Social Research & Reflexivity by May Tim Perry Beth. & Beth Perry

Author:May, Tim,Perry, Beth. & Beth Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446245057
Publisher: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Published: 2010-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

My field of awareness, though centred in a singularity, is a complex structure of relations to my environment, past present and future … To be one and the same person my point of view must be continuous relative to an all encompassing material framework, including the world of other embodied beings. (Harré 1998: 91)

It concerns the position of the speaker in relation to other things in the social universe, as well as being a performative utterance in the sense of being someone who is trustworthy. Thus, not only does it enable an understanding of the location of the embodied speaker, but also it is the means through which responsibility is taken for being positioned. An ethical dimension to selfhood thereby prevents the simple absorption of self-identity into social identity in the study of positioning. It allows for a sense of continuity in the self over time that can lead to the disjuncture that Pierre Bourdieu (1986) calls the ‘Don Quixote’ effect.

To steer a middle course between ‘epistemic exaltation’ of the self that is evident in Cartesian formulations and its ‘humiliation’ in the hands of Nietzsche, Ricoeur’s idea of the self employs the term ‘attestation’ to denote the kind of certainty that is appropriate at this level: ‘Whereas doxic belief is implied in the grammar “I believe-that”, attestation belongs to the grammar of “I believe-in’” (Ricoeur 1994: 21). Clearly, this can lead to a resort to the kind of guarantees reminiscent of the Cartesian problematic. It is the contingency of the questioning itself, however, that prevents such resort by providing vulnerability via a ‘permanent threat of suspicion’.

Before collapsing into ideas of self-annihilation, we find the relationship between attestation and testimony expressed as credence. As we are concerned with reliable attestation so we move into the realm of trust:

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