It is widely held that positional characteristics such as gender, age, education and race reflect experience. Here I draw attention to the fact that the understanding of how these and other positional characteristics matter is pre-determined by the theoretical positionality that we forget about. To show that theorizing is to take a position (on positionality), I present a new “dialogic autoethnography” of the two years I spent online dating. In this dialogic autoethnographic approach, I tell the story and then engage in a dialogue with a series of composite theoretical “others” each of which has a different take on the story. These others include a socio-biologist, a sexual fielder, an intersectionalist, and a loving relater. In so doing, I proffer a broadened conceptualization of positionality and its relationship to both story and theory. Theorizing affects how we understand positionality within a story. Theorizing is positionality.
University of California Press