Negative Productions during Fieldwork in the Hometown

Abstract

Through autoethnographic writing, I reflect on “negative productions”—the “nonproductive” events that initially seem to create frictions against the disciplined acts of data gathering. Locally valued concepts such as supog (shame) and ginakanan (place of origin, genealogy) could materially press on our academic creative projects. In my discussion, I provide two examples from my field work in my hometown in Nabua, Philippines: the nonscreening of my film Baad ng Pauno (Restless) and my eventual retreat from the filming of events involving retired U.S. Navy men to which I already had access. I push for the reconsideration of what initially appears to be “negative” as productive, while also thinking about the inevitability of our participation in the messy work of knowledge production. While negative productions might unsettle our academic ambitions, they open doors for rethinking self-reflexivity, empathy, and our ethical commitments.