Hearing girls' silences: thoughts on the politics and practices of a feminist method of group discussion
Titel:
Hearing girls' silences: thoughts on the politics and practices of a feminist method of group discussion
Auteur:
Hyams, Melissa
Verschenen in:
Gender, place and culture
Paginering:
Jaargang 11 (2004) nr. 1 pagina's 105-119
Jaar:
2004-03
Inhoud:
Many contemporary feminist research methods employed in the interest of realizing social justice advocate 'listening' to subordinated others, groups variously categorized and marginalized by gender, sexuality, race, age, and so on, in order to examine the sources and workings of knowledge construction and social power. Increasingly, feminist scholars are using group discussion or focus groups, in an effort to give subordinated others 'a voice.' Group discussions are seen as potentially empowering in exploring and enabling group members' social agency and knowledge production while at the same time diminishing the unequal power relations between the researched and researcher. In this article, I argue that the attention given to 'voices' in group discussions (dis)misses meaning-ful silences thereby limiting its political potential. There exists an 'epistemological messiness' inherent in a feminist group discussion method that makes it difficult to hear meaning-ful silences. Through reflection on my own research into the spaces of adolescent Latina gender identities, this article offers some insights into this messiness and recommends that a feminist group discussion method be guided by a politics of voice which includes 'silence within voice.'
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