Interview on Intellectual Honesty with Dr. Marc Calvini-Lefebvre

Doing research on feminist issues in the fourth wave of feminism: a recipe for intellectual honesty according to Dr Marc Calvini-Lefebvre.

My research topic is intrinsically linked with my political opinions: I am a feminist, a cinephile and an idealist who believes words can contribute to changing the world. I chose to do my research on the representation of prostitution through the male and the female gaze, and to dive directly into the theorizing of two subjects that are at the heart of a contemporary struggle. Facing this statement, I had to wonder what was expected from me, as a Master student writing a hundred-page dissertation. How to write a Master’s dissertation and not a political pamphlet? Can and should one separate their personal opinion from their research? To help me answer this difficult question, I asked Dr Marc Calvini-Lefebvre^[1] for his opinion on the subject.

On the question of neutrality and the necessity to separate one’s political opinion from one’s research, Dr Calvini-Lefebvre answers that “you can’t be neutral, so I don’t think being neutral is the goal”. He insists instead on the necessity of striving to be intellectually honest to do good research and to do so, the recipe is simple: first, “the only way to be intellectually honest is to make your biases known to the reader.” But also “you fairly represent the views of people you disagree with” and finally “you do not hide evidence that is contrary to your preferred point of view.” Intellectual honesty therefore does not prevent you from being political in your research. “Research is activism,” Dr. Calvini-Lefebvre asserts. The choice of your topic itself “promotes thinking about issues around your subject.”

Another topic I wanted to approach with Dr. Calvini-Lefebvre was the question of legitimacy. Who am I to talk about prostitution? Who am I, even, to talk about cinema? For Dr. Calvini-Lefebvre, the question was even more elementary: being a man, who was he to work on feminism? He feared the “white knight complex” going with the idea that he was doing that to help women. He finally found an answer to that question reading the work of Catherine Hall (a white woman, British academic) on racism. He understood that he was doing this work to realise “what it means to be a white, male, heterosexual, middle class, person in a society built for somebody like [him].” His point therefore is not to claim that he knows better than other historians working on the subject, nor to explain feminism to women, but he sees it as a sort of “self-enlightenment” and hopefully contributes to enlightening others.

If you are wondering if it is your place to write on a feminist matter, it always is, but know where you speak from. Know what your biases and your privileges are. As a feminist doing research, you contribute to assert the place of feminism in the academic world. You are an activist.

 

---

Header’s photo credits: UnratedStudio on Pixabay (PixabayLicense)

Embeded picture: Les Plages d’Agnès, dir. Agnès Varda, Ciné-Tamaris 2008

[1] Marc Calvini Lefebvre is a lecturer at Aix-Marseille Université, and a member of the “Project Horizon,” a research program in LERMA that focuses on the question of women’s resistance to feminism in the English-speaking world since the 19^th century. He is also a member of the scientific committee of l’Institut du Genre, and Secretary of the Société Anglophone sur le Genre Et les Femmes (SAGEF). To quote a few of his latest works, in 2018 he co-edited the issue “Women in Britain since 1900: evolution, revolution or plus ça change?”, for the French Journal of British Studies, XXIII-1 and in 2017 he co-edited FEMMES, SEXE, GENRE DANS L’AIRE ANGLOPHONE: Invisibilisation, stigmatisation et combats, L’Harmattan.

---

---