Confronting Positionality

Abstract

Drawing on a multiplicity of learning, teaching and educational experiences, I argue that understanding positionality, or the specificity of each individual, triggers necessary unlearning. Confronting hitherto hidden, subjective knowledge may be the means to recognize grounded learning as ethnocentric and time and space specific. The individual may learn positionality through unexpected contrast, especially through anthropology. The anthropologist is the participant observer, analyst and writer - no managerial delegator, but directly engaged. Learning through engaged action, anthropologists unlearn what they have consciously and unconsciously absorbed from infancy. New embodied knowledge is often gained through making mistakes in other unknown contexts, thus fostering unlearning. This article explores the above themes through an autobiographical account of experiences of both teaching and learning.