Research Realities in Ethnography and the Poetry of Alternative Identities

Abigail C. Lindo

University of Florida

“As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny, and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.”

From: “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (Lorde 1984, 36)

There is no ethnography that does not impose.

I meditated on this thought in April 2022, during a preliminary visit to São Miguel (the largest of nine islands in the Azores, a Portuguese autonomous region located in the North Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America). As I interacted with residents and tourists, as I walked to different venues, and on the road, as I drove from town to town to attend concerts and view installations, I felt the gaze of strangers. I was on the island for one week to attend an alternative music festival called Tremor and scout areas on the island to conduct dissertation fieldwork for a longer period in the coming academic year. A week is a brief period, but it would be time well spent: interrogating my research approach and the reality of interacting with research collaborators during a pandemic to shape a cohesive narrative (including myself in the work). The experience proved to be unpredictable, uncomfortable, and beyond insightful, provoking realizations about previously considered ideas.

In her essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Lorde recognizes poetry (and its potential as a liberatory practice and literary resource) as a vital element in Black women’s lives, weaving poetry into feminist thought to demonstrate the power women have to shape narratives of their lives outside realities of a colonial past. While her writing and perspective are often tethered to place, the reality of poetry’s power to excavate, to mine the depth of affective realities found in life and transform notions of their experiential value, is still relevant outside of the United States and beyond the plight of African American women. Therefore, I employ poetry in my written work and acknowledge it as a vehicle for transcending the limitations of traditional academic prose to better translate the affective breadth and ephemerality of fieldwork experiences.

In Ponta Delgada, the capital of the Azores located on the island of São Miguel, I was a Black face in a sea of white faces. I was a large Black body in a sea of slender, white bodies. I stood out in a noticeable way. This was not a new concept but was more pronounced on the island because I saw no other Black faces. Naturally, I was constantly observing my surroundings for another Black face. Was I wrong to do this? I felt a different type of sadness, a different kind of isolation in being so racially distinct as I traveled alone. I did not understand how this would affect my focus as my visit progressed, initially shaking it off only to keep it in the back of my mind throughout the entirety of my visit. I did not immediately understand how being possessed by the reality of double consciousness, always sensing and thinking of myself as a construction of others, would derail my poetry and corrupt my focus (Du Bois 2007, 9).

Following my departure, I wanted to write about my collaborators without essentializing them or creating a dichotomy between them and some generic, American idea of Western culture – an imagined category that I do not fit into. Anti-essentialism is something central to an ethos of decolonizing ethnography that I aim to pursue, and while I did not fear that an essentializing impulse would occur, I meditated on it with intentionality to guide my interactions. Tremor aided in this endeavor, partially because it represented a specific swath of Azorean society, providing a distinct space of belonging for its patrons (many of whom were queer). These were not people who I passed at the pineapple plantation or other tourist attractions created for Europeans on a quick holiday, nor were they the working-class people I encountered at the museum or in the city center. Tremor is a boutique music festival, welcoming all ages and backgrounds, although it seemed to attract a specific audience, many with similar beliefs.

Most individuals I spoke with were liberal. Many were raised Catholic but were not very religious. They made good money in creative industries or did not discuss their careers with me. Many were late-twenties to mid-forties hipsters with a desire to consume arts and goods that were not mainstream. They smoked cigarettes (well, most of the people I met smoked cigarettes), and enjoyed engaging in healthy debates. They were friendly for the most part, encouraging me as I nearly gave up the ghost on an intense one-hour hike.

They enjoyed talking to me about Trump and American culture and did not hesitate to distinguish themselves from Lisbon or continental Portugal more generally. They were proud without pretension, but with mention to specific facets of Azorean life. They wanted to be different in their Portuguese identity and touted the simplicity of life in São Miguel. They also told me how I could feel safer here than in America. Some locals, including one individual with whom I was able to converse, made an unprovoked effort to let me know that “even though I did not see a lot of Black people around, the majority of people on the island were not racist.” They told me the story of their home and what they felt was most important to elevate as they revealed aspects of their individual identity.

This interaction with an Azorean local occurred days after my visit to the Museu Carlos Machado, an interesting museum curated to celebrate the rich history of Azorean Catholicism alongside the taxidermies of researcher Carlos Machado. (So many dead animals, so much confusion). As I left the museum, a Black woman on the street yelled “Olá” with a raised hand. I responded in a similar fashion, although I had never seen her. She asked if I spoke French. I replied, “não, falo ingles.” She asked where I was from and how long I have been in the area since she had not seen me before. She was also looking for other Black people, and I appreciated our short moment of contact. She informed me that she is originally from Angola and that she moved to the island a year ago. “Don’t you love it?” she asked. “It’s beautiful” I replied, and it was, but I do not think I could fully appreciate the natural beauty while dividing my focus for the sake of research. This was a new sensation for me.

Ethnography similarly acknowledges living as “a situation to be experienced and interacted with” (Lorde 1984, 37). With a specific focus on sonic creation, participation, and interaction among individuals and the natural landscape, I consider the reality of my current research as resulting from a dream, something Lorde views as more than poetry—but as a product of living itself. Therefore, I make meaning through my ethnographic work without it defining me or defining my collaborators as it reflects the continued experiences and interaction of engaging in a dream (in the awareness of presence and harkening back to it to form meaning).

Outside of the physical masks we wore while indoors, I was unmasked in a way I had not previously acknowledged. When I was seen and questioned by concert goers and others I encountered as I completed research on the island, I considered how I hid behind my voice—my gesture, movement, and the implied roles of performer and audience when I musicked inside and outside of the field. I hid behind my instrument when I played in an ensemble, in the background, behind the piano or some percussion object, counting in my mind, grooving among others. Individuals are afforded this reality in collective sonic engagement. I recognized the constant of community in other realms of my research, for even when I present a paper in-person or online, I have safety in the slides, the reference to other researchers in my work, the knowledge of an audience, and strangely, in my voice, which is a sonic communicator of my thoughts.

When someone disagrees with me, they are in fact disagreeing with my thoughts or the information I have presented rather than disagreeing with (my)self. This is not the same as the rejection of (my)body as self or my physicality moving through space while being regarded as foreign, as a motivation for avoidance: this experience is not about me. I did not dwell on this. However, I understood that there was strength in being unknown, but some truth would be betrayed in the performance of identities: how I presented myself and how people in São Miguel presented themselves to me. I acknowledge that no ideas are new, but that “[t]here are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what our ideas really mean” (Lorde 1984, 39).

There is a poetry to diverse ways of being, in how we codeswitch and navigate new spaces while interacting with new individuals. These are new ways we feel and are experienced, similarly true of everyone and everything I encountered on the island. This reflects a use of power that reflects a specific form of privilege we possess in different environments: I could be someone else and it would still be authentic. It is not an act of hiding our power but a performance of power.

References

Du Bois, W. E. B. 2007 [1903]. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.