Defining Positioning within Politics of Difference: Negotiating spaces 'in between'

It is a quandary for narrative researchers studying politics of difference and education that even as the other is encouraged to speak, the researcher orchestrates their voices and is also positioned within the research. Researchers are cautioned that it is difficult to write about others and that a first task is to understand ourselves. Recent writings demonstrate that we are multipositioned, implicated in unequally empowered ways of understanding and doing; that people share positionings in common and yet are not simply defined by sets of binaries; black, white, working class, middle class, female, male. This article seeks to understand the implications of this 'changing of the subject' on positionality. In doing so it untangles Homi Bhabha's observation that subjects are formed in excess of parts of difference, especially as they are defined as race, class and gender; and that communities share experiences but have understandings and priorities which are antagonistic, conflictual and incommensurable.