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Research as an Act of Love: Ethics, Émigrés, and the Praxis of Becoming Human

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/15595692.2013.803464

1559-5706

Awad Ibrahim,

Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights

Abstract Conceptual in nature, this paper revisits the debate on the nature and ethical implication of what it means to conduct research with/in immigrant communities. The view from "inside" is different from the view from "'outside," I am contending, and both are mediated by what I am calling I–Thou Research Ethics. This is an Ethics that places émigrés as our neighbors, engineers, doctors, etc. Mexico now lives next door, I am arguing, and Mexicans are now hyphenated: Mexican-Americans (for example). Gilles Deleuze (2005) refers to this as "post-identity phenomenon." To deal with it, I shall (a) discuss its ethics through The Stephen Tyler Affair (hooks, 1990); (b) build an "I–Thou Research Ethics" as a response to this Affair; and (c) conclude with a genuine dialogue in which research becomes an act of love, and "researcher–researched" becomes an "'I–Thou relationship." Only then can we hope for the transformative praxis of becoming human.