This event is the Keynote Lecture of a two-day workshop to explore the multiple ways in which family (un)making, nation building, race, gender, and genetic technologies intertwine.
In 2014, Kim published in the Journal of Research Practice a self-reflexive methodologies article, “Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-indigenous Approach to Inquiry.” Part of a special theme, “Giving Back in Field Research,” the modest article received unexpected attention. Kim took issue with “giving back,” instead borrowing an analytical frame, “standing with and speaking as faith,” from cultural studies scholar Neferti Tadiar to explain the ethics of her longstanding research on non-Indigenous scientists. Tadiar explains “speaking as faith” as “furthering the claims of a people while refusing to be excised from that people by some imperialistic, naïve notion of perfect representation.” Kim brought Tadiar's idea to understand how hercritical Indigenous standpoint research on genome scientists paved the way for her to stand with Indigenous and other anti-colonial scientists.
In this talk, Kim will elaborate on the productive similarities between standing and speaking with in that ethnographic work with Indigenous scientists and in her autoethnographic explorations as a polyamorist. Kim is “caught up in the claims [those] others act out,” even though she is not an Indigenous scientist. Kim considers herself likely a less-than-desirable representative for many polyamorists. She challenges foundational settler-colonial assumptions within polyamory, for example, as she disrupts “sexuality” as an object. Instead, Kim works to disaggregate it into “good relations.” She also stands with Indigenous bio-scientists while attempting to disrupt settler-colonial assumptions grounding their scientific objects and gaze.
This event is a BSA Postgraduate Forum Event.
Kim TallBear (@KimTallBear) is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science.
Suki Ali is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at LSE.
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*Please note, the location of this event has changed. It will now take place in the Thai Theatre, New Academic Building.
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