Eileen Honan

The ambivalent practices of reflexivity

Reflexivity involves turning one’s reflexive gaze on discourse—turning language back on itself to see the work it does in constituting the world. The subject/researcher sees simultaneously the object of her or his gaze and the means by which the object (which may include oneself as subject) is being constituted. The consciousness of self that reflexive writing sometimes entails may be seen to slip inadvertently into constituting the very (real) self that seems to contradict a focus on the constitutive power of discourse. This article explores this site of slippage and of ambivalence. In a collective biography on the topic of reflexivity, the authors tell and write stories about reflexivity and in a doubled reflexive arc, examine themselves at work during the workshop. Examining their own memories and reflexive practices, they explore this place of slippage and provide theoretical and practical insight into “what is going on” in reflexive research and writing.

Producing Possible Hannahs: Theory and the Subject of Research

This article presents and compares three analyses of qualitative data drawn from an ethnographic case study using distinctive theoretical approaches. The article shows the power of theoretical approaches to constitute the “subject” of a study and to constitute the character of the social world in which such a subject is situated. The three readings of the data produce different possible subjects located in differently constituted possible worlds. By putting theory at the center of analysis, the article shows how theoretical approaches radically influence what can be found in the data and how it can be found there.