Research Performances

Abstract

I revisit a participatory research project, carried out with domestic workers at the Philippine Women Centre, to assess how persistent conventions dictated what did and did not count as evidence. I attempt to push against these conventions, to entertain a broader range of evidence. Beyond this, our writing can be thought of as a performance; I try to imagine writing performances that provoke productive tensions within the audience/reader, between identification and dis-identification. Finally, our research itself is a performance; framing it as such may enable us to imagine and experiment with a broader repertoire of research strategies, beyond the documentary and the confessional, and multiple research objectives: here, now, and then and there.