Transcending Subjectivities. Academic writing, narrative method, and the creation of discourse (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Sociology - Gender Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University , course: PhD, language: English, abstract: This paper is an attempt to create the bridge between how academic writing is shaped in the traditional training, and how it often desires to be expressed in subjective voices. Conducting a research into the twilight zone of sexual identities does desire unconventional methods, however, there are degrees that can be explored between subjectivity and objectivity to create a space beyond binary specificities. So, if presented traditionally, this paper is a collection of stories, which elucidates the need to accommodate creative writing within academic boundaries.

When we undertake discourses about issues of marginality and exclusion in society, within a strictly academic objective view, it tends to dilute the possibilities of addressing the individual as an active agent. The tradition of academic writing follows this standpoint, thereby undermining the poetics of social relations. The primary aim of social science research is the foundation of objective analysis: creating a link between an emotional organic being and the politics of evolution. The same objectivity also creates vast lacuna of knowledge, which could otherwise produce more deductive results, in research into human relationships.

My doctoral dissertation is a compilation of narratives collected over a period of three years, from individuals who voluntarily identify with the "alternative sexuality" category. I spoke to over fifteen respondents during this fieldwork, and collected their stories by conducting detailed interviews, in the regionally spoken tongue. During the translation, I realized that the tradition of compiling narratives is in a format, which clearly inhibits the possibility of writing them with the poetry of it, uncorrupted.