The Ethnographic Record as Archive: Epistemic Tensions and the Construction of Evidence With Muslim Youth

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Abstract

This paper examines ethnographic data collected over six years with Muslim undergraduates in Southern California and New York City. Drawing upon Stoler’s construction of colonial archives as “condensed sites of epistemological and political anxiety rather than as skewed and biased sources” (Stoler, 2009, 20), I ask how the ethnographic record I produced reflects the political and epistemic anxieties of a post 9-11 surveillance state. I re-read my field notes not as a site of truthfulness, or depth of record, but rather as a site epistemic tension. I ask what the construction of this data set reveals about political and social anxieties of surveillance, political liberalism and the suspicious citizenship written upon Muslim bodies.

Author

• Arshad Imtiaz Ali, The George Washington University
  Presenting Author