Imagining the Other? Ethical Challenges of Researching and Writing Women's Embodied Lives

Abstract

Feminists influenced by post-conventional and critical perspectives confront a significant challenge when researching women's embodiments: the dilemma of representation. For researchers from positions of bodily privilege, issues of interpretation intensify when researching and writing across physical differences distorted by colonial and other hegemonic histories and legacies. In this article, I draw from interviews with diversely embodied women to discuss difficulties encountered in interpreting their narratives of embodiment. I reflect on strategies of embodied engagement, including de-centring my bodily self, re-visiting my body story, and imagining the other's embodied experiences in the creation of provisional meanings about participants' bodies and lives. To shed light on risks and rewards of researcher-embodied reflexivity to study sensitive subjects such as appearance and difference, I show how analysing my `body secrets' invites deeper exploration into dynamics of bodily privilege and abjection underpinning women's accounts. I conclude by questioning the ethics of my `imaginative leap' into other/ed women's lives and by considering more broadly the perils and possibilities of traversing the space between self and other, and other in the self, within feminist research.

Caring for vulnerable children: Challenges of mothering in the Australian foster care system

“…Rigour was enhanced through the authors' ongoing self-refl ection regarding this research (Hall & Stevens, 1991;Hewitt, 2007;Rice, 2009). This refl exivity was particularly important for the lead author who, as a woman providing long-term foster care to children, found herself positioned as an 'insider' to the participants (Blythe, Wilkes, Halcomb, & Jackson, in press).…”

Gender and Sexual Identity

“…In the previous chapter, we noted Salamon's (2010) assertion that, while understanding embodied experiences is clearly important for the understanding and queering of gender, the individual's understanding of their body experiences involves a dynamic interaction between what is physically experienced and how these experiences are theorized and self-consciously performed, i.e., it is difficult, if not impossible to disentangle body experiences from the social construction of those experiences. Rice (2009), in dissecting her experiences interviewing women about their body experiences related to ideals of feminine beauty, raises a number of challenging methodological issues. How does one get women to talk about "body secrets," aspects of their physical appearance, considered taboo to discuss?…”

The Weight of the Word

“…A researcher's own body size matters, because bodies of a slim or "normal" size tread lightly yet weigh heavily in spaces and conversations, discomfiting both participant and researcher. In her research on women and body size, Rice (2009) similarly noted how cultural power, operating through appearances and differences, continually haunted her interviews. Bourdieu (1984) argued that the material actions and movements of bodies are inherently imbued with power relations.…”