ABSTRACT
During my dissertation study, I became increasingly vigilant of the multiple deconstructive arguments about voice and re-presentation from feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern perspectives. I acknowledged that the participants’ voices are always mitigated through various academic filters, thus questioning our ability to really hear the participants. On one hand, I identified with one of the purposes of qualitative research: to capture the experiences of the participants as told through their voices. On the other hand, how can those voices be really heard through/with/against the researcher’s subjectivities and various processes of academic gatekeeping in peer-reviewed published spaces? I struggled with the purpose of data collection and re-presentation especially after I accepted that the participants’ voices are always already partially or completely silenced in academic research. But the silencing of voices does not erase the everyday experiences and their effects on participants. Therefore, how should I negotiate voice and silence through the academic gaze that is on me, through the gaze that I put on my participants, and through the gaze that the participants put on me?
