Empowerment

by Troubling Angels

About the author

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Patti Lather: 48, PhD in Education, qualitative researcher

Chris Smithies: 45, PhD in counseling and practitioner as a feminist psychologist

Sources
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Columbus, Ohio

4 support groups----25 women with HIV/AIDS,

age from 23-49;

white (16), black (5), Hispanic (4),
with/without children (12/13),
(un)employed(8/17)
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Group interviews during 1992-1993. In 1994, meeting with some of the women
about publishing. And 1995 feedback from participants about the first published
version.

Layout: Order within Chaos

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Scan pages for this

Split texts, interview transcriptions, authors responses and reflections, tables, artwork,
poems, emails, AIDs-related information, Angels Interexts (as framework)

Interview transcriptions as the main body but more than chronicle of women living with
HIV/AIDS

Strong points: BIG PARTICIPANTS, small researchers; all texts interdependent and
supplementary to each other; reinforcing readers reading experiences.

Shortcoming: flip back and forth to make a complete reading experience.

Qualitative research
(research positionality )
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Ethically:

With participants; Between co-authors

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Esthetically:
poetic pieces; artwork interpretation (Postmodern Angeology)

(Onto)epistemologically (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; St. Pierre, 2011):

Deconstructive (Feminist Communitarian approach ):

normality/hetero-normality & Doubled otherness: (Female othered by patriarchy;

HIV/AIDS othered by the public)

Ethics
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Protect participants:
quotes taken out of sequence to protect confidentiality.
Chris:1. the feminist research partner must agree to be a sympathetic, full participant
in the upcoming retreat
2. she must be experienced in dealing with qualitative and feminist research,
especially the ethical and political issues involved
3. she must agree to me as co-researcher with final say in order to honour
the womens concerns regarding right treatment
4. confidentiality issues must be carefully honoured
5. factors of sickness and depression must be taken into account in what is
asked of the women in terms of participation. (Lather & Smithies, p.5)

Chris and Patti: collaboration between the field and academia. Patti: I dont want to use the word
negotiation, but our partnership. (Gershon, 2009, p. 33).

Participants as co-researcher:

participants as voice, researchers as hands and feet (Lather & Smithies,

1997, p. xix). Bigger fonts for interviews and smaller fonts for researchers
reflections; publishing decisions and feedback as member check.

Feminist communitarianism based on human relationship, affirming affection,

intimacy, nurturing, egalitarian and collaborative processes and empathy
(Christian, 2011, p. 69)

permission to talk for participants (Perselli, 232)

The self/other, researcher/ researched.

Attitude and Prayer

Esthetics-Angels

Ts went up again they said

The reason they cant conclude
All my friends are happy

Angels & Postmodern Angelology:

They say its attitude.

For the fact of the matter is that angels have been making a strange kind

But when I call my Mother

of come-back in postmodernist writing. Inevitably, many of these

She said, Its so wonderful everyone cares.

postmodernist angels are parody angels, hollow angels emptied of their

Its all your Mother's Prayers.

otherworldliness and brought ingloriously down to earth (figuratively or

----Linda B, 6-93

literally)Furthermore, not all these parody angels are unequivocally

parodic. In some cases, having been hollowed out at the beginning of the
text, the angelic figures are found to be full again by the end. (McHale,
1992)

But its not just attitude, honey,

1. Cloudy place, a tangled web of meanings

2. Messenger: Women Vs. Social implications of AIDS
3. key to reverse demonizing attitudes towards HIV/AIDS
4. means to work against comfort texts with consolations
of certain meanings or knowledges as cure.
5. Get lost in multiple layers of meaningsAIDS intersected with
universal issues.

other

6. resurface of multiple redefinitions of angels to address plural world visions, and to

negate previous indoctrinated implication of angels. (Lather & Smithies, 1997)
---Art-based inquiry aims at disrupting interrupting and challenging structures of
oppression (Denzin, 2011, 652)

(Onto)epistemology
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Blurred boundary between ontology and epistemology, knowing in being, which was
previously regarded as a category mistake in philosophy. (Christian, 2011)

Researcher/ researched; empirical data and analysis.

e.g. to drown the poem of the other with the sound of our own voices (p. xvi)

Chris: I think people grow from relationships and interaction more than from
anything else. (Gershon, 2009, p.33)

Reflection and diffraction. (a practice of critical self-positioning Vs. insights

through one another).

Subjectivity: subjectivity as constructed in relationships (intra-action) with others

(human or nonhuman) and in everyday practices; ways of existing in the world can
shift depending on social relations, historical experiences, and material conditions
Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p.115).

Goals? Findings?
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Support, inform, and trouble its various readers as well as make visible the work of living
with HIV/AIDS. (Lather & Smithies, 1997, p. xiii); female accounts on the cultural
significance of HIV/AIDS.

Our hope is to provide support and information to women with HIV/AIDS and their
friends, families and loved ones, to educate and inspire women with HIV/ADIS to advocate
for themselves, one another and their communities, and to promote public awareness of
women's HIV/AIDS issues and a compassionate response for all people with HIV/AIDS.
(Lather & Smithies, 1997, p. xiv)

Continuum within and universal attention to HIV/AIDS.

They seek to muddy the waters between the I/Thou, pre/post diagnosis stages of the illness,
the differences between being out or in, simultaneously forgrounding the curious
combinations of science and myth, knowing and unknowing that accumulate the stigmatized
topic. (Perselli, 2008, p. 228)

References
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Mchale, B. (1992). Constructing postmodernism. London: Routledge.

Jackson, A. Y., Mazzei, L. A. ( 2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple
perspectives. London and New York: Routledge.

Gershon, W. S. (Ed.) (2009). The collaborative turn: Working together in qualitative research. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Lather, P. (2007). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Lather, P., & Smithies, C. (1997). Troubling the angels: Women living with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

St. Pierre, E. A. ( 2011). In N. K. Denzin, and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The sage handbook of qualitative research (4th ed.). CA.
Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 611-623.

Denzin, N. K. (2011).

Christian, (2011).

Perselli, V. (2008). Troubling the angels revisited. Cultural Studies

Critical Methodologies, Vol 8., No. 2, pp. 224-245.