Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

discussions and experiences within the tradition of auto-ethnographic research I
formulated different criteria.
1 The research should testify of an analytical and reflexive approach of the narratives,
in which the partiality of the researcher and his or her development in thinking
must become apparent.
2 The researcher should as an observing participant be a full member of the different
communities he or she researches into. The position of insider must be certain.
3 The narratives should offer a clear, stimulating, challenging, careful and enriching
perspective on situations and social interactions about which is reported. For the
involved in the situations the narratives should be plausible from the perspective of
the researcher.
4 The research should be transferable, implying that the analyses, the reflections and
the findings should resonate with the reader, and with people which more or less
are working in comparable situations.
Due to the insider’s position of the researcher the attention being paid to ethical
responsibilities should be considerable. The people concerned must have consented to
being present in the narratives, they must have had an opportunity to take notice of
the narratives and if wished for to propose corrections. Moreover, personal privacy
and discretion concerning some issues must be guaranteed. Of course there also is a
responsibility for the reader: the reader should appreciate the care and openness of all
the involved instead of depreciating the course of things.
With the different theoretical orientations, the criteria for scientificality and the
acknowledged ethical responsibility the context is sketched for the chapters in which
the narratives are point of departure.
The taken for granted assumptions of the researcher
At the start of radically reflexive research it is logic to consider two subjects. First of all
the taken for granted assumptions of the researcher. Who is he or she and who does
the research and with what kind of opinions and experiences? Secondly the question is
by what he or she is troubled in his or her local situation and why?
In chapter 3 I give a sketch of my social genesis, of my – rather philosophical – perspective
on my existence, my career, the choices I made at different times and of what
I experienced as problematic in my work at the time of starting my research. After all,
within a radically reflexive approach that which is assumed to be the matter (ontology)
is seen as connected to the way it is perceived or experienced by somebody
(epistemology). As q way of speaking, ontology and epistemology fuse. And the way
somebody perceives does not come out of the blue, but entails a social history.
Roughly speaking I present myself as someone who in due course of his life has developed
an allergy for unsubstantial authority, as someone who in his career as a mana-
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