Disembodied experts, accountability and refusal: an autoethnography of two (ab)Original women

As two Aboriginal women from the lands now known as Australia, we seek to combine our disciplinary knowledges of education and community development to offer an Indigenous autoethnographic account on the tensions involved when working for our communities, yet within systems and structures of whitene...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Australian journal of human rights 2019-05, Vol.25 (2), p.217-231
Main Authors: Tynan, Lauren, Bishop, Michelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aboriginal Australians
Accountability
Autoethnography
Community development
Decolonization
development
disembodied expert
Education
Ethnography
Ethnology
Experts
Human rights
Indigenous autoethnography
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous women
Ontology
Refusal
Social aspects
Sovereignty
whiteness
Women
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Summary:As two Aboriginal women from the lands now known as Australia, we seek to combine our disciplinary knowledges of education and community development to offer an Indigenous autoethnographic account on the tensions involved when working for our communities, yet within systems and structures of whiteness. To do this, we draw on whiteness studies to conceptualise the 'disembodied expert'. Expertise becomes 'disembodied' when it is decoupled from the knower's standpoint, ontology, and raced and gendered corporeal form, particularly the feet that connect to Land and Mother beneath. This detachment results in a severing of accountability to community, ancestors, and Country. We propose the action of 'refusal' as an everyday assertion of agency within systems such as the Indigenous Affairs and human rights industries that tend to privilege 'disembodied experts'.
ISSN:1323-238X
2573-573X
DOI:10.1080/1323238X.2019.1574202