Geography
Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, PACTE, 38000 Grenoble, France
The situatedness that interests me is that of knowledge. As a geographer, I know to what extent being situated somewhere matters. More than anything, it is an epistemological question: in what way is the produced knowledge configured by the conditions of its production – including the location of this production – and its expression?
As a researcher, I am a producer of knowledge. Who I am influences the knowledge that I produce. I encountered this empirical evidence during my fieldwork, but it extends far beyond that: feminist epistemologies, including the work of Donna Haraway, are what have allowed me to understand the extent to which the researcher’s positionality affects their work. Knowledge is produced in relation with others – beyond the researcher themselves – and within specific social frameworks – institutions, power relationships, finalities – which will also shape it.
Thus, the situatedness of produced knowledges integrates who produces this knowledge, but also when. It appears, develops, is accepted or refuted at particular moments in history. The history of science has shown this, bringing links between researchers to light, as well as the importance of economic and political contexts. I have been studying South African geography since the end of apartheid, which I discovered at the very moment of the country’s first democratic elections in 1994; the when of this work is that of the negotiated revolution, of the democratic transition. My line of questioning obviously bears the mark of that moment when I personally discovered South Africa as a field of study, and of the country’s historical situation: what has or has not changed since the end of apartheid? How do we apprehend the traces of that "before?" And how do we conceive of a "post- "situation (as in post-apartheid, post-colonial, post-conflict, or, elsewhere, post-socialist)?
The South African case has also allowed me to understand that the situatedness of knowledge also comes from the location of its production; analyzing segregation from the French, US or South African cases does not lead to the same conclusions. The geographical space in which our findings are relevant should be carefully assessed. Moreover, Southern Theory demonstrates that we have long elaborated theoretical scientific knowledge based almost solely on Western cases and references. Producing knowledge from other points of view and anchors, and really considering the world as a whole in our ways of understanding – what is referred to as "worlding epistemologies" – allows us to fundamentally renew our theories.
Finally, navigating between French and English-speaking geographies, I realized that knowledge is anchored and shaped according to the language in which it is expressed, formulated, and transmitted. Concepts and theoretical references, scientific writing norms, reader's cultural complicities: these all change with language.
Who, when, where, in what language and for what reason – with what purpose is this knowledge produced? There are so many factors that situate and shape this knowledge, and that must be acknowledged.
More from this author:
Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, 2021, Keeping you post-ed: Space-time regimes, metaphors, and post-apartheid , Dialogues in Human Geography, DOI: 10.1177/2043820621992256
Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, 2020, Making the provincial relevant? Embracing the provincialization of continental European geographies, Geographica Helvetica, 75 No. 2, pp. 41-51. https://www.geogr-helv.net/75/41/2020/
Cite this item: Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, “Situatedness”, translated by Caroline Schlenker, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177897
