Within my own autobiographical experience of searching for haunted histories in my ethnic Chinese diasporic context within Canada, I have been curious about what narratives and stories have been told within the families of my peers whom I describe in this thesis as my ‘subject-‐peers’48. Writing about trauma and intergenerational traumas requires new and different ways of seeing histories and voices that are left incomprehensible,
unutterable, and unseeable. As a second generation Chinese-‐Canadian who is searching for unknown histories, I have wrestled with what sorts of methods can ‘see’ voices, listen to the unseen dead, and remember
unknowable and forgotten individuals who have passed on. Furthermore, I have challenged myself to critically engage my own educational background within a traditional psychology approach (and its restrictions) in order to ‘see’ in new ways what precisely cannot be seen.49
In this chapter, I will discuss a number of interdisciplinary methodological concepts that have helped me shape a unique research design that interrogates affective hauntings, forgotten traumas, and silenced histories in the ethnic Chinese diaspora. For example, my methodology involves a performative writing approach alongside an emphasis on reflexivity modeled by empathic vision throughout the thesis. This way of writing applies the diasporic vision method (as discussed last chapter) that,
48 I consider myself here the ‘subject-‐researcher’, and my peers as ‘subject-‐peers’ within my autoethnographic approach. The choice for my using these terms, discussion of insider/outsider researcher issues, and my choice/rationale of using ‘friends’ within my autoethnographic approach will be discussed in Section 2.5.
49 In the Preface, I described my background and original educational biases that were steeped in traditional assumptions of psychology. This of course, includes an experience of listening to the power narratives of the field that suggested how positivist methodologies were particularly privileged over alternative perspectives. Even though Counselling Psychology was more open-‐ minded than conventional psychology, I was advised (with good intentions) that in the field of psychology (at the time), a Master’s thesis based in quantitative methodological assumptions would be more highly favoured by institutions for doctoral study acceptance versus a qualitative one.
according to Cho (2008), offers the only way of seeing gaps, silences, and forgotten histories that affectively haunt across the diasporic unconscious. Diasporic vision is a central method in my approach that proposes a way of seeing generational hauntings in the ethnic Chinese diaspora through different forms of data. In particular, this thesis focuses on discussing and analyzing conversational interviews, written memoirs, artworks,
documentary cinema, and video installations.
In order to perform my search for histories, I employ a reflexive act of performative writing (e.g. Phelan 1997) alongside my critical
autoethnographic method that co-‐implicates my voice and story as a second generation Chinese-‐Canadian person with those of my fellow peers. My epistemologies and specific research design approaches of performative writing, reflexivity and critical autoethnography are key approaches to developing my diasporic vision of the hauntings within the data (mediated forms of memory) I analyze in each chapter. These approaches are
important in how I ‘stage’ my search for histories and structure this thesis as a performance of my efforts to compose a diasporic montage. My critical approach to autoethnography privileges the entanglement and mutual complicity of our life experiences and stories, rendering the experiences of my peers as part of my autoethnographic narrative as much as my narrative is a part of theirs. Ban Wang’s (2004) critical historical consciousness also offers a complementary method. Wang’s perspective brings an important interrogation of the tensions between history and memory at the
intersection of production and power in Chinese historical contexts. These perspectives are particularly helpful in my explorations of memoirs and testimonies that I will discuss in Chapter 4.
Jill Bennett’s (2005) ‘empathic vision’ brings another critical
approach that complements diasporic vision through ‘seeing oneself feeling’, within my explorations of performance and aesthetics (e.g. artworks, film), in Chapters 5 and 6.
Together, all of these approaches (under the umbrella of a diasporic montage) each contribute a method of analyzing different modes of data as evident in the following chapters. These approaches all form the basis of
what I have described as a ‘diasporic montage’, that is, composed through a critical autoethnographic approach. Thus, what my performative writing approach throughout the thesis performs is a ‘staging’ of my own (critical) autoethnographic journey to compose a ‘montage’ of fragmented mediated memories that can uncover haunted histories and how affect transfers across generations regardless of the limits from chronological time or geographical space. The concept of ‘montage’ is drawn from Gordon (2008) and Wang’s (2004) discussion of the ‘montage’, both of which are strongly informed by Walter Benjamin (1999), which I will speak more about later. Therefore, my way of understanding how all of these approaches
complement one another is by reflexively framing new ways of ‘seeing’ hauntings through data by composing a ‘montage’ of visions that interrogates the intersection of trauma, history, memory and affect.
My primary questions in this chapter concern: What are the specific methodologies as epistemologies I employ to study and analyze ‘ghosts’ or generational traumas that are situated at the intersection of affects, trauma, memory, diaspora, transmission, and media? How do I generate and analyze the data within each chapter within my research design and framing of the thesis? What research choices do I make within my research design to analyze this data in light of diasporic vision? How do I frame the thesis as I ‘perform’ my efforts to compose a ‘diasporic montage’?
2.2 ‘Reflection: The Field.’
Footprints in the mud. ~(...toes, claws, feet, shoes)
Remembering smiles. ~(...toes, claws, feet, shoes)
Rain. Clouds ~(...toes, claws, feet, shoes)
Old Umbrella. Old Companions ~(...toes, claws, feet)
Floats Away. Crawls away. ~(…toes )
~(…toes, feet, legs)
Sun. Sight. Smiles. ~(…toes, foot, leg)
Dripping. ~(…toes, foot, leg)
Not water. Not a mouth. ~(…toes, leg)
Not the sun.
~.(…toes)
Forgetting. Forgettings. ~(…)50