'Everything I told you was true': The biographic narrative as a method of critical feminist knowledge production

Abstract

In this article the author explores the biographic narrative as a process of intersubjective knowledge production in the sense that this process is embodied, situated and partial. The analysis of this process focuses on the biographic narrative of Hajja, a market woman in Darfur, Sudan. Her assertion that what she told to the researcher was ‘true’ is a starting point for understanding the relevance of this ‘truth’ for the way Hajja negotiated the Islamist moral discourse on gender at the time of narrating. The context of narration proves of main importance in order to understand the identities Hajja prioritized and silenced as well as the shifts in her narratives of self at different moments in time. To consider biographic narratives as a form of feminist knowledge production, the author suggests to understand biographies as ‘texts-in-contexts’ whereby feminist scholars also write about the process of understanding, since they are part of the context as well. Reflexivity is thereby a tool for analysis whereby the representation of this process of understanding is as important as the product of this process of knowledge production.