Undergoing experience

This is a reply I made to my friend's blog....

"You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it."

This is the same principle required of all ethnographers. Basically, it refers to the fact that for many years, researchers would make their own data to fit their own philosophical theories. What resulted was a skewing of facts, if not a complete recreation of data which was not factual but "made up." People like me, who belonged to exoticized or historically oppressed groups, were "made" or "created" in light of the creator's perspective without regard to our true capabilities. Hence you have eugenics and the Tuskegee syphilis study and a host of other immoral and unethical behaviors on the part of researchers. One solution that came about from all this was the immersion of the researcher in the environment being studied, the mutual collaboration between subject/participant and researcher, and the ethnographic models we now follow. It basically meant digging deeper into the reality of someone else, rather than just skimming through to obtain exemplars to fit your theories (we still do it, but there are elements in place that make us more accountable for our behaviors within academia...there are always loopholes and such). It meant undergoing a process of change through introspection, of acceptance rather than tolerance, all in an attempt to capture the reality of the ones we dare call our participants.

Does that make sense? What I am saying is don't create me, but rather re-create yourself in a way that allows you to see me, as much as possible, the way I am, not the way you want me to be. I recognize it is easier said than done. But that is what we are being trained for, hence the usefulness in taking a glimpse at other people's philosophies; finding nuances amidst what seemingly is only a regurgitation of what has been said before, but doing it by keeping an eye out for those slight differences in experience.