Lorraine Nencel De Vrije Universiteit

Feeling Gender Speak Intersubjectivity and Fieldwork Practice with Women Who Prostitute in Lima, Peru

Keywords:

This article discusses a dimension of fieldwork methodology often overlooked. It concerns the act of feeling (inferences) and how this subjective ability contributes to understanding cultural meanings, which are unspoken or encoded in dialogue, but remain unarticulated. The discovery of this dimension in fieldwork eventually brought several epistemological principles into question pertaining to power and intersubjectivity subscribed to in a feminist or critical anthropology. Simultaneously, the use of this dimension in fieldwork gave insight into the relational construction of gender identity -the author's own, that of the women and a male assistant. The article illustrates this by reconstructing different ethnographic moments during fieldwork practice. Moreover, it aims to put these theoretical assertions into practice by presenting an ethnographic narrative intended to evoke meanings that contribute to feeling the construction of identity through interaction in fieldwork practice.

always cooperative. What was our relationship like? How can our communication be characterized? From my perspective our relationship can be described as difficult and taxing. Curiosity, an excellent attribute for an anthropologist, is not a virtue in this urban setting. When I brought up relevant research topics, a silence would fall or curt answers would be given, lies would be told. More often than not, the women would feed me bits of information when they felt like it. Interpreting our relationship from their perspective, it was probably very similar to their relationships with other outsiders. Very little is talked about, much is concealed or avoided and distrust reigns. Thus, I found myself in a fieldwork situation that was far from the anthropological ideal and to top it off, many of my questions were left unanswered. Still, if so little was verbalized, how did I manage to collect the material that coalesced into a book about their lives, the construction of gender identity and their marginalization as women and as prostitutes [START_REF] Nencel | Mujeres que se prostituyen. Género, identidad y pobreza en el Perú[END_REF][START_REF] Nencel | Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru[END_REF]? Reflexive analysis aided in solving this enigmatic puzzle and revealed a multilayered process constituting the process of gathering and creating knowledge in the field.

In part, the material collected was found in a subterranean mode. Within this realm, silence acquires significance; meanings that remain unspoken, unsaid and untold are encoded in the actual dialogue. Expressions emerge from meanings created through shared but unstated knowledge. Gestures, tone and facial expressions amplify these meanings. In essence, these meanings are evoked in interaction. Some are expressed in doings and deeds but others are enclosed in the intentions behind what is being said and often conflict with what is actually said. Others are found in the silences or appear through a different reading of the same dialogue. Smith and Watson come to similar conclusions in their article on autobiographical narratives. They state: 'The narrative can be coded, signalling certain meanings while masking others before those not sharing the secret knowledge. Phrases or intonations or certain rhetorical gestures become veiled signals to other participants in the unspeakable' (Smith and Watson, 1996: 15). If these meanings cannot always be read straightforwardly by the researcher, how then are they identified and given substance in the research process and ultimately in the ethnographical text?

Here we enter into the terrain of methodology to discuss an aspect normally not treated as methodological, but, I contend, which accompanies everyone to the field and is essential for an ethical and reflexive anthropology. I refer here to the act of feeling and its influence in fieldwork.

Feeling has at least three dimensions. First, there are feelings as in emotions. Fieldwork can be experienced as pleasurable or unpleasant. Feelings of affection or antipathy towards a respondent may ultimately influence research results. Second, when something is felt an inkling or a suspicion emerges and this feeling is the impulse to dive deeper into the matter, giving the anthropologists the feeling of being a detective, following inferences until they make sense. This dimension of feeling is situated and is a result of fieldwork interactions and appears to work similar to what Lancaster calls 'the give-and-take of social life'. As something that . . . is tentative, unarticulated, inarticulate. Meanings are negotiated: we don't quite know what we meant until a response comes from someone else. Our best thinking is serendipitous: we're not quite sure what we suspected until some evidence appears. We're not quite sure what we're looking for until we find it. A gaze roves until it catches something unexpected, as we might have expected. (Lancaster, 1997: 13) Finally, and highly related to the previous, it also refers to the act of becoming aware, of being able to sense something. In this manifestation, feeling in fieldwork is receiving and perceiving meanings and emotions that are evoked and embodied. It can be compared with the attributes given to oral narrative by Patai. Patai conceptualizes oral narratives as follows: 'oral narratives usually evoke rather than describe emotions, in the same way they usually evoke rather than describe the cultural context with which speakers' lives are lived' (Patai, 1988: 148). Perhaps the difficulties I experienced in fieldwork made me more sensitive to the importance of feeling in gathering cultural expressions of gender (identity). If I had received all the answers verbally, I would not have been made aware of the unspoken. When I learnt to read unspoken, encoded messages, at times they made more sense than what was being said.

Conceptualizing the act of feeling as a methodological component in fieldwork reworks the western division between feeling and thinking, the emotional from rational and therefore raises queries concerning certain epistemological principles. Hilary Rose (quoted in [START_REF] Harding | The Science Question in Feminism[END_REF] associates the unification of thinking and feeling as a step towards a feminist theory of knowledge. 'Its distinctiveness is to be found in the way its concepts of the knower, the world to be known, and processes of coming to know reflect the unification of manual, mental and emotional ("hand, brain and heart") activity characteristic of women's work' (Harding, 1986: 142).

Unni Wikan discusses the Balinese ideal of 'feel-think', which stresses the inseparable unification of these two actions in Balinese thought. Those who separate them will be unable to reach genuine insights (Wikan, 1991: 285). Upon this discovery, Wikan questions the western social science tradition and concludes, 'What if Balinese are right that feeling-thinking is one integral process that should be implicated in any successful venture . . . how then should we proceed methodologically to enhance the string of our knowledge?' (Wikan, 1991: 287). Further on she states, 'Our splitmind vision of culture, then, impedes understanding of alternative epistemologies like those based in feeling-thinking as vital premise and the key of relevance to lived experience' (Wikan, 1991: 289).

The act of feeling portrayed here is part of the multilayered process constituting knowledge construction in the field. It is entwined with more conventional methods relying on spoken statements. The relationship between the unspoken and the verbal is not a dichotomized separation. It resembles Wikan's 'feeling-think' conception in which it is difficult to discern where one leaves off and the other begins.

Methodologically, the act of feeling blooms in an intersubjective fieldwork relationship founded on reciprocity, partial identification and double consciousness (Mies, 1991: 78-9). Power differences are minimized and the researcher and research subject 'are assumed to be individuals who reflect upon their experience and who communicate those reflections' (Acker et al., 1991: 140) and produce knowledge together. Intersubjective interactions are not directed by research protocols that instruct the researcher to maintain distance and obtain rapport, but rather it is assumed that distance and approximation are negotiated and/or created in the fieldwork relationship. Thus, intersubjectivity does not erase the divide between researcher with her research objectives and the research subject who consents to participate in the project, nonetheless, in varying degrees it enables a special relationship to grow characterized by respect, mutual interest, humour, moments of friendship, trust and guided by feeling.

This article has two purposes, in the first place it aims to explore the relationship between intersubjectivity and feeling. In the following section, an analysis is made of the unspoken expressions felt in our interactions and in doing so challenges the previously stated assumptions regarding intersubjective fieldwork relations. The second purpose is to present an illustration of how the unspoken and untold expressions of gender are enacted in fieldwork and how I learnt to grasp meanings enacted in the interactions between myself, the women who prostitute and between the research subjects.

SILENCES, DENIALS AND LIES

During the preparation of the research proposal and upon leaving for the field, my anthropological identity could be most closely described as a standpoint feminist [START_REF] Harding | The Science Question in Feminism[END_REF] with unorthodox methods, who, in regard to fieldwork, considered an intersubjective relationship the most appropriate, ethical and politically correct. Thus, in the field an attempt is made to create a relationship of dialogue. My objectives of research intended to de-objectify the prostitute by designing an investigation that studied their situations not only from the perspective of their work, but also as women situated in a broader community. I set out to the field with the intention to do life stories, which I considered reflected most adequately my epistemological standpoint and research objectives. In retrospect, I am still convinced of my good intentions even though the fieldwork did not reflect the progressive, accumulative scenario of gaining trust assumed in intersubjective fieldwork relations. What ensued was a continuous struggle between fieldwork reality and the ethical and epistemological principles I took to the field. In other words, there was no dialectical interaction (i.e. [START_REF] Mies | Women's Research or Feminist Research? The Debate Surrounding Feminist Science and Methodology[END_REF], nor rarely was there a conversation that could be classified as dialogue [START_REF] Dwyer | The Dialogic of Ethnology[END_REF][START_REF] Schrijvers | Dialectics of a Dialogical Ideal: Studying Sideways and Studying Up[END_REF]. What there was was a deafening silence. What did this silence tell? It revealed a great deal about power and the construction of identities.

WHEN SILENCE BECOMES UNBEARABLY LOUD

The silence I experienced brought into question the power relationships between the researcher and the research subject. As alluded to earlier, it is assumed that in the field all efforts will be made to minimalize power differences and create egalitarian relationships. However, this decisionto construct an intersubjective relationship -has been taken by the researcher. The researcher assumes beforehand that both parties desire an egalitarian, harmonious relationship. It is not a joint decision or one necessarily reflecting the subject's yearning. Although such a relationship is less harmful than an asymmetrical one, the researcher still is the person who orchestrates the relationship. She does not relinquish the bandleader's baton and above all, still has the power to decide whether and when she will release it.

The researcher assumes she is in the powerful position. What does this power entail? The power to define the research project? The power obtained from class, culture or ethnic differences? If the anthropologist finds herself in a position of power because she is defining the terms of research and creates the situations of encounter, isn't it absurd to presume she defines and controls the entire relationship? Why does the projection of power in the field reflect a nearly binary opposition between the powerful and the powerless instead of departing from the multipositioned subject? Lerum asserts, 'Although researchers may still ultimately claim the most structural power, the immediate interpersonal power dynamic may be far more fluid, unpredictable, and weighted toward the researched. Thus, emotionally engaged researchers must continuously evaluate and construct the behaviour best suited for each person and situation' (Lerum, 2001: 475).

What happens in situations where the research subjects are not interested in an egalitarian relationship? For example, either they have no problems accepting the differences that exist and are not interested or do not feel comfortable in an egalitarian relationship, or inversely, which happens to be this case, the prostitutes were not interested in sharing power. They gave me no more than a minimal amount of space for manoeuvring and the control of the situation remained in their hands. Of course, I made efforts to negotiate alternative configurations of power relations. I attempted to build trusting relationships in which they would eventually feel comfortable enough to relate their life story. There is no denying, our relationships were founded on respect and a degree of trust, but this impasse in dialogue was never completely surmounted. They seemed content to hold onto the reins throughout the duration of fieldwork. Thus, the silence between us forced me to ponder to what extent the concept of intersubjectivity is ethnocentric, paternalistic and grounded in an essentialist notion of power.

The silence also embodies expressions of gender identity -theirs and my own. The control they exercised over our relationship showed how they managed and exerted power in their working lives. This sense of power that I felt in our daily interaction caused me to reflect on the conceptualization of prostitutes' identities encountered in feminist theory either as victims of sexual slavery, proposed by the abolitionist strand of feminist prostitution theory [START_REF] Barry | The Prostitution of Sexuality: The Global Exploitation of Women[END_REF] 2 or as sexually assertive women [START_REF] Alexander | Feminist, Sex Workers and Human Rights[END_REF], a symbol claimed by sex workers' rights advocates and academics. Both of these labels inaccurately portray the complexity of power and how it is exerted and exercised in daily practice.

The silence also projected certain features onto my gender identity. During my nightly adventures, a male assistant accompanied me. It did not take long to realize the differing ways the women related to us. They seemed at ease talking to him, they appeared to let their guard down and confided in him, while I felt they often kept their distance and held up a certain image for me.

In retrospect, I realize that during fieldwork I departed from an equivocal ontological notion that only one version of truth exists. Since my assistant received the type of information I wanted to hear, I was inclined to think his version was the truth and mine false. His relationship was less problematic than my own. He was a native of Lima, which made it easier for him to read between the lines, a skill that anthropologists must learn but takes some time to acquire. Returning from the field and reading over my notebooks several times, I became aware that the cause of the differing relationships was gender related. Roberto was able to appeal to the women using gender relations to his advantage. He was flirtatious and charming and they enjoyed the attention. This experience convinced me to question even further the positivist-oriented conception of scientific truth and inspired me to analyse the material as different gendered versions of the truth: one constructed in a gender relation between two women and the other between a man and a woman. Nonetheless, during fieldwork, this dilemma caused rich reflexive moments that gave insight into the process of gender construction in the world of prostitution.

There are various positions belonging to men in the nightlife. They are clients, husbands (maridos), pimps, managers, bouncers or waiters. Before the women got to know my assistant he was a potential client. When they became aware of his intentions, they continued to talk to him because he showed them respect, was interested in what they had to say and gave them affection. Many of the women trusted him, some wished they had a man like him. Two fell in love with him, and others appreciated his friendship.

There is no existing role for a woman who does not prostitute and it is even harder to imagine if she is a foreigner. It gradually became clear that our relationship constructed an image of me as a buena mujer (good woman) -an ambiguous but nonetheless, pervasive image. Their representation of me as a buena mujer shows their acceptance of a non-prostitute in their setting. The friend who does not look down on us, someone willing to help us, who does not compete. In other words, different from other women who do not prostitute.

The second connotation overshadows the first by highlighting class, ethnic and social difference. I was the professional, I had a love life, a gratifying life and being a foreigner it was assumed that I was financially well off. This second interpretation constructed barriers between us. For some I represented the type of woman they would like to be. Therefore, my presence was a reminder of the dreams and desires they were unable to achieve. This made them feel uncomfortable telling me their stories. Perhaps they did not consciously make this comparison, nonetheless, it was silently present. Either I was an exception to the run-of-the-mill good woman or on another level, I reflected this very same woman. Thus, the silence provoked by their projections of my gender identity functioned as a mirror that gave insight into their perceptions of their selves. They upheld the traditional Peruvian gender dichotomy of femininity, which constructs juxtaposed gender scripts -one as the good woman (the mother) and the other as the bad (the whore). Hence, if I was the good woman then indirectly within our relationship they positioned themselves as the bad.

Returning to the concept of power, these two manifestations of identity created different power relations. The first projection reinforced the relationship in which they managed and exerted power. In the second, by according me the stereotypical image of a woman who does not prostitute, I was regarded as more powerful and distance was maintained. Both configurations obstructed the knowledge process to some degree. Meanwhile, the relationship between my assistant and the women reflected male and female power relations in general and in this context in particular.

Finally, all of this brought into question an assumption intricately woven into the notion of intersubjectivity, namely that female anthropologists are more equipped and find it easier to do research with women than a man. In other words, the commonalties experienced as being members of the same gender will ultimately override differences. Working with this premise increased the silence and obscured my vision to other conceivable relationships, not necessarily the epistemological ideal, but which would be based on mutual respect and other elements constituting the foundation of feminist methodology.

DENIAL AND UNFURLING THE UNTOLD

As I stated earlier, I had chosen to use life stories to complete my research objectives. In her discussion of feminist ethnography, Bell states, 'Feminist ethnography opens a discursive space for the "subjects" of the ethnography and as such is simultaneously empowering and destabilizing' (Bell, 1993: 31). One of the methods to create this discursive space is through life stories. Moreover, life history methodology enables the growth of intersubjective fieldwork relations. For this and other reasons, for example the rich and subtle details that flow out of a life story, I was determined to use life stories as my primary source. Little did I know this would prove almost impossible. During fieldwork, I collected five interviews. Two resembled interrogations and the other three bear a strong resemblance to life stories. Other than these five interviews, I was unable to collect life stories and relied heavily on my participant observation in the field to fill in the details and help make sense of cultural meanings. What does this form of silence imply and what does this suggest about intersubjectivity and research aimed to empower and to reduce asymmetrical relationships? 3 Suzanna eloquently answers these questions in a few simple sentences.

I have left the past behind me. I don't want to think about it, I don't want to think about the future, I just live for today. I don't want to think about it because I don't want to recognize how I earn my money, I earn my money in an ugly way. Doing a life story would force the women to recognize what they are doing and accept it as something more permanent. A life story can function as a catalyst that forces them to come to terms with the way they earn a living, which the majority of the women would rather avoid doing. And a life story creates a dimension of permanence, which in their enactments as prostitutes they try at all costs to avoid.

Many prostitutes dream of getting out as soon as possible. They experience prostitution as temporary and live within an illusion of continual temporality by planning the moment of retirement either in material terms -'when I have saved enough money', 'when I am able to start my own business', 'when I am able to finish my house' -or in temporal expressions -'four more years then I will quit', 'when I turn 30 I will leave'. Perhaps the desire to get out does not match their reality but it is what keeps them going. Thus, women who prostitute create a situation in which permanence is avoided, and anonymity is savoured creating the sensation they can slip away without many questions being asked or without being noticed. An anthropologist who is prepared to ask questions, to dive deeper and try to make sense of things is creating permanence. Thus, the notions of temporality and permanence were continually at odds. Considering all of this, it should not come as a surprise that the majority of the women were not interested in doing life stories. Their various ways of refusing to do a life story were simultaneously expressions of denial of what they do and the permanence in which they do it. The clearest statement made was when they did not show up for an appointment. Life stories may be a way of sharing power, but the question remains whether life stories as a method of empowerment is boundlessly suited for all situations. This manifestation of silence suggests the need to evaluate at different moments of the research process the methodology being used and more specifically the use of life stories.

READING BETWEEN THE LIES

Lying is another form of silence. It contributes to creating an ambience of temporality and evasiveness and is also a way of managing information. In most cases, it is not meant to be a personal affront, nor should each lie be looked at as something to be unravelled. Sometimes, lies are never discovered. Being lied to during fieldwork drove me crazy, still, I did not always set out to find the truth. I listened to what was being said and tried to interpret the message being transmitted.

I was told on several occasions that lying soothes, makes one immune in this hard world, it kills curiosity. Thus, lying glosses over what they are doing and makes it easier to sustain a stance of non-acceptance in regard to their work. At the same time it offers protection.

Lying is the enactment of a double life. They are willing to conceal parts of their lives and carry this burden because of the shame they feel working as prostitutes and would be made to feel if it became known to others. Many of the women working at night concealed their work from their families. Some women hinted they are involved in an illegal activity such as drugs or counterfeit money (this would account for their having so much money). 'I would rather they think I am involved in something illegal than they find out how I really earn my money.' Even when the family suspects, the women continue to create borders between the two worlds to protect their private lives. Lying is a pragmatic decision. It is a protective coating intended to keep strangers out of their personal lives. Telling the truth can ultimately be used against them and could have severe repercussions in their private lives.

A refined lie I encountered is what I came to call a 'grand narrative': a believable account about some aspect of a person's life is brought into question after hearing more or less the same believable story from several people. An example of this is the women's motives to enter the trade. They maintained that sexual harassment by their previous employer was the push factor to enter prostitution. They all said something to the effect of 'if I am going to do it then why not be paid for it and make good money'. I am not underestimating the degree of sexual harassment that takes place on the work floor in Peru. On the contrary, more and more complaints are being published in the newspapers. However, it becomes less credulous in this context, when each time almost the exact words were used, in approximately the same place in the conversation and the subject was never brought up or referred to again.

Many women who work as prostitutes are aware of the accepted parameters for being a prostitute. In other words, they are aware of the 'correct' reasons for becoming a prostitute and they give clients what they want to hear. Thus, childless prostitutes are made into instant mothers; they always work with condoms and have regular check-ups. Lying serves to protect, to negate, to fantasize and to be accepted. It is a means to sculpture one's identity. Lal interprets silences and misinformation in the interviews as a form in which . . . research subjects shape their own presentations . . . The fact is that our subjects are often not just responding to our agendas and to our questions, but they are also always engaged in actively shaping their presentations to suit their own agendas of how they wish to be represented. (Lal, 1996: 204) Lying is the most intentional performance of the prostitute. A simple lie constructs identity.

This account on research relations and the meanings they construct in the field has given an idea as to the messages concealed in the silences, the denials and lies and has cautiously delineated the contours they groove into gender identity. In addition, it has shown how these same silences challenge epistemological principles wrapped up in the concept of intersubjectivity. They have shown the intricate and inseparable relationship between interactions, epistemology and the production of cultural (gender) meanings in the field. Although I have managed to express this on paper, it is actually an outcome felt in the relations. Cultural meanings and understandings are also transmitted through this unspoken mode and it is the job of the researcher to capture them and try to make sense of them. In the following section, the ethnographic account illustrates how feeling enhanced understanding of cultural meanings during fieldwork.

A JOB LIKE ANY OTHER: THE UNSPOKEN POWER OF PROMISCUITY

'A job like any other' is an unsolicited statement I continually heard when the women described their work. It is a simple assertion packed with unarticulated meaning. It clarifies their position towards their work -a not out of the ordinary job that has nothing to do with sex. Taken at face value, this statement could be interpreted as an expression of a professional consciousness. However, this is not exactly the case. This statement is intended to counteract the promiscuous nature given to women in the social identity of the prostitute. In societies like Peru, being a prostitute is synonymous with being promiscuous. Thus, when the women say it is a 'job like any other', they are negating this dimension of their social identity. It took me some time to suss out the actual meaning of this statement. To understand how this unarticulated message finally came to the surface, it is necessary to examine the definition of prostitution I upheld when I came to the field.

My politically sound definition sees prostitution as a type of work if not a profession and negates any correlation between personal characteristics and the nature of the work. In this definition, promiscuity does not exist. This ethically correct stance towards prostitution echoes developments in the international sex workers' movement; however, during fieldwork it blinded me to the pervasive, unspoken notions of promiscuity embedded in their self-representations. 4 Their statements stressed the non-existence of their own sexuality in their work. The idea that sexuality is a part of being a prostitute and that promiscuity has signifying power in the women's self-definitions is both verbally and non-verbally rejected. Initially, I took statements like 'I do it for the money' at face value because it seamlessly connected with my own definition of prostitution. It was some time before I realized that such a statement shrouds denials of promiscuity, understood by insiders because it is shared unstated knowledge. As we see later, this awareness came as a result of being able to be present where interactions took place, enabling me to feel what was going on behind what was actually being said.

The Plaza Bolivar, where the fieldwork took place, is well kept, lined with restaurants and very popular in the Limenian nightlife. Shortly after I started to visit the Plaza, my assistant introduced me to a young woman called Carmela, whom I was told is studying medicine and has five children. It was through Carmela and her colleagues that I began to realize the prominent positioning of promiscuity in their self-definitions. One of the areas where its presence was felt strongly was in their relations with their partners. Their partner's behaviour was extremely important in erasing promiscuity from their identities. Carmela's relationship with her boyfriend illustrates the layered complexity of this process of signifying.

Carmela had a stormy relationship with Miguel, her 'marido' ('husband'). He was married and had five children, who she claimed he had abandoned for Carmela. She described the meaning of her relationship as follows, 'the life I lead is tough. When you finally meet someone who truly loves you, you have to hold on to him the best you can.' Miguel made it known that he did not want Carmela working in his presence. If he suspected she had been working he would demonstratively walk away angry. If someone approached her when he was in the vicinity he would pass her a disapproving glance. Carmela explained, 'He does not want me to work when he is here. He gives me money on those nights, a little but it is money. It's all right; I have steady clients on the other nights. Some women give money to their boyfriends, I don't.' She implied these women kept the men and the men were cafiches (pimps). The significance of this statement would only become clear as fieldwork progressed.

Miguel's marital status was not a problem. Being attached does not necessarily influence the decision to get involved in a relationship, although there was always a lurking fear that he would return to his wife. Carmela never admitted openly she suspected he went back to visit his wife and children, it would make her relationship less genuine and more likely to be considered by others as an insignificant relationship that illustrates her promiscuity. To avoid this reaction and to kill curiosity when her boyfriend had vanished from the scene for a few days, she would say he went somewhere else to work. However, these words encoded her fears that her marido had permanently left her. The undertone of these statements remained unspoken. I coincidentally captured the other meaning when her boyfriend returned and I curiously asked him where he had been working. His muddled reply made me feel that there was more underlying his answer.

A prostitute's relationship is continually being scrutinized whether it is 'authentic'. All too often I heard people surrounding the women say, 'if he really loved her then he would not let her do this'. Thus, their partner's love is always in question. Outsiders define men de facto as pimps until proven otherwise. One of the worst things to say or imply is that a woman keeps her marido. This infers she not only works as a prostitute but she is a prostitute: a promiscuous woman. This in turn makes her relationship inauthentic. In the ambiente (the nightlife scene) the partner's identity can shift between being a marido or cafiche, according to how the man reacts and behaves in regard to his girlfriend's work. Subsequently, promiscuity is mediated through his behaviour. Carmela's relationship with Miguel illustrates this even further.

Miguel's insistence that Carmela did not work when he was present reinforced the idea that he was her marido. His obstinacy demonstrated that he was a man of principles, even though he never could have made enough money to support Carmela, her children and his own family. His jealous outbursts legitimized both their identities. Carmela even stopped working for a period when they attempted to live together. They would come together to visit the Plaza and spend some time with their friends, but as soon as a possible client approached her Miguel sternly told her to ignore him. Then one day, Carmela went back to work, but this time Miguel accepted she worked because he had lost his job. He waited for her in the park until it was time to pick her up to go home.

Carmela's return to prostitution was completely understandable. However, Miguel's versatility with regard to Carmela's work was not only surprising but questioned by others. Cati, a friend and colleague of Carmela's, ran into Miguel and told him what she thought of his change. 'You were different when you were working. You have five children, you can't just forget about them.' I interrupted and said, 'Carmela has several too.' She replied, 'Carmela only has one from a drug addict who she kept even worse than Miguel. After him it was a watchman who worked at the Plaza. It was the same type of relationship. Someone who lets you work in this doesn't really love you. Miguel should be working. He has five children. But he lost his job for some stupid reason.' She replied in disbelief, 'He lost his job because he didn't show up for four days, Carmela persuaded him not to go to work.' Thus, it was not only Miguel's behaviour that made him into a cafiche, but she strongly implied that Carmela always kept him as she was accustomed to do with all her boyfriends. Thus, Cati redefined Carmela as a 'common street whore', and inadvertently as a promiscuous woman. Miguel's resignation with the situation challenged his image as the caring marido and transformed him into a cafiche, putting the genuine nature of their relationship into doubt and tacitly reinforcing its promiscuous nature. A cafiche is a poor excuse for a man and is looked down upon. Miguel's attitudes and behaviour towards Carmela's work defined his identity and indirectly hers. The crux defining this notion of masculinity in this ambiente is not what stereotypically defines a pimp: a man who forces women to prostitute or has several women under his control. In this ambiente, this type of cafiche is nearly non-existent. It is not violence or force determining the definition, rather it is the fact that in an emotional relationship he accepts money earned from selling sex.

For a relationship to be labelled genuine (not promiscuous), based on love and not on opportunism, the man must aspire to remove his partner from the environment. In essence, he is responsible for remaking the women's gender identity to conform to traditional gender 'roles'. The man is expected to provide for her and her children and the woman becomes the housewife. In the realm of prostitution, this ideological illusion, and I deliberately call it an illusion because the majority of the relationships in the popular classes cannot even attempt to live up to this ideal, is strived for against all economic odds: the high level of unemployment and a minimum monthly wage that is not sufficient to satisfy a family's basic needs. Taking a woman out of the environment rearranges her sexuality. Previously accessible to all men willing to pay the price, ideally it is transformed into a sexuality exclusively practised with her partner. His acts must show that he is erasing the notions of promiscuity from her identity. The proof of the relationship's authenticity is determined by whether these goals can be successfully achieved. This is not merely an expression of wishful masculine thinking, the women share and contribute to this ideal, too. Sometimes it is even accomplished.

In worded expressions, the women who prostitute are reaching or holding on to the traditional gender norms. However, in the unspoken domain they are enacting and embodying their rejection and denial of promiscuity. Thus, the acceptance that a relationship is only authentic when the prostitute is removed from the ambiente infers that the act of selling sex is not just a way of making money but also a way to soothe her promiscuous desires. Attempts are made to limit its influence in the definition of oneself as a prostitute, but nonetheless, it possesses a forceful defining power. These unspoken notions of promiscuity became even more audible in how it was used by the women to define each other.

Returning to Carmela and Cati, Carmela presented a different version of the story. She claimed they had argued because Cati made a pass at Miguel when they stayed at her house. She admitted that Cati publicly called Miguel a cafiche, which she felt she had no right to say publicly, but her main explanation for their argument was Cati's sexual overtures to Miguel.

In these arguments, the notions of promiscuity constituting social definitions of the prostitute are projected onto the social setting to define the women's identity. On various occasions, I witnessed and was even involved in an argument that projected onto other women the promiscuous nature entangled in the label of the whore. By doing so, they become the mirror image -the woman who in her non-professional relationship enjoys an exclusive sexuality, thereby severing this aspect of their work from their private lives and coming closer to conforming to the gender ideal. Equally significant is how notions of promiscuity are denied or asserted, depending on the label given to the women's partner. All of this came together piecemeal, by being present in the field at different moments, in different situations, bringing the meanings to the surface in an act that combines thinking with feeling.

SOME FINAL REMARKS

The recognition that feeling and thinking are much closer than usually assumed in fieldwork has been part of the process of deciphering the unsaid and making cultural sense of it. In the first part decoding the silences between the researcher and research subjects led to questioning epistemological principles and ethics of feminist anthropology and more particularly the concept of intersubjectivity and its correlating methods. This in turn gave insight into silent ways that identity was constructed and power relations figured in the field -between myself as a researcher and a non-prostituting woman, the women who prostitute and men visa-vis my research assistant. In the narrative excerpts presented in the second part, feeling in all its complexity facilitated reading what is usually left unread and unsaid in interaction and gave clues concerning cultural meanings of masculinity, femininity and sexuality in this particular setting. Through these readings of the fieldwork material, intersubjectivity has not lost its value in feminist research but rather its content has been expanded. Intersubjectivity is all too often portrayed as an ideal state. However, this study has shown that it is a relation that is workable, enabling and obstructive, as are all relations in the activities of daily life. NOTES 1.

The use of the word prostitution and prostitute instead of sex worker is intentional. It reflects how the women labelled their work and themselves.

The women never referred to themselves as sex workers or to their work as sex work. It is feasible that in the last few years with the growth of a sex workers' organization in Lima this has changed. 2.

That force does come into play in some women's experiences in prostitution goes without saying. But Barry constructs theories and strategies based on the supposition that prostitution is sexual slavery for all women who prostitute.

3.

Additionally, as Wolf points out in referring to Spivak's writings, the notion of 'letting women speak' suggests 'that First World feminists are once again wielding their hegemonic power to allow Third World subjects an audience' (Wolf, 1996: 26). 4.

The concepts of social representation and self or subjective representation of identity are borrowed from [START_REF] Moore | A Passion for Difference[END_REF]. For further discussion of these concepts in relation to women who prostitute, see [START_REF] Nencel | Mujeres que se prostituyen. Género, identidad y pobreza en el Perú[END_REF][START_REF] Nencel | Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru[END_REF].

identity

  . She is a member of the advisory board of the Global South, Mama Cash and does methodological consultancy and training for NGOs. Address: Department of Social ResearchMethodology, De Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081c, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [email: LS.Nencel@fsw.vu.nl]

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Nencel: Feeling Gender Speak

European Journal ofWomen's Studies 12(3)


Halleh Ghorashi

D E Vrije Universiteit

When the Boundaries are Blurred The Significance of Feminist Methods in Research

Keywords:

This article focuses on the ways that the author's somewhat inbetween position as both an outsider/researcher and an insider/ex-political Iranian activist now in exile has contributed to the process of research on Iranian women exiles in the Netherlands and the United States. Feminist attention on life stories as a method, and feminist anthropologists' attention to particularity, involvement and reflexivity give the author the space, and inspire her, to explore the issue of positioning. This makes it possible for her to engage with the issues of home, identity and belonging, not only as a scholar but also as a woman in exile. In this way, the reflexivity resulting from this involvement enables her to reevaluate her own identity, sense of belonging, and life in exile, next to rethinking these essential themes within the social sciences on the theoretical level. The blurred boundary of the self and the other in her research has its moments of complication, but in the end, these complicated moments seem to be not only necessary but rewarding, in many ways.

participated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as a leftist political activist. From 1981, I experienced years of suppression, living day by day in fear of being killed or arrested. Once in exile, I felt as if I had entered an empty space, where neither present nor future mattered; the only thing that mattered was the past. How could I deal with the memories of so many high ideals and so many disappointments? I entered a domain in which feelings of displacement and in-betweenness became part of daily life. Questions of identity and home started to have a central place in my mind and in my life.

My academic education in the Netherlands as an anthropologist provided me with some tools to approach this encounter with exile.

Reading new theories about identity, home and exile attracted my interest but left me confused. The emphasis on the dynamic and changing aspects of identity and constructed meanings of home and culture seemed appealing, but also left me with many unanswered questions. Why were exiles like me unable to feel at home in their new countries? Why were exilic experiences so strongly coloured by the past and nostalgia for a lost home? If identities and the meanings of home are so flexible, as often assumed, why are exilic subjects not able to come to terms with their position in life based on their achievements in their new countries? I remember reading Said's Culture and Imperialism and coming across a passage from Hugo of St Victor:

The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his. (Said, 1994: 407) Hugo's vision provided me with a conceptual framework within which to position myself. I started to question my exclusive love for my homeland, when I appropriated Marxist ideas while active in a leftist organization. In those years, I distanced myself from the idea of a national homeland and began to believe in the Marxist ideology that saw 'the world as a homeland'. Later I completely lost the illusion of a sweet homeland when political violence made me a refugee in my own country. Thus, my first experience of being a cosmopolitan citizen was formed partly through my Marxist belief but mainly by the harsh experience of becoming an internal exile. That marks the time when I can say that I passed the stage of 'a tender beginner'. Once in exile in the Netherlands, I realized the reverse of this process. I began to develop strong nostalgic feelings towards Iran. I started to idealize Iran as my homeland: the only country where I could truly belong. As the years passed, this imaginary Iran became stronger in my mind, which led to feelings of displacement and emptiness in the present. The painful consequence was that I was banned from the only country that I considered as my homeland. A sense of emptiness shadowed my life in the Netherlands, a life that in no way was an isolated one, because I was quite successful there. However, this feeling of living in-between spaces (there and here) and time (past and present) created the unsatisfactory situation of longing for my sweet homeland. So I retreated to the stage of 'a tender beginner'.

In 1995, when I began a project about Iranian women exiles in the Netherlands and the US, I wanted to know what happened to our generation of women who participated in the Iranian Revolution and now live in exile. What happens to cosmopolitan 1 minds like ours when we enter exile? Do we all return to the nostalgic, nationalistic thoughts of 'a tender beginner', or are some of us able to become the 'perfect' one: 'to whom the entire world is as a foreign place'? But before I consider the condition of these women in exile, it is important to contextualize their revolutionary background in Iran.

A REVOLUTION THAT CHANGED LIVES

In my research, I listened to the stories of women leftist activists who were forced to leave Iran because of their political activities during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Women's involvement in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 took place at many different levels. Their most intense participation was during the two years following the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime . This was a period of political freedom resulting from a power vacuum. A number of political groups came into existence, and were then permitted by law. These groups advanced a wide range of ideologies, including various forms of Marxism, Islamism, liberalism and women's rights. Both the extent of the freedom enjoyed during these years and the opportunity for political involvement gave Iranian women the chance to acquire political identities in an extensive manner for the first time.

The 'spring of freedom' 2 did not last long. Confrontations had been growing between secular/leftist political parties and the Islamists in power from the very beginning of the revolution. Those confrontations took a turn for the worse on 18 June 1981. From that date on, the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities began to witness terrible violence. Islamists began institutionalizing their absolute power. All other political groups were declared illegal, and the majority of their followers were arrested, tortured, or killed. Those who had the chance left the country and became exiles. A new start in a new country went hand in hand with the memories of a lost home and an insecure future.

The women who were part of this research had participated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 within leftist organizations. They had left Iran when the years of suppression started after 1981. My fieldwork, which took eight months in each country, was concentrated in Amsterdam in 1996 and Los Angeles in 1997. During this time I listened to the life stories of 20 women in each country. I also did several months of participant observation within the local Iranian communities to grasp the dynamics that existed in both contexts. The main focus of the comparative research was to understand the impact of the new countries on the ways that the women told stories of the past, present and future.

The most striking outcome of this research was that these leftist political activists, with their relatively common pasts, positioned themselves completely differently in their new countries. The women in the Netherlands felt like strangers and were afraid of the future. 'What is going to become of us here? We will never find our place here, but is there any place for us left in Iran?' Their sense of non-belonging in the Netherlands does not mean that they were not part of the society. The contrary is the case: they speak the language and are active participants within society. But why did they feel like strangers there, and why were they afraid of the future? The women in Los Angeles have similarly contributed as active participants in their new society. The big difference was that they felt that they belonged in their new country. They felt at home in Los Angeles and were not afraid of the future. 'If I have been able to gain so much within the 10 years I have lived here, then I will achieve even more in 20 years. Why should I be afraid of the future then?' To explore the differences between the two countries I have elaborated on a combination of factors that involve levels of experience, structure and discourse. Unfortunately, the methodological focus of this article does not leave any space to explore these factors (for more on this, see Ghorashi, 2003aGhorashi, , 2003b)).

SADNESS AND PASSION: BOTH A RESEARCHER AND A POLITICAL ACTIVIST

The question that kept me busy from the first year of this research project was how to combine my personal experiences as a leftist activist in exile with the research I was planning to conduct. I was enormously inspired by the works of feminist anthropologists such as Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) and Ruth [START_REF] Behar | The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart[END_REF]. In their works these scholars give special attention to creative as well as critical writing (Behar and Gordon, 1995: 7). Stressing the particularity of experiences against simple generalizations leaves space for 'writing against culture', which subverts the process of othering within anthropology (Abu-Lughod, 1993: 13). These scholars draw attention to the construction of research material that was to a large extent shaped and influenced by the personal background and experiences of the researcher. From the beginning I have intended to present my writing in a way that not only gives room to emotions, but also opens a window to my personal background as both an activist and researcher. In addition, I wanted my work to touch people's hearts and minds. The feminist anthropological choice in reflexive and experimental writing provided me with a perfect framework.

To collect material for this study, I used a range of field methods and techniques: participant observation, life stories and short interviews on specific topics. By giving the women I interviewed the space to narrate their lives, the life story method (Berger et al., 1991) was essential to the research. Historical dimension gives space to the experiences and the choices of the women in their new countries, and it also highlights recollections of the past and their impact on the present. The life story method gave space to an interaction between past activism, present experiences of exile and future expectations. What these women went through during the political changes in Iran, the reasons for their flight and their problems in the new countries are often very painful subjects that are usually difficult to talk about in an interview. Since these are situations that the women would rather forget, survey methods that merely provide a dispersed picture of such experiences would not succeed in giving the women the opportunity to express their feelings within a dialogue [START_REF] Anderson | Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses[END_REF]. The role of the researcher within this method is mostly to listen to what those interviewed have to say. A researcher should raise some orienting questions, but the character of the interview should be such that the narrator feels free to express her complex and conflicting experiences.

MIRRORING EFFECT OF LIFE STORIES

The intensity of the narratives of the women I interviewed affected me enormously throughout the research period. During my fieldwork in the Netherlands, I discovered that I would travel back to the past because of the character of some of the interviews. I experienced nightmares on several occasions, but did not really ask myself why. I had in fact anticipated this, as I had expected some of the interviews to affect me deeply. However, I later realized that I did not have nightmares after all of the interviews. I read the transcripts of the interviews again, and was amazed with the result. I noticed that some of the interviews created an atmosphere in which I travelled back in time. This was a result of the vocabulary used by the women. They were using the revolutionary words of the past, a vocabulary that for all of us belonged to the past. Those old revolutionary terms unconsciously carried me back to that past. To clarify this point, I give an example of the vocabulary of those years. I also explain the context because it was not just the words but the context that had such an impact on me. The word that had the most impact on me was dareiha, which means 'the valley ones'. When one of the women used it, we both became very emotional and our eyes filled with tears. She said:

Another strong propaganda at that time was that between imperialism and communism there is a kind of valley that should be filled with our blood. We are the ones who should fill that valley with our flesh and blood; we are the valley ones. Then you do not think of being able to see communism itself, you think of just sacrificing to fill the valley as a bridge for others. Because I was the valley one, I could only think of the ways to develop my defensive and revolutionary methods, instead of thinking about having children or not.

Other words that caused me to travel back in time were the names of different sorts of machine guns: Kalashnikov and J-3; ghahrze enghelabi: revolutionary violence; khalq: people; and falanj: dogmatic. I found it amazing that I had not thought of those words for many years and yet they were a very important part of my life for at least two years. During the revolution, we were taught in high school how to use machine guns. I remember that I found it fascinating, and felt that I was already a partisan by taking part in those classes. These words became symbols of the political passion of those years. A nostalgic passion comes back every time those words are mentioned. In this way, revolutionary words became mediators between the past and the present and showed how the past remained an essential part of the present. Expressions were drawn from different periods, and raised deeply embedded emotions. The revival of those words created in me the feeling of being completely transferred to another time, as if I had lived another life. Through those words I relived the events of those years in my dreams as if they were real. For example, in one dream I was chased by Islamic police and was running for my life when I ended up in a dead-end street and woke up. Those events seemed so far away, but still much closer than I expected. For many weeks after conducting these interviews I felt completely exhausted. It was much later that I learned the reason for this exhaustion.

After my flight to the Netherlands, terrible headaches became a part of my life. Sometimes I had to deal with them four days a week. My doctor called it the disease of the modern era and advised me to take painkillers, so I did. After conducting my research in the Netherlands, or maybe it was during the time of the research, I realized that my headaches had become less frequent. It was a great feeling. I could also think about the past more easily and I felt more relieved. Could it be that this research had become my therapy to deal with my memories? I realized that it was. It was not so much the research itself that helped as the discovery that I was and am not alone with my pain and that there are others who went through similarly tough experiences and who are also struggling towards a rather uncertain future. We are people with lost homes and misplaced ideals, people who experienced both the nearness of death and the highest moments of joy in life, and people who learned to survive. It feels like a miracle to know that people can talk about lost ideals and hopes, and be surrounded by emotions. It is amazing to talk to others without words, using just the movements of our bodies, the tears in our eyes, and the coldness of our hands. These moments of intense emotions gave me strength to deal with the difficulties of my research and to deal with my own past as it surged to the forefront. Many of the women I interviewed told me that my research affected them deeply by giving them the opportunity to talk about their experiences or by feeling closeness and understanding when they could not find words. Some Iranian men read my articles and told me how deeply they felt a strong common spirit with those who shared the experience of the revolution and exile. This made my work more than scholarship. It made it about sharing stories, matching experiences, and helping each other lift the dominant shadow of the past as much as possible. Being inspired by feminists in general with their attention to life stories as a method, and feminist anthropologists for their attention on particularity, involvement and reflexivity, my work became more about touching hearts than minds, and about changing lives rather than observing them.

INTERSECTION OF THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

When I began this research I assumed that I would be touched by the stories of other Iranian women about their past experiences, but I could not imagine that this research would change my view on life in exile and the future so drastically. The life stories showed me that I was not only escaping from the past but also from the present. In spite of my hard work in learning the Dutch language and finishing my MA in a rather short time, I realized that I was not happy; I was escaping from reality by working like crazy. My feelings of not belonging, of emptiness, became obvious when I was transcribing the interviews of the women in the Netherlands related to the future.

When I first transcribed the women's voices, and listened to the uncertainties of their lives, I had to cry. Realizing how bleak they felt reminded me of my own feelings of uncertainty about the future and the pain of a lost home. It was a rather emotional scene behind the computer, typing and crying. Although I am not at all a poet in any way, I came up with the following, which captures how I felt at that time:

It feels so cold inside, I feel a loss, The loss of warm eyes, Eyes I knew from my childhood, Eyes that talk to me without words, Eyes I know by heart, I feel a loss, The loss of emotion, The loss of holding and smelling the known body, The loss of being accepted without explaining, I miss the emotion, the summer in my life. I miss the people who shone in my life. I need the sun to warm my bones, I need the sun to bring a smile to my lips, I need the warmth of the sun to live.

The logic, the winter, is new to me, But I will die without the sun. (Ghorashi, 1998: 25-6) This poem expresses the emptiness of my life in exile at that moment. But it is more than that. Contrasting warmth, sun and emotion to cold, winter and logic shows the way I glorified the past that was different from the present. In this way my sense of belonging was related to a selected and imaginary past that contained all the things I was missing in the Netherlands. The poem tells us about the exilic experiences of the writer with strong nostalgic feelings towards the past. The sense of being othered, of not belonging in her new country, and of the insecurity about the future fuelled my creation of a past that gave me hope to stay alive. In this sense my exilic experience was similar to that of the women I interviewed in the Netherlands. This exiled feeling changed during my nine-month stay in California for my fieldwork. The following excerpt from my fieldwork notes in Los Angeles records my feelings.

For many Iranians who were brought up during the time of the Shah, 'Irangeles' feels more like Iran than the Islamic Iran after the revolution. I felt more at home in Los Angeles in many ways; I could relive so many of the similar images of my childhood that I had lost already when I was in Iran. An example:

One of the sweetest memories I have from my childhood is our trip to my aunt's villa in northern Iran in summers. I loved the green, the sea, and the play with the children there. We went there with the whole family and many children. We woke up early in the morning with birds singing, rushed to the sea, and stayed there the whole day. We had the choice either to go to the sea or to the swimming pool. It was a marvellous time. We went there with our bicycles and the whole day was full of joy, playing, swimming, quarrelling, running, and eating. During the night, another picture that I never forget is the smell of barbecue in the garden and several tables settled for adults to play cards. Almost all of our parents played cards deep into the night. We ate, played, and at some point just fainted from exhaustion. My nights mostly ended with the sound of crickets. The morning started with birds and the nights ended with crickets. Of those memories, the sounds stayed part of my life for a long time.

After the revolution, I did not hear those sounds any more. We went to northern Iran every summer but the scene was completely different. The city of my memories had changed to a city full of Islamic police. That city which was considered as a base for wealthy people became the centre of hatred for revolutionaries. We were not allowed to swim, and having fun became a sin. At some point they said that biking was forbidden for women. I could not believe it and just took my bicycle as usual and headed towards the sea. An Islamist policeman who was hidden behind the trees jumped out and pointed his gun at me. I was totally shocked and just stepped off the bike and went with him to the police office. I was afraid of getting into trouble because of my political background, and for such an unfortunate reason for arrest as riding a bicycle. So I stayed as polite as I could, they called my father, and he guaranteed that I would not ride a bike any more. Another time we were barbecuing in our garden. The garden was surrounded with trees, so my aunt did not wear a scarf, hoping that nobody would see her. At some point, Islamic police attacked the house and wanted to talk to 'the man of the house'. So my father came and they were very rude to him and told him that if he could not control his women they would do it for him. My father felt insulted, and our barbecue and the rest of the week were spoiled. I remember that after that incident we did not have barbecues outside and preferred to stay inside the house with the curtains closed. These were the last pictures of the beautiful city of my memories before I left Iran.

Strangely enough, I felt at home within a month of my arrival in America. The lost home that was neither Iran nor the Netherlands took on another dimension when I came to California. One evening I was invited to a party at the house of a distant relative. Most of my cousins were there too. When I entered the house I was shocked by what I saw. The decoration of the house, tables ready for playing cards, the smell of barbecue and the big plate of fruit hit me immediately. It was such a familiar scene. My grownup playmates and I stayed inside and talked. I heard the sounds again. There were no birds or crickets outside, but I clearly heard them singing. I realized that the feeling of home has little to do with your country of origin, but very much to do with the place you can revive your memories. I was not in Iran or northern Iran recapturing my memories; I was in Los Angeles. And there I felt at home. It was a displaced home, which fitted into my constructed memories. A combination of different factors made Los Angeles home when the 'real home', Iran, lost its meaning as home. Nevertheless, this feeling of home for a refugee is fleeting and momentary. It is something that one searches for, but it does not last long. Home and homelessness become feelings of mere moments for migrants, moments one cherishes and dislikes at the same time. Feeling closeness but fearing betrayal, the question that keeps you busy becomes: will this moment betray me? Unfortunately, that moment betrayed me. But it took a while before it happened. During my fieldwork in California I was happy with my research, the friends I found, the Iranian parties, and the ceremonies that I attended. I even considered going back and living in California. Nevertheless, the feeling changed when I came back to the Netherlands.

The first weeks after coming back to the Netherlands I was happy and full of energy about what I had done in the US. I realized that I had really missed the Netherlands, my friends and colleagues, and my life there. I missed my own space in the Netherlands: a space in which I was not limited because I was a woman. I could live the life I wanted to. I related these feelings to my experiences in California later when I started to have nightmares. In my dreams, I was being choked in my sleep by groups of Iranians, familiar and unfamiliar faces coming closer and closer with their hands towards me. After thinking about the nightmares, I realized that in spite of the positive feelings I had about the Iranian community in California, I was also often bothered by the extent of social control there. I often heard stories about my personal life that were spread around. This showed me the power of network and rumours.

I also did not like the consumption-oriented life in California. I hated the system in which your financial credit meant everything. I often felt uncomfortable on those occasions; however, experiencing the home sweet home again, and being busy with my research covered those feelings up. Once in the Netherlands those incidents became a strong part of my life in my subconscious. When the nightmares in the Netherlands started, I not only had to deal with my feelings related to LA, but also my disillusionment with the past. In the poem I explained how I created an imaginary homeland that was warm, sunny and full of emotion. My feelings of uprootedness in the Netherlands fuelled the creation of an illusionary homeland to which I wanted to belong. Then I started to ask the question: who are you kidding? The discomfort I felt in Los Angeles with traditional ideas regarding women's roles and the gossip going around would be even worse in Iran. In Los Angeles, many of my friends spoke positively about the ability to interact in two spaces, the Iranian and the American one. Thus, in LA Iranians can distance themselves from negative traditional elements, but this distance is much more limited in Iran with an oppressive government and a strong patriarchal tradition.

Disillusioned by that unreal picture of Iran and faced with the negative aspects of California, I started analysing fieldwork material. It was a year later before I discovered that I had become much more positive about my life in the Netherlands. Based on the comparison with the US, I realized that I liked my life in the Netherlands. In the 12 years I had lived in the Netherlands, I had become Dutch. Differently Dutch, but still Dutch. By being Dutch, I do not mean having Dutch nationality (which I have), but feeling part of the Netherlands. I realized that the process of othering in the Netherlands had preoccupied me for a long time. I was busy seeing life in the Netherlands through a negative lens. The process of doing this research also made it possible for me to answer some questions about my life related to home, the past and the future.

The construction of my exile experience started when I felt that I was being treated as an unwanted other in the Netherlands. This made me furious, because I had worked so hard to be part of the society. It felt as if it was never enough. Then I started to distance myself from society by criticizing everything Dutch: the weather, the individualism, the coldness of people. In the last year, based on my experiences in Los Angeles, I started seeing my life in the Netherlands in a different way. I realized that I appreciate my individual space; call it individualism if you will. I have wonderful Dutch friends who are not cold and distanced. I like neither the consumption-oriented lifestyle of Iran and America, nor the exaggeration of the plain lifestyle of the Netherlands; however, if pushed, I prefer the second. The lifestyle I choose is a strange one, anyway, it will never fit entirely into any one structure. It has a hybrid character, existing in the shared space of cultural difference, which includes a variety of partial lifestyles and cultures including Iranian and Dutch.

It was then when I realized that home is where I feel at ease; where I can be the person I want to be, where I have the job I always wanted and where I have friends I like. Although I realized that now home is the Netherlands, who knows for how long? But I also realized that feeling at home is something that takes work. In the Netherlands I miss the Iranian cultural activities that I grew up with. I miss the social network I had in Iran, and that I experienced in LA. Nevertheless, my life in the Netherlands had changed me in ways that I could not ignore: I became even more aware of my individual space and what my father called 'my rebellious choices in life'. So it is possible that Iranian women with my background, my friends in LA, feel at home and belong in California. The trajectory of life of my companions and me in the Netherlands has been different: we have been spoiled by our individual space here. We are too Dutch to feel at home in either Iran or in California. What we can do is to make the Netherlands our home, as I have started to do already. The Netherlands becomes home when we start looking at its positive sides, the chances we have here, the friends we have, and the space we have created to be the person we want to be. Feeling Dutch is not about being accepted by the Dutch or becoming like the Dutch, by ignoring one's background. It is about claiming Dutchness based on being different, being Iranian. Becoming Dutch is then about being Iranian-Dutch.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The rich narratives of the women in this study have enabled me to rethink the notions of identity, home and belonging. When it comes to the life of migrants and refugees, home is often equated to the past. Departing from this static and fixed approach, home becomes synonymous with the country of origin where people are supposedly rooted and which they have left behind. Scholars within the field of refugee studies have also contributed to this way of approaching home by making 'the assumption that the homeland or country of origin is not only the normal but the ideal habitat for any person' (Malkki, 1995: 509). In this way, home is directly equated with the national borders of the country of origin. Malkki links this so-called sedentary bias to the claim that we live in an era of 'the national order of things' in which 'rootedness' in a culture and a geographic territory is considered to be the natural and normal feature of humanity. She disputes this kind of approach by deterritorializing the concept of home.

But if 'home' is where one feels most safe and at ease, instead of some essentialized point on the map, then it is far from clear that returning where one fled from is the same thing as 'going home'. (Malkki, 1995: 509) To consider the country of origin automatically as 'home' also assumes 'that refugees' attachment to their homeland and their desire to return to it are "natural" givens' (Al-Rasheed, 1994: 199). Through the methodological choices in my research, such as life stories and reflective positioning and writing, I have been able to bring these theoretical insights into practice and rethink the notion of home and belonging, not just in regard to my research materials, but also in my own life as an exile. By adopting a deterritorialized notion of home, I show that the feelings of belonging and foreignness do not have to be related to a fixed place, either the homeland or the new country, but that they are related to one's position in life. The sense of belonging is not related to a soil as assumed by Hugo of St Victor: be it identifying with the 'native soil' or 'every soil in the world', or denying it all together. But it is rather to what a place can offer and how one can become part of a life in a certain place. In this way, the notion of place is not fixed but it is fluid. It is the meaning of a place that is then essential. The creation of meaning comes from memorized experiences of certain places. These memories, which change over the course of time, remain part of one's life; and it is through these memories that feelings of belonging can be created. The point here is that it is not the place as such that is important, but the matter of positionality in a place.

European Journal ofWomen's Studies 12(3)