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DOI: 10.1177/1077800412462986

2013 19: 71Qualitative Inquiry

Calanit TsalachBetween Silence and Speech: Autoethnography as an Otherness-Resisting Practice

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I position myself here—now—visiting my past, doing field

work, performative living my life as whole. I position

myself here—in the academic public space—as an indige-

nous ethnographer: as a member whose membership is notmine . . . yet. I position myself here to decolonize inquiry,

to decolonize academia.

Claudio Moreira, 2008, p. 679

Mizahi ethnicity is discussed in literature in various con-

texts, but usually much less through centering on experi-

ences and storytelling, although such writing allows for a

more sophisticated understanding of how hegemonic prac-

tices work and suppress Mizrahi subjects (Motzafi-Haller,

1997). In this article, I wish to trace three everyday moments

in which my Mizrahi ethnicity intersects with my academic

identity. I will explore and delve into experiences of ethnic

otherness within these moments and analyze the construc-

tion of Mizrahi ethnicity, practices of otherness, and the

terms of silence that operate there in such instances.

Mizrahi is a term relating to Jews who immigrated to

Israel from West Asian and North African countries mainly

in the late 1940s to 1960s. Within the Zionist view, these

Jews arrived from far-flung corners of the globe to the

Promised Land, where they became one entity. Their Mizrahi

identity was “invented” within the process of the Zionist

invention of the “Jewish Nation” (Shohat, 2001). In this

process, Jews of different ethnicities and cultures like Iran,

Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, or Iraq, like my own family,

became a homogeneous category—Mizrahi. Moreover, rather

than being discussed as part of the social construction of theconflict between ethnic groups in Israel, these immigrants

from Muslim countries were perceived, in an Orientalist

manner, as blocking the Zionist ethos of Israel as a White,

Western nation (Dahan-Kalev, 2006).

Mizrahi identity often writes itself out of a wounded

place (Pedaya, 2006). The wound that I speak about here is

located at the heart of academia, where an encounter takes

place between Mizrahi identity and Israeliness. It is at this

very place that the distinction between the researcher who

knows and the object of knowledge that can only be known

is drawn, resulting in a deep epistemic wound.

The moments that I will analyze are documented using

autoethnography, a form of self-narrative located in a social

context (de Freitas & Paton, 2009). Ellis and Bochner (2000)

describe autoethnography as a systematic sociological intro-

spection where the researcher begins with her feelings and

I . /

1Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Calanit Tsalach, Spitzer Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion

University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105

Email: [email protected]

Between Silence and Speech:

Autoethnography as an Otherness-

Resisting Practice

Calanit Tsalach1

Abstract

In this article I wish to trace three everyday moments in which my Mizrahi Ethnic Identity intersects with the academicone, and then extract experiences of ethnic otherness that are built within those moments. Exploring these moments

while considering Mizrahi identity construction, practices of otherness, and terms of silences enables a more nuanced

understanding of the ways in which hegemonic practices work and oppress Mizrahi subjects, and how these subjects work

against them.Throughout these described moments, Mizrahi ethnicity is marked as troublesome, inferior, or as an Other that is forced

to struggle to find its place. It is constructed as opposed to, or as a threat to the academic. Throughout these describedmoments I remain silent. My voice is given back to me through this autoethnographic text. In this way, autoethnography is

also a way to oppose otherness due to its power to see these moments of ethnic otherness and resist them.

Keywords

otherness, autoethnography, silence, Mizrahi ethnic identity, academic identity

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72 Qualitative Inquiry 19(2)

memories, and uses reflexive writing practices to move

back and forth between personal narratives, wider contexts,

and social forms. Autoethnography, then, can be thought of

as a form of identity politics, the exercise of the phrase “the

personal is the political.”

Mary Louise Pratt (1996) defines autoethnographic texts

as one of the reactions that characterize the colonial encoun-ter, and she therefore views them as pertaining to the rela-

tionship between the conquered and the conqueror, and to

modes of resistance to dominant discourses provided by the

native story. If ethnographic texts are texts in which

European colonial subjects present themselves and their oth-

ers (usually their subordinated others), then an autoethno-

graphic text is “a text in which people undertake to describe

themselves in ways that engage with representations others

have made of them” (p. 28).

In the moments I will present in my article, I remain

mostly silent. Margaret Montoya (2000) argues that silence

is an aspect of communication that is linked to one’s culture

and may also be correlated with one’s racial and ethnic

identity. In a partial response to Montoya’s invitation from

scholars to notice and attend to silence as it used by people

of color, especially in academic spaces, I will examine these

moments in relation to conditions of silence. This autoeth-

nographic text, so I will argue, enables me to mark my

silences, politicize and verbalize them and, eventually,

resist otherness.

First Moment—Blessings

and Babot at Sapir College

In March 2009, I participated in a conference at SapirCollege, a college located in the south of Israel, an area

which is often referred to as the unprivileged periphery in

relationship to the privileged center of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv,

and the Coastal strip. The college is located near the border

with Gaza, and in the proximity of Sderot and Netivot, two

“development towns,” where in the 1950s the Israeli gov-

ernment provided public housing for immigrants to develop

the area. In the rest of Israel, these southern towns are

known primarily as the site for the holy grave of the Baba

Sali—a popular religious leader, whose burial place has

become a site for prayers and believers. Other popular reli-

gious leaders have built communities in these areas attract-

ing multitudes of visitors asking for blessings. These

charismatic leaders and their followers are mostly Mizrahi.

Given its social and physical location, Sapir College pro-

motes itself as an attractive educational option for students

from the periphery. For example, two years prior to this

conference, in a Southern Film Festival, the president of

Sapir College declared in his opening speech that

one of the main problems of Israeli society is that it

speaks in one voice [. . .] that its cultural space

revolves around the center of Israel. Israeli society,

however, is a society that exceeds these boundaries,

and it doesn’t have an opportunity to express its

voice. Here in Sderot, Netivot, Sapir College—we

say: there are other layers of society whose voices are

not heard, and we are their loudspeaker. (Matatias,

2007)

The conference is titled “Women, Gender and Periphery”

and offers different sessions, including several on religion

and ethnicity. In a building called the Academia Building, in

auditorium 9202, still only half full, the conference begins.

I sit in one of the front rows. The opening session includes

a number of greetings by academic functionaries in addition

to the main lecture, as is customary in Israel. The first is

presented by the same president of the college. The chair of

the session invites him to present his blessings (a word that

has the same meaning as greetings in Hebrew). She then

takes pains to correct herself and says that the president

does not like to give his blessing and that is why she invites

him to “only” say a few words. The first statement and its

correction become clear when the president rises to speak.

The president is about 70 years old, he has gray hair, and

is wearing neat, semitailored attire. He approaches the

microphone and explains that there is no need for his bless-

ings as “there are enough Babot all around.” The Babot to

which he refers are those popular Mizrahi religious leaders,

surrounding Sapir College. As I have mentioned earlier,

many people visit them and request their help as healers and

miracle workers. The charismatic leaders and their believ-

ers are studied abundantly by academia, usually as the

exotic other dwelling in our midst. Critics of the popularreligion they represent often present these matters of holy

rituals, faith, and miracles in terms of deceit and trickery on

the part of the leaders.

“There are enough Babot all around,” says the president

of the college. Smiles and light giggling in the audience indi-

cate that his punch line was understood. Perhaps they were

also giggling due to embarrassment, anger, or pain. I am not

sure how aware the college president was to the possible sig-

nificance of his words, but the exchanges between him and

the panel chair and organizer of the conference, also a col-

lege professor, suggests that it is not accidental but rather a

recurrent conduct, familiar and known at the college.

In this short sentence, seemingly banal and inconsequen-

tial, but also ironic and belittling, the college president

draws an imaginary line that distinguishes between the

Babot and their believers, and the college, the conference,

and its attendees; a line that discerns between the first Israel

and the Other Israel. Between the educated, enlightened,

secular, western Israel, and the faltering, primitive, reli-

gious, oriental, foreign Israel.

In order to emphasize the rational, modern, scientific,

and cultural center, folkloristic beliefs, religious rituals, and







Tsalach 73

myths are constructed as its opposition, and as indicators, if

not the cause, of backwardness and ignorance. Embodying

exactly the opposite of what Sapir College and the academia

had set out to accomplish. The very opposite of the white

mask, through which the proper Israeli Society wishes to

see itself (Markovich & Alon, 2007). Uri Cohen (2005)

potently describes this with a quotation on the founding ofthe first university in Israel claiming that “science is the

wall protecting [us] from Levantine assimilation” (p. 233).

Estrangement, rendering something foreign, is often done

by constructing otherness of place and consciousness. Yassif

(1995) describes how the geographic distance between cen-

ter and periphery has always been a primary factor of

estrangement. The more the distance between them grows,

the easier it is to see beliefs and customs as other, strange,

foreign, and different from “ours.” But Sapir College is

located in the heart of the geographic periphery, a stone’s

throw away from Netivot and Sderot, and therefore it is nec-

essary for its president to repeat and emphasize this fluid

border, to strengthen it by constructing otherness of con-

sciousness. In so doing, he exchanges the ethnic divide,

usually expressed in the polarization of center and periph-

ery, with a cultural divide between Sapir College and its

surroundings.

“There are enough Babot all around” says the president

and indicates the line. According to this equation can those

who believe in Babot also be rational? Can they find them-

selves in an academic conference? Can their children be

students? Pursue doctoral studies? God forbid become pro-

fessors? On the surface it seems impossible. The marking

and delineating of borders by the president is a move that

exposes a message that it is not possible to be on both sidesof the indicated line. Both the development towns and Sapir

College. Both the Babot and the conference on “Women,

Gender, and Periphery.” Both folklore and scientific knowl-

edge. Maybe even both a Mizrahi Jew and an academic

researcher. As if we were speaking about two opposites,

parallel universes, water, and oil.

And maybe it is some sort of a term being made by the

college president, according to which, to be present in the

conference—not as an object of research—one should cross

the marked line, leaving one’s traditional baggage outside

the gates of the college, so as not to set off the security detec-

tors, upon entering the hallmark of scientific knowledge.

This drawing of the line by the president of Sapir

College, assumes that all of those present are on the right

side of this line. The inclusion of the audience constructs

them as an imagined community. Yet the line that is drawn,

as if incidentally, leaves many people on the outside. I too,

feel as if I am being pushed forcefully, almost violently, out-

side of the borderline, to what Stuart Hall (1997) calls sym-

bolic exile. His words hit my nerves. I immediately stand by

the Babot. I can feel insult, exclusion, pain, and anger stir-

ring in me. “Anger resides in you” writes Robin Boylorn

(2006) in her narrative about her experience as a Black PhD

student in a predominantly White academic institution. “It

is nestled in your belly, next to determination and ambition”

(p. 661). This silent rage can serve as empowerment for

women of color in the academy, granting them clarity

regarding racism and a reminder of the need to politicize the

self (Rodriguez, 2011).I hear the president of Sapir College and I understand that

for him, my ethnicity will always be disturbing, improper,

illegitimate, staining. That I will always have to monitor it,

regulate it, lower its voice, just like my mother used to do

when her father listened to the famous Iraqi singers Saleh

and Daoud Al-Kuwaiti on their old radio.

I wonder who I am there; which part of me hears the pres-

ident’s words? Where do I belong? Where can I stand?

Which type of choices am I being asked to make? What does

it mean to me? Is this a personal or an academic issue, am I

the minority or the majority, in or out, center or margin, the

one who knows, or maybe just the one who can be known?

The native intellectual, states Frantz Fanon (1962/1968),

feels that he is becoming estranged, the living haunt of con-

tradictions that run the risk of becoming insurmountable.

It seems that despite the postmodernist discourse of mul-

tiple identities, as well as theories that emphasize the native’s

knowledge, research still relies on stable and fixed identities

and subjectivities, regarding both the researcher as the

“knower” and the native as “knowable.” An epistemic

acknowledgment of a knowing native or the native as a

knower, argue Russel y Rodgriguez (2002), threatens this

stability. Consequently, as a Mizrahi Jewish researcher writ-

ing about Mizrahi Jews in Israel, my standpoint is con-

structed as relying on contradictory agendas, separatedspaces that do not allow for academic terra firma.

I look around, assuming that there are other people from

similar backgrounds like my own, choosing to conform to

this line marked by the college president without challeng-

ing it. Maybe it is too hard, too painful, or too distant. Maybe

it is just not such a high price to pay in order to enter the

academia. And besides, who really wants to hold on to an

identity marked as so inferior? Yet I cannot help sensing this

price. With the ongoing will to belong pecking at the back of

my head, I see how the “expert,” the “authority,” the presi-

dent of the college hosting the conference, closes this space

from me, keeping it away from me and leaving me outside.

Sitting there, I exchange a meaningful, hurting glance

with a friend sitting nearby. He rolls his eyes without words

as if to say “I understand.” I feel an enormous dissonance

and ponder whether I should say something, but I remain

silent. While women’s silences are often coerced, we have

also been socialized to remain silent (Montoya, 2000),

especially in the academic world (Rodriguez, 2011). I am

silent even in situations of intense emotions also because I

was brought up well. I know how to behave—I know how

to be silent. I feel anger, pain, frustration, but still I am not








talking. How can I cross this moment and find a voice to

speak, overcoming the disturbing boundaries set by the

president of the college?

Second Moment—Barbecuing

at the Kreitman Fellows ClubThe Kreitman Foundation is one of the most prestigious

scholarships in Israel, and it offers an academic enrich-

ment program that takes place at the Kreitman Fellows

Club, a room whose door can only be opened by swiping a

magnetic card. The Kreitman Club includes computers,

colored printers, daily newspapers, comfortable sofas,

refreshments, and even a nice coffee machine. In other

words, all the means needed for young scholars to devote

their energies to studying, conducting research, and devel-

oping professionally.

The lecture I am attending centers on analyzing mascu-

linity and nationalism in Israel by examining the people cel-

ebrating Independence Day by barbecuing at a large public

park in Jerusalem. There are about fifteen people in atten-

dance, mostly men, Kreitman Fellows, doctoral students,

and young professors. I look around and do what I always

do when I arrive somewhere—I read others through visible

signs on their bodies; counting heads; sorting skin colors and

other identifying marks; distinguishing between those that I

am sure of, from those who are only maybe. At the same

time, I am also blaming myself for this marking and label-

ing. At the end of my count, I am left with three or four

people besides myself who I perceive as possessing a

Mizrahi ethnic identity.

Right at the onset, the speaker explains that the peoplecelebrating at the park are Mizrahi, religious, lower-class

Jews. The atmosphere at the park, he reports, is crowded,

dense, vulgar, and sweaty. He has no idea why anyone

would want to celebrate this way. His depiction of the head

of the family leaving early in the morning to secure land at

the park brings smiles to those present. These smiles do not

reveal any familiarity with the description. On the contrary,

the words accompanying them show that barbecuing pub-

licly at the park on Independence Day is something strange

to them, something exotic that only other people do. The

overall framing of the phenomenon is of something differ-

ent, inferior, distant. Barbecuing at the public park in

Jerusalem, it seems, is as far from the lecture at the Kreitman

Club, as Sapir College and its president are from the Babot

among whom they sit.

At the end of the presentation one of the participants

wondered out loud why the speaker was analyzing this par-

ticular ritual, and how it could possibly say anything about

Israeli society. He questioned the basis for the speaker’s

assertion that it is such a common practice, when none of

the people he knows, including those present at the lecture,

celebrate Independence Day in this manner. The lecturer

answered him with the words “I know what you mean, you

are in the right place, I also don’t celebrate like this, but a lot

of people do.”

The unstated assumption in both speakers’ words is that

none of the people present in the heart of academic excel-

lence should identify themselves in the anthropological

description of the lecturer. “You are in the right place” heanswers, and all I could think about is my mom, who imme-

diately after viewing the traditional torch lighting ceremony

on television, hurries into the kitchen to prepare the meat for

tomorrow’s barbecue. I think of my dad, whom on

Independence Day, we “deport” before sunrise to find a

place for us in the forests of Mount Caramel Park. I think of

the dense, crowded, sweaty but also delicious and cozy fam-

ily barbecue. And I wonder whether it is me who is out of

place here, or maybe just in an Other place? Part of an Other

people? I wonder what I should think about how these

Othered people—including my family and many others

besides them—celebrate Independence Day, and whether

they-we can enter the academic sphere not only as an exotic

phenomenon defining the imagined Israel. For this anthro-

pological description of people celebrating in the park is in

line with the traditional manner in which many social scien-

tists have constructed Mizrahi people along the years as col-

orful and marginal populations.

I sit there and can’t decide whether to say something. It is

the first lecture I am attending as part of my Kreitman schol-

arship and I remain silent. When I later tell a friend about it,

she teases me and asks why I did not admit that it was exactly

how I celebrate Independence Day. I think of Pierre Bourdieu

(1984/1993) who simulates every linguistic situation to a

market in which each speaker is marketing his productsdepending on the forecast of profits and penalties he expects

to receive. Sherene Razack also discusses this when she

critically examines what happens when White people look at

people of color talking. She exhorts us to direct our attention

to the conditions of communication and knowledge produc-

tion that prevail, calculating who can speak and how they are

likely to be heard. This way of seeing and hearing the world

is connected to racial and ethnic superiority (Montoya,

2000). Why would I mark myself, then, as part of something

that is constructed as so inferior and out of place?

When I look around, I cannot help but think about the

social organization of silence and wonder if there are others

in the room who agree to publicly ignore something that

they also see and notice. Whether they, like me, choose to

remain silent. According to Eviatar Zerubavel (2006) the

distinction between what we see and what we ignore is not

natural or neutral. Ignoring something does not mean just

not paying attention to it. Often it is a result of pressure that

comes from social norms of attention designed to distin-

guish between what we conventionally perceive as worthy

of our attention and what should be ignored and dismissed

as background noise. In addition to these norms, it is also







Tsalach 75

about social and political constraints. After all, social rela-

tionships usually involve power, and silence and denial are

often products of asymmetrical power relations. Thus, what

we pay attention to and validate, is in part a function of how

much power we have.

In Bourdieu’s (1984/1993) terms, we can think of a space

of speech and silence as a field in which any expression isthe product of the relation between an interest to express

and a censorship determined by the structure of the field in

which it is being expressed. Accordingly, those who enter

the field are located within the existing power structure that

determines whether they will receive the right to speak or

whether this will be deprived of them in different ways,

whether they will get credit or not, and so on. In this man-

ner, the social conditions that constitute the field in which

discourse is produced determine what can be said, what is

impossible to say, and what should not be named.

In this context, the French literary critic Pierre Macherey

(1978) argues that “what is important in a work is what it

does not say” (p. 87). Macherey implies that in analyzing a

text, we have to pay attention also to its omissions and

exclusions. The subaltern subject-position may be traced

only through its negative traces (Britton, 1999). Following

him, Gayatry Spivak (1988) maintains that we can set up a

system whose task is measuring silences, a task that is par-

ticularly relevant to the question of subaltern conscious-

ness. Silence, particularly that of students of color can

potentially be a form of resistance to oppression, but more

often, it is a form of self-censoring (Montoya, 2000), the

gray area of what Araf-Bader (2006) calls “silent talks.”

Therefore, when we come to talk about silence, it is easier

to point out clear and defined conditions of silencing, butmuch harder to mark procedures of self-censorship.

Third Moment—Ethnic Trash

at Bar-Ilan University

The visual culture studies workshop at Bar-Ilan University

offers a platform to discuss critical and reflective research

methodologies. In one of the sessions I’m attending, there

is a lecture on Mizrahi ethnic films as a community instru-

ment. The lecture centers on movies created in the margins

of the canon of Israeli cinema. These movies, starred by

“third class” oriental singers, have what is called Turkish

style plots—melodramas about infidelity, poverty, drugs,

prostitution, and families falling apart. In spite of their

popularity among some audiences, especially working class

and ethnic minorities, these movies are perceived as infe-

rior and are rejected out of what is defined as cultural

(Banai, 2004). Artistically these are small budget movies

with motifs such as poor play, cinematic mistakes (shooting

from the opposite angles, unreliable locations, inappropri-

ate lighting, etc.), flat characters, and simplicity of plot

(Aharoni, 2009).

The lecturer wishes to discuss these ethnic films as a cin-

ema that constitutes an alternative to hegemony; a cinema

with a conscious choice not to act according to rules of the

genre and stick to a poor budget, pathos, melodramatic plot,

excess and exaggeration. These practices, he explains, are a

subversive mechanism, which represent and distribute a

unique subculture of ethnicity and class—“Ethnic Trash”— that in practice is a radical reaction to negative representa-

tions and stereotypes of Mizrahi identity by the mainstream

Israeli culture.

After this promising opening, he shows a clip from a

typical movie of this genre. Yet while it plays, he frames it

in a variety of comments and gestures that do not leave any

doubt regarding the distance he wishes to mark between

himself and what is projected on the screen. “Pay attention

to the living room,” he says, “the gun was bought in the flea

market for two dollars. Carefully observe the people. This is

always a moment when the music becomes dramatic.” At a

scene of shooting, he calms down and ridicules that, “in this

case the man was shot in the head, sometimes it’s in the

heart, take it easy, it doesn’t really mean he will die.” The

audience does not need much more, and is completely swept

into the joke. In front of my eyes, the scene morphs into

what Stuart Hall (1997) calls a spectacle of otherness.

Inequality is revealed as a lack of respect, shame, and pub-

lic humiliation (Amor, 2008, para. 12).

As in the lecture at the Kreitman Club, there is a general

assumption that there is no one among those present for

whom this spectacle is familiar or relevant. The marginality

of the people related to these ethnic films, as well as the

people barbecuing on Independence Day or seeking the

blessings of the Babot, is a fascinating and entertaining dis-covery. Yet it is not really a revelation. People like the ones

being shown on the screen are hardly a revelation to most

people living their lives in similar surroundings, at the mar-

gins of Israeli society.

I sit there and hear my heart pounding. I get up and walk

two rows ahead, where my supervisor is sitting, trying to

figure out whether she feels the same way. My supervisor

nods and says, “It’s really disgusting.” Suddenly, I realize

something about the difference in our positions: she identi-

fies the otherness being constructed into the event and finds

it problematic, while I take it as a personal attack, as if

someone is talking about me, laughing at me, threatening

me, negating me. At this moment, my racialized identity

works as a pair of epistemic binoculars from which certain

layers of reality become visible, while they remain less

accessible and relevant to members of other identity groups

(Alcoff, 2006).

The threat that I feel has to do with understanding that I

do not have a place there, and it also involves a fear of being

recognized, of having someone discover that I am much

closer to those presented on the screen than to the people

enjoying themselves observing them; that it is only this time








that I managed to sneak in, and immediately the inferior

ethnic detector will be put to work. The fact that I am not

clearly marked as such helps me blend in rather than stand

out, yet it also allows me to see how others are treated.

I look around, pretty sure that any minute someone will

say something or leave the hall in protest. But on the contrary,

when the clip continues and one of the leading characters, anobese ethnic singer enters the frame, the speaker’s words of

explanation are not even needed. The audience is laughing

hysterically, fascinated by the cinematic trash in front of

them. Between the various cuts of scenes, the reactions are

getting more intensified. In this manner, at the presence of the

most enlightened audience, among critical researchers deal-

ing with various Others, such as gays, Palestinians, and

Bedouin women, there is an ethnic Mizrahi spectacle taking

place with the silent consent of all those present. How ironic

it is to find that under the appearance of critical alternative-

subversive discourse, between discussions on hearing the

voice of the Others and resisting Orientalism, the construc-

tion of Mizrahi otherness is rampant.

It seems that gays, Bedouins, and Palestinians are distant

enough not to constitute a real threat. Encounter with the

Mizrahi Other, however, requires those present to position

themselves and reflect about their location within the cur-

rent power structure. This reflection becomes even more

complex, since the product—ethnic trash cinema—is con-

structed as carrying inferior value and challenges their self-

perception as enlightened and liberal people. In reaction,

these Others are ridiculed and symbolically exiled outside

of the social context (Hazan, 1994).

Seyla Benhabib (1985) distinguishes between two con-

ceptions of the relations of self-other—the generalized otherand the concrete other. From the standpoint of the general-

ized other, each individual is perceived as a rational person

entitled to the same rights and obligations as we are; our

attitude to him is subject to norms of formal equality and

reciprocity. These are rooted in universal commitment as

perceived by classic theories of justice and law, and estab-

lished in democratic government through the recognition of

human rights, civil rights, and political rights. The starting

point of the concrete other, however, requires us to see any

rational being as an individual with a life history, a concrete

and specific identity and emotional structure. Our attitude

to the other here is subject to norms of equality and mutual

reciprocity rooted in ethical relations. Differences between

the self and other in this case are complementary and not

exclusive of each other (Benhabib, 1992).

To recognize only the generalized other leads to a dis-

course based solely on rights and obligations, without refer-

ence to human needs and without recognition of the

importance of norms such as friendship, solidarity, love, and

compassion. The critical discourse at the university work-

shop acknowledges the Mizrahi ethnicity described in the

movies only as the generalized other. For the concrete

Mizrahi Others on the screen, or, God forbid, who managed

to sneak in to the lecture, there is no place. Their otherness

is their entrance card to the workshop. And the speaker, in

complicity with the audience, will not let them escape this

early typecasting.

Thus, while the structured marginality of Mizrahi ethnic-

ity serves an academic and social purpose, the Mizrahi subjects themselves lose their visibility and meaning (Hazan,

1994). Instead of really “seeing” them and voicing the sound

of otherness loud and clear, we are left with a rhetoric of soft-

ened liberal diversity regarding the legitimacy of different

cultural groups (Yona & Shenhav, 2005). As Cohen (2001)

maintains, Israeli society may be at the point where it recog-

nizes that there are others, whose voices are indeed permis-

sible, appropriate, and need to be heard, but still only from

the perspective of the dominant society, rather than through a

broader vision of taking responsibility for these others.

The movement of the speaker and his ambivalent atti-

tude is fascinating. Despite his opening statements, the

speaker cannot hide his opinion of these movies, an opinion

that is itself part of the atmosphere against which he argues,

but that he also effectively reproduces. He makes declara-

tions about subversion and a critical standpoint, but in fact

cannot or does not dare break the mainstream hegemonic

climate. In so doing, like the President of Sapir College, he

draws a line, a boundary, marking the normative and accept-

able, and the nonnormative and inacceptable; the in place

and the out of place, the self and the other. This epistemic

violence reinstates order. The one who represents, there-

fore, is also the one who excludes.

Sitting there, I am already memorizing my pointed

response, one that will start with doubting the methodologyand theoretical framework of the presenter, and will end by

saying that what we have just seen was not an ethnic trash

and a poor epic, but rather an academic trash and a poor

criticism. But this panel turns out to be interior, without out-

side responses. I want to do something, say that it is really

unthinkable, yet I do not want to violate the order and I

remain silenced, ashamed. Shame, according to Ziv (2008),

is the indicator of hegemony, the shepherd pushing the sub-

ject back into the ranks of the herd. Yet it is also an oppor-

tunity for a dialectical relationship between domination and

agency, between denial of recognition and recognition, and

between the threat of subject deconstruction and the oppor-

tunity to reestablish it.

My shame, anger, and frustration later turn into tears.

“Why?” my supervisor asks when we walk to her car. “Do

you see these films? Is it you there?” In his book, The

Wretched of the Earth, Fanon (1962/1968) writes that since

colonialism is a systematic negation of the Other and a

refusal to see in him any human characteristic, it urges him

to constantly ask himself the question “Who am I really?”

This question becomes more acute when the original cul-

ture is underneath the dominant colonial culture. Individuals







Tsalach 77

in such societies suffer from the pain of what Fanon defines

as a “split-hybrid existence”—an attempt to live at the same

time as two different contrasting persons and negotiate

between different identities and value systems. Following

him, Dangarembga (1989) describes the formation of an

internal otherness—situations of ambivalence, uncertainty,

the blurring of cultural boundaries and haziness betweenthe inside and the outside. She calls this the nervous condi-

tion of the native trying to find his place.

My supervisor’s question echoes in me for a long time. I

wonder whether it is me there on screen. Why do I care so

much? Maybe I am appropriating a pain that is not truly

mine. Sometimes it seems that if I am not close enough, if I

am not among those who seek blessings from the Babot, or

did not grow up watching ethnic trash films, I must cooper-

ate with this spectacle of otherness, with the silence protect-

ing me there. Its violation would mark me immediately;

would require me to explain, to justify, to take a side.

Paradoxically, despite the silence protecting me, it is

clear that at this moment I voluntarily choose to stand there.

To stand where ethnicity meets class till they seem insepa-

rable; to stand where Mizrahi ethnicity is perceived as poor,

weepy, irrational, loaded with excess and exaggeration. The

same link that runs between the Babot, barbecuing on

Independence Day, and ethnic trash movies. At this point

otherness is constructed, and at this point I find myself iden-

tifying, belonging, knowing that a lot of what these films

represent regarding ethnicity and class is not really strange,

other, far from me.

So yes, it is also me there.

Ignoring this seems to alienate me. The subaltern intel-

lectual, writes Fanon (1962/1968), knows the danger lurkinghim, the danger of severing ties with his people. To ensure

his salvation and to avoid the superiority of the White cul-

ture he feels the need to return to unknown roots, to even get

lost within his barbarian people, because he feels he is

becoming estranged from himself, the living haunt of con-

tradictions that run the risk of becoming insurmountable.

Voicing Silence: Autoethnography

as an Otherness-Resisting Practice

In this article, I have tried to capture three daily moments

of ethnic otherness in academic spaces, and linger on them.

Writing about experiences of ethnic otherness might be

perceived as a problematic move, suggesting possible con-

forming to external stereotyping, and maybe even accep-

tance of hegemonic discourse that constructs the Mizrahi

subject—me—as a problem. Yet for me, writing about and

within my experiences of otherness is also a demonstration

of power and a site for critical investigation. If the writer is

not quite “at home,” it allows her to transcend everyday

perceptions of the self and society, and to some extent

rewrite them (Reed-Danahay, 1997). As Richardson (1994)

maintains, it is through telling our stories that we create

ourselves, validate our identity, and give meaning to our

pain. This turns the margins into an alternative sphere for

the development of critical and political consciousness

(hooks, 2000), where Others can be heard and represented

(Young, 2003).

Focusing directly on oppressive experiences often meanssaying what cannot be said and attempting to learn what is

not knowable. That is to say, rather than seeing knowledge

as something that is available in a transparent way, speaking

about these moments of otherness as a type of epistemic

erasure reveals that knowledge is always an assertion of

ideology and reminds us of what cannot be known, what has

been erased, and the process by which this is done. Once

you recognize what is unknowable, academic authority is

undermined and the control it is based upon fissures (Hong,

2008). Although I point to my own experience, I would like

to think that this testimony says something about knowl-

edge as whole, about its borders, its oppressiveness, and its

potential. Moreover, if violence against ethnic bodies is

executed via epistemic means, then the complementary act

must be a different type of knowledge production that can

create a different space within the academy. This form of

knowledge production would enable us to reimagine the

university as a site where various kinds of intellectual

projects—including autoethnographic projects—may emerge

(Hong, 2008). In this way, academia can also be a source of

strength and not only of pain.

Krumer-Nevo and Sidi (2012) identify textual mecha-

nisms that create othering in academic writing. As I have

tried to show in this article, creating othering is not restricted

to writing, but prevails in other academic spaces as well,even allegedly critical ones, and can serve to tell us some-

thing about the strength of hegemonic discourse. These

mechanisms produce alienation and social distance at the

research encounter, which in turn creates otherness (Krumer-

Nevo & Sidi, 2012). In similar manner, the speakers during

the moments I have outlined in this article speak in a hege-

monic theoretical voice in order to distance themselves

from what is perceived and constructed as inappropriate,

inferior, and nonacademic.

Throughout the analytic description of these moments,

Mizrahi ethnicity is marked as troublesome, inferior, or as an

Other forced to struggle to find its place. In my analysis of

the first moment, it is described as a threatening alternative

cultural force; during the second moment it is an object of

anthropological research; and in the third moment it is a

symbol of low, inferior culture. In each case, it is an object

being discussed, constructed as opposed to, or as a threat to

academic identity. It seems that the ethnic endangers us

native researchers because it is perceived and valued as not

appropriate enough. Value is given to holding on to the intel-

lectual, the theoretical, and the academic, all of which polish

the personal stains and give us our status in the academic








field. But can’t we break through this discourse? After all,

for me it is actually the academic that prevents me from

forgetting, from alienating, and from leaving “my people”

behind, and instead, allows me to connect, belong, and be

present. Therefore, I insist on not giving up on marking sup-

pression and voicing the silences. I insist on speaking aca-

demically with an ethnic accent.In the moments I trace in my article, I remain mostly

silent. At times, it is a silence that involves giving up

expressing intense emotions publicly. At times, it is a pro-

tective silence, keeping me from self-marking in a setting

that constructs my ethnicity as inferior. Yet at the same

time, this silence also strengthens the hierarchic dichotomy

between my ethnic and academic identity, a separation that

I am trying to contest. Linda Alcoff (2006) writes that the

truth of racial and gendered identities is largely considered

something that can be seen. Consequently, a threatening

dependency is developed between what is real and what is

hidden. The feeling that if I say anything at the lecture, I’ll

expose my hidden ethnic identity, constructs what is hid-

den as the true essence of my nature, my real self, and what

is supposedly “out”—my academic identity—as not truth

or as a disguise. Moreover, it leaves the academic identity

associated with my public identity, while my ethnic iden-

tity remains inside the body. Yet what is so-called “out”—

my presence at the lecture, my intellectual ambitions, my

academic identity—is not nonethnic, and it is a part of me,

just the same.

I am not sure of the exact conditions that would enable

me not to remain quiet and censor my words and speech, or

how such speech might have sounded in each of these

moments, but in retrospect, it is clear to me that my silenceis more complex than merely a form of avoidance. Within

the experience of these moments, I look up and look around;

looking for recognition, an echo, feedback that will remind

me it is not just in my head. Those who experience these

moments of otherness are not once required to experience

them quietly. The dominant social rules in multicultural

societies perceive it as inappropriate or tactless to engage

with differences in public spaces. Those who point to these

moments are accused of exaggerating, being too sensitive,

making a fuss about nothing, or simply misunderstanding

the situation. The courage to bring such moments into dis-

cursive consciousness stands against denial and powerful

acts of silencing that can cause subaltern people to feel like

they have lost their sanity (Young, 1990).

Violating the silence, argues Benjamin (2003), is a pro-

cess where social relations hitherto conducted by hege-

monic powers of oppression, and therefore characterized by

alleged harmony, adaptation, and acceptance—or actually by

silence—now change through social conflict and require

renewed negotiation on conditions and order. In this sense,

we can examine the violation of silence and silencing not

only as an analysis of the relative strength between competing

meanings of public discourses but also in terms of a change

in how we understand ourselves within this interaction and

the way we gain power by redefining ways to speak and

strengthening identification with the sources of identity

(Benjamin, 2003). Through this reflective move, we are

able to give voice to issues and ways of speaking that seem

inappropriate in this social interaction and begin negotia-tions regarding the definitions.

Thus my silences are also a gaze, an effort to relocate,

and mostly, an attempt to find a language to voice my pain.

As I write this text, I know that my silence is also a kind of

inner space in which work is being done, mainly regarding

highlighting the silences, politicizing them, and—yes, also

verbalizing them, pushing what was private to the public

eye, as an act of resistance to oppression. In this sense,

silence can also be performative because of its production of

action, interpretation, and consequence (MacLure, Holmes,

Jones, & MacRae, 2010). Although silencing exists, there is

also the subversion of precisely what structures this silence

(Bhattacharya, 2009). Montoya (2000) adds that because of

the role academics play in the production and maintenance

of the forces of hegemony, we can use silence in a counter-

hegemonic manner, that is, we can learn to hear it and

inquire into its meanings, learn to employ it as a means of

resistance, and subvert the dominant conventions. This is

the undermining that writing allows me. So I do not only

testify to suppression but also act against it.

During the moments I described above, I focused on my

silences. If, as Alcoff (2006) argues, our racialized identi-

ties work as epistemic binoculars that can capture certain

layers of reality, while leaving them less accessible and rel-

evant for other people, one must ask how we hear the silenceof others. How attentive are we to the others? Are silenced

voices interested in the silence of others? Is there a desire

and ability for solidarity, a longing to belong to a cry that

transcends boundaries? In other words, can silences meet?

Just as autoethnography is about crossing borders, I think

the answer lies in breaking the dichotomy between those

who are silent and those who silence them. It is important to

remember that there is no full, static state of “I vs. Other,”

but rather these locations are hybrid and fluid (Riggins,

1997). To be an Other, maintains Sartre (Sartre, 2007), is an

experience that enables the recognition of the possibility that

you also have an Other. The understanding that otherness

can include you at any time, provides a more forgiving and

careful standpoint regarding the world. Politically, it means

that we can see the simultaneity inherent in the location of

the other and the fact that under the gaze of this other, I could

have been an Other too (Kaplansky, 2006).

Throughout the moments I described and analyzed, I

remained mostly silent. My voice is given back to me through

this autoethnographic text, which allows me to move between

different modes of silence and speech. As such, it offers a par-

ticular kind of cultural self-awareness regarding facets of my







Tsalach 79

life as they are marked and tagged by the dominant group

(Pratt, 1996). Remaining silent will guarantee my erasure and

allow the colonizer to define who am I (Rodriguez, 2011).

In this way, this autoethnography is also a way to oppose

otherness (Richards, 2008) due to its power to see these

moments of ethnic otherness and resist them. It confronts

dominant forms of representation and power in an attemptto reclaim, through self-reflection, representational spaces

that exclude certain individuals and groups, and relegates

them to the margins (Tierney, 1998).

Krumer-Nevo and Sidi (in press) suggest that research

methods that use narrative, dialogue, and reflexivity can

contribute to the mitigating of othering in academic writing.

Autoethnography can be one method that is in line with

these characteristics. Besides escaping the inevitable power

relations that representation carries, autoethnography brings

the subject and her history to the fore; it is contextual, par-

ticular, written out of a situated position, and uses reflexiv-

ity. In autoethnographic texts, the research subject who

writes the narrative on her own, as Krumer-Nevo and Sidi

(in press) suggest, has the strongest ontological and episte-

mological status, since she serves as not only the protago-

nist but also the writer, who defines the narrative’s content,

form, and point of view. Moreover, autoethnography can

give an embodied sense of the lived experience of other-

ness, affect readers, and therefore has the potential of creat-

ing an encounter across the great divide between the social

positions of individuals who would otherwise never meet.

This alternative ethnography does what bell hooks calls

“repositioning” (Boylorn, 2006); it gives voice to those who

are silenced, and enables them to say what cannot always be

said. Breaking the silence, according to Rodriguez (2011),“involves retraining ourselves to speak, to envision a new

world of freedom” (p. 595). Such an act is critical to us as

marginalized people, leading to a possible change that

becomes a means to becoming subjects. In a paraphrase on

Gayatry Spivak’s words, although the subaltern cannot

speak, it seems that, over time, they cannot remain silent.

Author’s Note

This article is part of my PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof.

Michal Krumer-Nevo, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and

Dr. Yuval Yonay, University of Haifa. I thank Art Bochner,

Henriette Dahan-Kalev, and Orly Benjamin for their helpful com-

ments on parts of earlier drafts.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with

respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this

article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Bio

Calanit Tsalach is a doctoral candidate at the Spitzer Department

of Social Work and a member of the Israeli Center for Qualitative

Research of People and Societies, Ben-Gurion University of the

Negev, Israel. Her doctoral research is an autoethnography of

experiences of ethnic otherness in academic spaces. Her research

interests are qualitative methodologies, ethnicity, critical race the-

ory, popular culture, and production of knowledge. She received

her master’s degree in communication studies from the University

of Haifa. She is a Kreitman fellow and was recently the recipient

of the Wolf Foundation award.

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