, places, events and ideas become impossible if every casual meeting or conversation must be tracked down and formally negotiated ex post facto.

 

Some Things are too Serious to be taken Literally

The pretence of objective scholarship makes the scholar hide inside a series of circumlocutions (“the writer of this book,” “the author considers”, “research shows”) or complicated passive constructs (“it is said that,” “given the current state of knowledge, it may be argued”, “contrary to current scholarly opinion, we have decided”) and to avoid calling him or herself “I”, even when “I” marks the shift from citation or precis of other views, authorities and modes of argumentation.

Because of this shibboleth, the writer tends to take his or her presence in the body of the text too seriously. The real scholar, however, recognizes the uncomfortable or awkward fit of complicated ideas and simplistic jargon, and so offers opinions and speculations in the ironic way. Witty asides, subtle jokes and performative tricks mark such significant critiques of accepted and standard views and opens up understanding thorough the presentation of ambiguities, ambivalences and hesitations.

Moreover, and especially in an age when old certainties and truisms are put in doubt and when many expressions of long-held beliefs and practices are considered politically incorrect or at least inappropriate, the scholar born into previous generation and formed by protocols of academic scholarship now out of fashion, finds him or herself caught in a dilemma: either (a) to proceed in pursuing the truth in the way he or she was taught and long experience has re-modelled the ways of setting out proofs and analytical arguments—and thus risk rejection and contumely from the new generation of editors and academic critics or (b) to suppress or distort one’s writings to conform to the new standards and formalities—and thus lose the sense of honesty or integrity. Or instead of these options, to play a new game altogether: through obliquity, wit and irony.

 

The  Outside Insider

Someone writes a research paper about her own experience of an out-of-body incident or a journey into the underworld or some other bizarre adventure. The chief authority for their thesis is their own memory and imagination and, though they actually do read intensively in the literature of mythology, anthropology and folklore, they are focusing on something which cannofr be taken seriously in an academic document. It is one thing to describe and analyse something within the cultural boundaries of a non-westernized, modern and secular society, and another to treat as plausible and true for a person living, thinking and feeling in our own civilization. Or is it?

More specifically, a student wishes to study the beliefs and practices of his or her own society—for example, Papua New Guinea, the Trobriand Islands, an Aborigine settlement deep in the Outback of Australia—and to write a dissertation or other research paper on the personal participation of a community still functioning in terms of non-scientific views of reality.

Such a student knows what the research is about and attempts to articulate feeling, beliefs and knowledge that once was complete and self-validating but now because of such awareness and commitment to the protocols scientific investigation, the written report can only be contaminated by the paradoxical attempt to be both insider and outsider to such an all-encompassing belief system. 

But what does one do with a student who does not have such a background identity in some pre-modern, non-Western culture and yet claims to have experienced the shaman’s ecstasy, possession and powers: that he has, for example, descended into the underworld like a classical hero, participated in archaic rites leading to shape-shifting and has first-hand knowledge of primeval life known at best in vague and fragmentary ways through archaeological and anthropological evidence? Does one treat such supposed information as the ravings of a lunatic? Tell the student to write up his experiences as a fictional tale? Consider the confession as a speculative essay and ask for as much corroborating proofs as available in archival research? Walk out of the room in disgust?