Uncomfortable Positions
On positionality, and why it's important to accept our discomfort.
Having uprooted my life and moved 12000 miles, and having just read Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, I’ve been thinking a lot about “positionality”. I’m required to think about this for my PhD, in the sense of my positionality to the research. Positionality, in the research sense, is the way your life experiences and points of view relate to the social and political contexts of what you are studying. It’s asking yourself questions about inherent bias, whether you are an “insider” or an “outsider”, and how these factors will affect how you approach your research. It’s also about making a statement so that others can understand your starting point. Unsurprisingly, PhDs involve a lot of thinking and questioning. You’d hope so.
I’ve been thinking about it in a wider sense too. There’s nothing like moving continents, it turns out, to prompt you to question your position in wider society, your relations to other people. Whether, as Ahmed puts it, you are following the “line” you are “supposed” to follow, or whether you’ve made a deviation. Deviation, we are told, leads to discomfort, for ourselves, and for those around us. But I fear we’ve become a bit too uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.
Sara Ahmed writes a lot about tables, how we direct our bodies towards them, how our bodies are directed by them, how they provide spaces for writing and ideas. How they direct our attention away from “what is behind”. Sitting here, right now, I’m not sitting at a table, I do not yet have a desk. Instead, I am sprawled somewhat uncomfortably on the sofa under a blanket, my laptop balanced precariously on my lap. Astrid, my cat, is sharing the blanket, so my leg is in a position I would not otherwise choose. I’m under the blanket because even here in the subtropical North Island, Aotearoa New Zealand houses are never quite warm. And because I like sitting under a blanket, I like that soft cover between myself and the uncomfortable outside. Behind me, Dan is working away much more sensibly at the kitchen table. We have adopted our usual early evening state of parallel, proximate activities. Both tapping at laptops yet doing our own thing.
This is a description of my very literal, not especially comfortable position. Geographically, sensorily, and somewhat socially. But let’s move from the sofa, outside of the house.
I’ve been thinking a lot about emigration, as you might expect. In the five weeks since we made the 24-hour flight, I’ve had no regrets about the decision to move so far away. I’ve wondered, however, about what this move has signalled to friends and family, those who have supported me and, I think, enjoyed my company. More than once, I’ve wondered if the act of emigration from one economically developed country to another is a little selfish. After all, I could have studied for my PhD in the UK and stayed in closer proximity to my family and friends. And yet, for reasons of wanting a change, of being attracted to the lifestyle, of not really “feeling” living in the UK, I’ve challenged myself by moving. On a personal level, I feel change and challenging oneself are vital for personal growth. On a community level, I’m not sure this wasn’t a slightly selfish decision, reflecting the individualised social state of “late-stage capitalism”. Perhaps I have undervalued the power of connection.
Thankfully, this also being the technological age, I do not feel I am missing out, because my friends are still in my pocket, and we can update each other. I haven’t become magically good at initiating communication, but I’m trying. I think a huge factor in my not regretting this choice on a social level is knowing I am not missing out. It might take me a few days and several thousand NZD to physically be in the presence of my loved ones, but nobody has disappeared. We are still connected, even if we cannot hug.
This is not to say that there hasn’t been challenging aspects of this move, but my consideration of “challenge” in this context is of a challenge to my thinking, a challenge to my position, and a new consideration of my privileges.
In the UK as a white, British woman, any questions I have of “belonging” are only ever articulated around sexism or social graces and are certainly never framed around connection to the land. Here, my positionality is very different. I am like, so many of my ancestors before me (it turns out that as well as popping to live in southern Africa on a regular basis, my genealogy also includes a huge number of military families who lived in India during the Raj), essentially a settler. I am choosing to live in a land which was borne of colonialism, and where recognition of those who’s land we colonised are simultaneously woven into society and somewhat tacked on.
I’ve been thinking a lot about decolonisation, and my role within it. In Aotearoa New Zealand, everybody uses Kia Ora (pronounced much more like “ki’ara” than I’d realised), and yet I can’t yet bring myself to say it. I can’t quite decide whether as a white, British woman with a very British accent whether it would be respectful or, in fact, appropriative for me to do so. I suppose it doesn’t feel like my greeting, because it isn’t. I am obviously not Māori, nor am I Pākehā (the Māori word for European New Zealanders). I suspect that as I become “more Kiwi”, as I become straightened along these new cultural lines, that it will start to feel more natural. But I must accept myself as an outsider, and consider what this means. I know it means I should listen far more than I talk. That much feels obvious.
Meanwhile, I challenge myself to learn a little Te Reo every evening, I seek out writings by Māori and Pasifika thinkers, I welcome my discomfort, because it is so, so vital to feel discomfort when you come from a place of privilege. Discomfort challenges us to confront our own positions in society, and to understand that our perspective is actually very limited. We shy away from discomfort, we want to feel comfortable. But as Vygotsky teaches us, we learn very little in our comfort zone. We must be pushed out of it, or we will always stay the same. I often wonder how much our addiction to comfort limits change in the world. It’s not to say we should be masochistic; Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development is only just beyond our comfort zone after all. We can’t all move to a different continent. But we can all sit with our discomfort, rather than numbing with all the ways we refuse to experience the reality of the world.
I must not, however, overvalue my role in dismantling this system of privilege. I am here to learn, but not to request to be taught. Which, interestingly, quite accurately describes doing a PhD in general. As I have perhaps undervalued social connection, I, like every PhD student, worry I have overvalued my own abilities. I used to be very sceptical of imposter syndrome, feeling that in order to suffer with it, one must have a fairly high opinion of oneself to begin with. Can’t be an imposter if you don’t think you’re worth very much. But then you actually get funding to think for three years, and those doubts creep in. It was the same in the workplace as well. In fact, one of the odder, more “queer” positions I find myself occupying is that of the student. Having worked for so many years, and worked all the way through my master’s, and, finally, having worked, apparently successfully, within a university’s administration, it is a position of extreme unmooring to be a student again. No longer bound to immediate deadlines or working patterns, I am adrift in a sea of reading, thinking, and worrying I am not doing enough. From what I can tell, I will feel like this the entire time. I guess I have to accept that discomfort as well.
As for my positionality to my research, it’s not the first time I’ve considered this. My master’s dissertation, on experiences of disabled pupils in secondary schools, included a couple of paragraphs about my position as a school pupil who knew I was “different”, but who was unaware that there were names and diagnoses for the ways I experienced the world. Now, with my research focused on the transition to adulthood for neurodivergent young adults, and the impact of the neoliberal ideal of “normal”, I am asked to consider my positionality again. It’s a similar story to begin with; I was unaware I was neurodivergent, and thus did not have support transitioning to adulthood, but the coda in this case is that I worked supporting autistic students through that transition. I probably enforced some of the norms I am so against. And, of course, in both cases, I am viewing the world as a neurodivergent adult and thus researching as a neurodivergent adult. This will shape how I research, how I interpret my findings, and, although the thought makes me uncomfortable, how my research will be interpreted by others.
So much of the neurodivergent experience is about being physically uncomfortable. When your senses are not quite tuned to the same frequencies as everybody else, you feel things too much, or not enough. It appears that a lot of what unsettles neurotypical people about neurodivergent behaviour is the appearance of behaviour which is driven by sheer discomfort, and the sheer joy and relief we express when something is comfortable, familiar, ours. Our positioning, our orientations, are just a little bit “off”. Our discomfort makes other people uncomfortable.
Discomfort is part of the human condition. We need just enough to change us but must have ways of self-soothing so that we do not become completely distressed. We must accept some discomfort into our lives. If we stay comfortable, we do not change.