Research as an Act of Love: Ethics, Émigrés, and the Praxis of Becoming Human

Abstract

Conceptual in nature, this paper revisits the debate on the nature and ethical implication of what it means to conduct research with/in immigrant communities. The view from “inside” is different from the view from “‘outside,” I am contending, and both are mediated by what I am calling I–Thou Research Ethics. This is an Ethics that places émigrés as our neighbors, engineers, doctors, etc. Mexico now lives next door, I am arguing, and Mexicans are now hyphenated: Mexican-Americans (for example). Gilles Deleuze (2005) refers to this as “post-identity phenomenon.” To deal with it, I shall (a) discuss its ethics through The Stephen Tyler Affair (hooks, 1990); (b) build an “I–Thou Research Ethics” as a response to this Affair; and (c) conclude with a genuine dialogue in which research becomes an act of love, and “researcher–researched” becomes an “‘I–Thou relationship.” Only then can we hope for the transformative praxis of becoming human.