Vulnerability
Emotional Responses
One of the opportunities that a testimonial reading offers us is to acknowledge the role of emotions and explore how they reflect the stakes at play when we conceptualize ourselves as implicated subjects.
Our initial responses varied from defensiveness about the legitimacy of scientific research, a fear of losing community support, guilt, and cognitive dissonance between (violent) historical research practices and on our current research collaboration.
One of the BearWatch PI's, who has had a collaborative relationship with the community of Gjoa Haven to a degree not shared by the other academic members of the research team, took such negative perceptions of research to reflect directly on his personal research history with Gjoa Haven.
The other researchers, did not perceive Gjoa Haven’s critique of research outcomes as directed towards the defensive PI's prior work in the community per se. Rather they saw such comments as expressing frustration with research practices in general, extending beyond projects related to polar bears - and as a critique of the Government of Nunavut. In particular towards their surveys leading to Gjoa Haven’s near moratorium, and their subsequent lack of timely accountability towards the community.
Vulnerability
Initial affective responses, as they inevitably happen along the course of research, are often left unmentioned in academic publications in favour of more sanitized, cognitive or rational responses. Emotions are deemed to stay out of research. As a result, many academics do not know how to examine and articulate their feelings towards their own work (Daly, 2005). This can perpetuate oppression, as unexamined emotions like guilt, might lead to denial, or defensiveness that prevent us from studying how affective responses influence practices and choices made within research. Guilt, for example, can form a trap of one remaining oriented on the past (Young, 2010). Conducting a testimonial reading can assist us in acknowledging the unsettlement that our affective responses clearly speak to.