The Overcoming of the Attacks on Freedom of Speech Through Qualitative Research

I do research to break silences and say what not many dare to say in my regional, border context of northern Chile.

I live in a country with a history of political repression and extreme violence during different times, being the stretch between 1973 and 1990 the most internationally known one. The events that took place during that time are still present in the structure, the powers, the daily life, and especially in the ways of relating, valuing, and appreciating among Chileans. Fears, absurd hierarchies, patriotic pride, racism and discrimination, silence, the tendency to forget the past as a way to be okay. In the survivor side, solidarity; a critical attitude to life, the system, happiness and success; a clear misunderstanding of what it is to be successful in today’s Chile; a way of living life from the gray traces of a past that is still maintained even though the sun rises shining bright every day. Today, in daily life this translates into a type of life that remains quiet for many with an apparent order, but that can become agitated, altered, unstable, or in crisis from one minute to the next, if for some people threats arise as ghosts from the past. What is threatening from what is not; what is phantasmagoric about the figures of protection in a country like Chile; varies according to the location and the family position in which the family of each Chilean was when the history of the country was weaving, whose atrocities were censured for more than 20 years of military dictatorship, but not ceased to be obvious to those families who experienced in first person the most extreme violence that a State could reach and therefore have survived to the losses caused by these experiences. So, we can actually talk about an unsewn blanket which has been sewn back several times, mending the broken threads in seams, in which pieces of fuzzy appearances and parts that remain intact of the different scenarios of right and left, order and violence are drawn; of what had to be done, versus what should not have ever happened. This blanket, in my case, in a first stage the effects of the long-term traumatic political violence in my country, is today the contextual and historical basis of new studies focused on discrimination, racism, and other social injustices against immigrants and locals in the border city of Arica. The way in which Pinochet’s policies still apply in how the powers and the public organisms are structured in my border city of Arica (northern Chile). Among them, the educational system. The way of relating among the peoples from distrusting those who come to Chile due to political persecution or poverty, searching for better life prospects in the country.

In this context, freedom of speech is at the same time possible and not possible. It is valued by a group of students and some academics. But the latter do it either in silence or in private and do not reproduce it. Information about politics and its effects in Chile is not covered in the regular curriculum in the different study programs at university level and high school educational system (preliminar results of the National Fund for Scientific and Tecnological Development, Fondecyt Project Nº 1181713). This is happening even after more than 40 years of the military coup. At the same time, what is related to politics in the academic context is considered as not academic and even as anti-scientific by the most conservative, and why not to say even more “quantitative” side of programs such as psychology, being criticized by a group of colleagues who view with diffidence the neutrality of the teaching, demanding a neutral education. Thus, the trend between academics of my generation and older than myself in northern Chile and possibly in other regions in the country is to omit political contents from the topics they teach and from their role in academia, as if it were possible at all to do so. It is more like pretending it does not exist, when in reality everything can be related to politics, and in fact, all knowledge is related to national and international politics if we talk about human behavior, also studied from psychology. This, in my opinion, is to deceive the students without explaining the political tendency behind the professor’s standpoint, a kind of deception or care at the same time and from the perspective you look at it, which is not perceived as such, because for many it is an indefinite/uncertain/denied standpoint, to which we are accustomed—and trained—not to mention in words. To silence.

Therefore, and as a consequence of our Chilean history, the great thinkers who criticize the “normal” in Chile, are people more than 55 years of age who have returned to the country after their exile, and most of them are currently working in the capital city, Santiago. Meanwhile in the other regions of the country, fear to stop and put down in words what is evident and can be associated to injustice, inequity, and violence still abounds. In my Chilean context, as diverse as its geography, an academic and research position that recognizes the presence of class, gender and ethnic and cultural differences, as well as the vulnerability of the researcher and the life trajectory that is implied in the investigative processes that the researcher develops, tends to be negatively valued by the scientific community, dealing with matters not considered science, lacking in rigor, biased, reinforcing, and forcing the tendency to maintain the position of the academic researcher—even in the case of qualitative researchers, as a subject who observes from a distant place, not linked to the people being researched, privileged in terms of salary, class, knowledge imported and difficult to access, which is expected, to be found in a linear, categorical, and imposed way in the subjects and communities that are investigated. Then, the attack is present and can be felt when what I am saying here is said, and there are people in the audience on the other side of the blurred blanket who believe it is unfair to defend life in the context of war and as a way of “acting out” demand to be careful with what is being said, as a warning. Behind it, there is the establishment of the fear of being sanctioned, repressed, and even fired.

Hope is in the new generations who were born after the military dictatorship, during the times of transition. They are students who do not show fear in their eyes and in their actions, and who present themselves intellectually curious. So, we have a group of academics who prefer dealing with social issues, in that academic space that does not disturb and that nobody would oppose to, as if there were a learnt politically correct way of saying and doing things. To me, in a context in which there is so much to do, everything helps. But nothing is ever enough.

How to survive the attack is not easy. It is not about ghosts anymore but people, sometimes with the power provided by the administrative authorities. In this context, the breathing space I have when coming here, ¹ the opportunity to work with professor Denzin and trace an investigative path in neoliberal times, achieving what I am supposed to fulfill in terms of productivity, has allowed me to generate an academic space of respect and even though few people in my university read my papers written in English, at the end of each year when we have to add up the points in our academic performance commitment, I always manage to double the points required to get the letter A. This has been my way of repelling the attack.

However, and to conclude, I define my research work from the interpretive autoethnography, but I find myself facing the constant difficulty of publishing this kind of work in Spanish. Coming here is like traveling 20 years into the future in qualitative methodologies. Going back there is going back to the classic. Interpretive autoethnography is written from the heart about the autobiography felt and lived in Spanish. Doing it in a second language works as a powerful shield against my Chilean context. But I do not know to what point these communities keep the dialog beyond this panel. Outside professor Denzin’s office or in other spaces such as A Day in Spanish and Portuguese (ADISP) or the Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines (CEAD) community. As a matter of fact, I wonder how YOU see ME when I am reading this text written in a language I do not have full command of or what YOUR relationship is like with the ADISP community that comes here every year to attentively listen to you and learn from you.

Now, I’ll share with you the answers from the reviewers of a new attempt to publish a paper about the use of these methodologies in teaching in higher education in the north part of my country.

Some of the reviewers’ comments from a Spanish qualitative research journal were as follows:

Statements such as “the heart is never far from what really matter,” lack a minimum rigor and are characterized by the absence of reflexivity. If it is about placing value in the voices of the authors, their worries, dreams, aspirations, reflections, feelings . . . this should be done through a rigorous and systematic research process, reflective and with a sound theoretical and methodological foundation.

It is a beautiful text; interesting and that removes the affects when using the narratives. It is creative and proposes a critical and important topic to be taken into account by the academic and educational world. From the position as a reviewer, I find myself in a conflict between reason and emotion. In the conclusion section, and maybe if there was a Results section, it would be interesting to further develop the results connected to theory than has been achieved, not only to demonstrate transformation but to know how: the narrative, the methodology of the heart, autoethnography (with its cracks, breaks, seams, etc.) operate in the transformation.

Another journal of qualitative research from . . . Answered,

We cannot accept your paper because we do not know how to review it. I think this was better, but it is still an attack to freedom of speech from qualitative paradigms.

It is definitely an academic responsibility and a challenge to break the traditional academic discourse to make sense of our past experiences with our problems present also in Latin America. That is why I train, that is why I travel, and that is what motivates me to keep going despite the peculiarities of my job there. That is why I think that the current challenge should seek to decolonize the voices in academia and create new ways of conducting more humane research, connecting our problems with other realities and achieving freedom in academic writing which will allow us to recover the local knowledge and progress even in academic equity, in this academic world which is so competitive, Anglo and first-worldly. This is the only way I see to achieve the freedom of speech we are longing for and to have permission to fight for a fairer, more equitable, and ultimately healthier society.