7. Toward a Genealogy of the Researcher as Subject in Post/Decolonial Pacific Histories

Abstract

Recent discussion has drawn out some important differences between postcolonial and decolonial theories. The former are associated primarily with the work of South Asian scholars working in cultural, literary, or historical studies; decolonial scholarship, by contrast, is located in Latin America and has emerged from sociological critiques of dependency theory. Shifting the locus of debate to the Pacific centers another subject in globalizing critiques of colonialism: the historian in indigenous communities. In this article, I examine how the role of the researcher is conceptualized in Linda Tuhiwai Smith's landmark work Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999). Revealing tensions between objectivity and intersubjectivity, on the one hand, and between essentialist identity and hybridity, on the other, I ask why Smith's book hinges on dichotomizing nonindigenous and indigenous researchers, who are by turn enabled or constrained in a colonial present. I situate this late twentieth‐century subject in a genealogy of indigenous engagement with history and anthropology in New Zealand and contemporary problems of historical justice.

Troubling the trope of the authoritarian father: Perspectives from the Arab World

“…Jacob (2011) has described how disseminating European ideals of a ‘muscular Christian” masculinity was part of the “narrative of salvation” that characterized colonialism as well an essential part of the arguments used to justify it both at home and in the colonies themselves. Johnson (2020) has suggested that given the history of how much of academic knowledge has emerged, it behooves scholars everywhere to disentangle their own “imperial entanglements” so that academic disciplines can work towards pluralizing common understandings. LaRossa (2012) cautions us to be wary of over-generalizations especially in the case of fatherhood studies, that can erase nuanced understandings.…”

Needed Methodological Emancipation: Qualitative Coding and the Institutionalization of the Master’s Voice

“…In an essay on the genealogy of the researcher as subject M. Johnson (2020) argues that academic disciplines must reckon with their own “imperial entanglements” to not only become inclusive academic homes to diverse communities of researchers but also to serve the interests of those who have traditionally functioned as subjects in the research equation (p. 423). Such a reckoning, Johnson argues, necessarily involves a re-orienting of methods of research that have mostly engaged in “servicing colonial dynamics” toward more innovative and inclusive forms of research that are both “responsive and responsible to the communities in which research was undertaken.” (M. Johnson, 2020).…”

“…In an essay on the genealogy of the researcher as subject M. Johnson (2020) argues that academic disciplines must reckon with their own “imperial entanglements” to not only become inclusive academic homes to diverse communities of researchers but also to serve the interests of those who have traditionally functioned as subjects in the research equation (p. 423). Such a reckoning, Johnson argues, necessarily involves a re-orienting of methods of research that have mostly engaged in “servicing colonial dynamics” toward more innovative and inclusive forms of research that are both “responsive and responsible to the communities in which research was undertaken.” (M. Johnson, 2020). Although qualitative research has certainly been open to change driven by decolonial perspectives for a while, calling for the development of forms of inquiry that are “ethical, performative, healing, transformative, decolonizing, and participatory” as far back as 2008 (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 2), that project continues to be a work in progress.…”

8. Finding Decolonial Metaphors in Postcolonial Histories

“…It may be, as Miranda Johnson suggests, that a bland and effete reconciliatory postcolonialism has provided the conditions of possibility for the emergence of decolonial critique, while at the same time foreclosing any hope of its disciplinary realization as "history." 16 "Down with every catechism," as Oswald de Andrade wrote in his ironic Cannibalist Manifesto (1928). 17 "Down with all the importers of canned consciousness," he wrote: "Our independence has not yet been proclaimed."…”