Autobiography in feminist research

In my current project I work with autobiography in feminist research. I try to experiment with the dichotomy of public and private in different ways in order to understand how I myself am located within the different sites of my life, and how they influence what I do as a researcher.

One reason for starting this blog is that it gives me an opportunity to play with a public researcher attitude. So far, my research has been kept rather private, meaning that only a small group of people know me while working. I would like to practice expressing academic ideas in the making, and keeping a public research journal is a way for me to commit myself to refrain accordingly from bullshitting.

To be honest, I didn't have a lot of plans, when I opened the blog; it only occurred to me as something I should really do, and then I went doing it. But as I write this entry, I get the idea of keeping this blog attached to my project in a way that makes it possible for me to hyperlink (obviously the act of linking should be done by other than the usual technological actors) it to other texts that I write during this semester.

In a recent draft writing period, I ended up with a rather detailed study of my work practice as I decided to read chapter 2 of Rolf Jensen's Dream Society, a central piece of litterature in my project. At the end of the period (2 days) I had 12 pages of messy text with excessive footnotes, and I was only five pages into the chapter. The paper showed up to be quite an eye opener to me. I read what I previously wrote and started wondering why I found these things that I mentioned to have such relevance. I was distracted from reading by a lot of anecdotes and self reflections, and I had a few Messenger chats with friends as I worked. I added to the paper screenshots from what I did during times of procrastination, and I took detours into previous experiences which hardly related to the emotional markets of Dream Society.

Last week I didn't work as manically; my daughter was here. Instead, I spent some time reading and trying to figure out how to realize the four papers that I have projected for this semester (only three to be completed this semester, though). I think I have the first paper figured out by know, which is quite fortunate, since it is due on October 15. It will be an 'autobiographical reading study' in which I will use aforementioned text as documentation of the work I did. I will then use that study to frame a discussion about feminist studies, writing as a method of inquiry, and the role of the researcher.

My problem is, or was, that I had so much interesting text that won't really fit into a 15 page paper, but I still feel that they should be able to still somehow belong to the same body. With this blog, I now have the opportunity of referring back and forth between the texts, so that I can keep the more anecdotal stuff where it belongs - in the blog.

This is one way of responding to a question raised at the course of Academic and Creative Writing in Gender Studies, for which the paper is an assignment. The question was how to distinguish relevant from irrelevant when accepting that scientific research cannot be done neutrally in sterile surroundings. Personally, I find this question very important. I support the idea that we need to be aware of how we're situated within the fields in which we do research. However, I don't believe that we need to spit all that awareness into the research papers we publish.

That does not mean that I find it meaningless to spend time writing autobiography, it only means that I think that autobiography shouldn't distract focus from the research questions. Still, your point of location is an important piece of information which shouldn't lack from your research paper. So the question is rather: How do we clarify our point of location within the fields in which we do research, in a way that doesn't draw attention from our reasons for entering these fields? As suggested earlier, this blog is a way of responding to those questions.