Words do not undertand whats going on: Ethical-political dilemmas in the construction of an anthropological investigation

Abstract

This article seeks to approach ethical-political tensions that emerged from a specific anthropological investigation process, proposing an open reflection about the representations we create from anthropology about the people we work with (specially taking into account the power we as investigators have to allow some voices either to speak or to silence) and the impacts or effects this representations generate when published or spread among different publics. This work is framed in the final assignment proposed by the course Seminario de Ética y Derechos Humanos en la Investigación Antropológica and is related to the researches I have been carrying out in the areas of gender and migrations, together with migrant woman who have been arriving Uruguay in recent years. The tensions I seek to approach may be settled within the anthropological historical dilemma about the representations of the other, and, at the same time, from the specificity of being an investigation traversed by feminism and militancy.