Abstract:
This paper provides a position for critical discourse analysis in changing ethnographic fieldwork relations. Emergent ways with which objects of study are defined necessitate marginal orientations towards research. Performing relations of times past often denies the complexity of lived experiences that are now developing in the context of mobility. Beginning with a critical perspective, this paper raises questions about the history of a postgraduate group working with critical discourse analysis. Bringing forth the ways in which the group initially demarcated what counts as the application and theory of discourse analysis allows questions about knowledge production to be raised. The latter part of the paper repositions towards a more generative approach. It suggests the notion of 'situated discourse' as a way of undermining the themes of an assumed world system that continue to be performed through the kinds of critical orientations that appear in the former part of the article and in critical discourse analysis. The extent to which these tools can be useful in defining objects of study through the changing relations between ethnographic subjects is brought into question. This article is a contribution towards the larger project of continuing to produce an imaginary for multisited ethnography.