Holding On Together

BT: It's a liberal humanist position to adopt isn't it? They are all dressed up, to use Meatloaf's phrase, they are all dressed up with no place to go. OK. So now they know that the world is an oppressive place in which they live and there are certain things that have gone on in their life which have accentuated their vulnerability. What would you do about it?

IG: Mine might be a little humanist, yours sounds unduly determinist in the sense that... to pursue the argument that when people have a better understanding of how they might politically and actively work for a better world, is meaningless. Is to cut up almost any possibility in action. Is that what you are doing?

BT: No. What I'm saying is that the life history methodology, with it's highly individualized focus, doesn't actually prepare the ground very well for collective action... (although) I think the collective subject scenario... has a lot more potential and it's certainly the approach I would want to support.

IG: But, I think one of the great advantages of the one on one, essentially individualistic mode... is that in quiet corners a couple of people can have conversations about these various things which allow both of them to try out ideas that they can later try out in more collective scenarios. And that's what we, as your unspeakable researchers do, all the time...

BT: The possibility then from either collective or individualistic life history is resistance. Is a recognition of what's going on and generation of activities to deal with those sorts of oppression on this project. That's a possibility (but) the reality is that Professor Ivor Goodson will go to New Orleans and Kings College, London, and here, there and everywhere to talk about this research. That's the reality. There is an inevitability about that that may be over determined. How would you respond to the claim, therefore, that, that to use perhaps an indelicate phrase of Patti Lather, you are simply involved in 'rape research'?...

IG: It's obviously quite conceivable that this could be presented as 'rape research' in a sense that, yes, I have these conversations and then I go off to other arenas and talk to different audiences, in different ways about these things. But it begs the question of what I do in these other audiences and other places. If I thought that I gave addresses which presented the people I've talked to in an unwitting and unwilling light, then yes, that would obviously be a prime case of rape 'research', but it begs the question very much, of what I talk about. As a matter of fact, I never talked about anyone's life history in the places that you've just talked about. So I never talk about those personal histories in a personal way in those places. I do talk about the methodological and ethical issues that they raise and the possibility that this may be 'rape research', but then that's something that I should talk about and it's important to talk about in those hallowed halls of the academy. But, I mean, all I'm saying is that it begs the question of how one talks about this research in other places. One might talk about it in a way that does confirm the allegation of 'rape research', or one might talk about it in ways that raise issues which in some sense resonate with the concerns of the prior collaborative life history work. So it may or may not be exploitative.