ABSTRACT
This chapter theorizes issues of reading across differences in educational research by looking at a very specific example of making connections across differences of history, geography, languages, disciplines, identity positions, and theoretical investments. My case study is Handel Wright’s (2003) critique of Cynthia Dillard’s (2000) ‘endarkened feminist epistemology’, a critique that was noteworthy for its respectful and generous reading of a position quite different from the critic’s own. In what follows, my sense of task is to unpack Wright’s critical practices and then attempt to enact such practices in a reading of Patricia Hill-Collins (2000) in a way that moves against what Wright (2003: 201) terms ‘(racially unmarked but remarkably white) feminist epistemologies’. Moving toward ‘getting lost’ as a methodology (Lather, 2007), I explore the implications of such critique for qualitative research by drawing on Eve Sedgwick’s (1997) idea of ‘reparative critique’.
