A Critical Response to Sara Scott's ‘Here be Dragons: Researching the Unbelievable, Hearing the Unthinkable. A Feminist Sociologist in Uncharted Territory’

Abstract

This paper offers a critique of Sara Scott's recent work, which provided an account of the research process as the author documents and analyses the experiences of survivors of organised sadistic abuse. [1] More specifically, it responds to Scott's assertion that acceptance of a ‘subtle’ realist epistemological stance offers an adequate base from which to make ‘truth’ claims. The difficulties around defining and defending the truth status of individuals’ accounts, in an emotionally charged context, are truncated within this framework. The ongoing struggle to work with the complexity of academic discourses, without denying the lived experiences of individuals, requires us to struggle with the tensions and contradictions even as we seek to make judgements about ‘truth’ claims that are inevitably socially constructed, situated and specific.