White women speak, black women write: the politics of locution and location in the other researching the not other

Abstract

This paper scrutinizes a rare methodological moment when I found myself, an unseasoned black woman scholar, researching the lives of three white women. In this reflective process, I make a single point: that the locution of race is limiting if it persists in being a point of struggle for marginalized scholars. In so doing, I distinguish between race as the site of intellectual engagement and race as a point from which to engage in scholarship. I begin with a brief explanation of how I came to take the decision to research three white women and of (dis)locating myself as other to the respondents. I then examine my actions in the context of concerns raised by other black scholars in their engagement with the academic establishment. Finally, I draw on the works of feminist scholars and argue that politicized and strategic understandings of otherness can potentially create challenging means for intellectual activism.

Keywords:

• (dis)location
• otherness
• race
• academic activism
• feminist scholarship
• methodology
• self

Notes

1. The first part of the title, ‘White women speak, black women write’, is the title of the methodology chapter of my book from which this paper emerges. It was intended to signal the uncommon situation of a black woman researcher, researching the lives of white women. It was included as part of the title of this paper on the suggestion of one of the respondents.

2. Here, I track the lives of three academic mothers over a period of 18 months. In sum, I argue that the bifurcation of self into academic and mother is destructive to the academic mother. Instead I show that the wholeness of self is a path for potential intellectual liberation.

3. I was able to write this paper only two years after the completion and publication of the book.

4. Published under my married surname.

5. Some time after the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC, the main liberation movement), I went to India for the first time and realized that despite the startling similarity of color between me and almost a billion other people, and some similarities in the food we ate, I was unequivocally a South African.

6. The Natal Indian Congress was a political organization formed by Mahatma Gandhi in the late 1800s in South Africa. It continued through till the 1990s to be an organization though which many anti‐apartheid battles were fought. That it bore the identifier of Indian in its title was perceived by political activists not as a point of exclusion but as a means to organize the Indian community and a vehicle through which many anti‐apartheid battles could be fought, battles that sought the rights of all South Africans and not just Indian people.

7. Although I am not comfortable with distinctions between the personal and professional selves, Sally, Ann, and Sue made such references throughout the conversation.

8. After writing this paper, I asked Sally, Sue and Ann for their comments, in their capacities both as researchers and as the white women referred to in the paper. Ann said she was excited by the idea of oppositionality I brought to this research and was pleased to be a part of it. Sally indicated that had she known she was chosen because she was white she might not have participated. I discussed this with her and pointed out that I did not approach her because she was white but that the issue of white women being researched emerged only after I had approached four possible respondents. She felt reassured after noting this point. Sally and Sue were pleased that they were asked to comment on the paper and both offered valuable critique.

9. All the extracts that follow are taken from the epilogue of Academic Mothers (Pillay 2007, 159–86). They are in italics because that is how the conversation was presented in the book.

10. ‘Ja’ is the Afrikaans word for ‘Yes.’

11. In a private conversation, when she commented on the first draft of this paper, Sue indicated this discomfort. When I pointed out this was not what I had set out to do but that the decision had evolved, she expressed understanding though not complete acceptance. I respected her view.

12. Of interest was O'Donoghue's study of white mothers of biracial, black–white children. She makes the point that psychology has fetishized people of color and that whiteness has simply evaporated beyond study (2004, 68). However, her study is about white women who are not the norm in that they have married black men.

13. I use the term ‘black scholars’ and not ‘scholars of color’ because I think it better describes the people I refer to. Despite being of Indian origin, for 150 years my family has been South African. I am South African and I am black.

14. The terms other and not other, or other and center, or margin and center, and to an extent insider and outsider, are used in various writings to describe the concept of other.