Inhabiting the Space Between Search and Research

This article explores the connections between personal and research journeys as a central aspect of positionality and reflexivity. It develops in conversation with ethnographies produced by feminist, diasporic and ‘halfie’ researchers. Based on fieldwork extracts from my doctoral research with Palestinian museums in the West Bank, I discuss the possibility of using our vulnerabilities to displace discourses that portray research participants as ‘those in need’. I use the concept of bahth, in Arabic ‘to search, to seek, to pursue’, as a means to connect personal and research journeys. Building on Naeem Inayatullah’s notion of the insecure self, I suggest that inhabiting the research/search boundary requires stressing one’s lacks and vulnerabilities. This is not a call on reflexivity for its own sake but a means to unsettle assigned roles with research participants, even if only in provisional and contextual ways.