Listening Through Performance: Identity, Embodiment, and Arts-Based Research

Abstract

Cooperman addresses identity construction from the perspective of a researcher of the global North studying research participants of the global South. Because identity is enmeshed in epistemic systems, the author draws attention to the inherent difficulties of listening to subalterns without rethinking one’s own positionality and deeply held memories and meanings. In this chapter, the author leads the reader through three examples of performance ethnography in which her own identity was called into question through embodied and participatory research focused on Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. She demonstrates the way her Jewish-American identity, at first an obstacle, becomes a guidepost to understanding the way dominant epistemologies continue to oppress and occlude Palestinian voices.