Speaking Truth to Power: Oppositional Research Practice and Colonial Power‪.‬

We need a different and innovative paradigm for humanistic research. Scholars can be frankly engaged in the politics and interests of the present - with open eyes, rigorous analytical energy, and the decently social values of those who are concerned with the survival, neither of a disciplinary fiefdom or guild nor of a manipulative identity like "India" or "America", but with the improvement and non-coercive enhancement of life in a community struggling to exist among other communities. (Said, 1993, p. 312) Not so long ago I thought that my home was a place (a beautiful bit of west coast Canada), the place I grew up, the place where the people closest to my heart live, the place to which I would always return. But as I've learned a little more about the history of the peoples of that place, this country, this continent, I've slowly realized that my deeprooted sense of home, of comfort and belonging, of community may spring as much (or more?) from the consonance between the whiteness and middle classness of that place and the race, class, and time I was born into, as from the place itself (the sweetness of spring there, the soothing rumble of ocean waves) and my close family ties and friendships there.