Researcher as an Enigmatic Object in a Fieldwork on Addiction: Positionality within the Lacanian Context

Abstract

How can positionality be understood beyond ego-based notions of identity? This article addresses this question by using Parker's Lacanian Discourse Analysis to explore positionality at the level of the subject, rather than the coherent researcher-self often assumed in reflexive accounts. The analysis draws on a text authored by the researcher that does not merely document interactions with gatekeepers during a one-year postdoctoral study on addiction among immigrants, but also incorporates the researcher's own reflexive statements, ethical and methodological considerations, and theoretical interpretations; accordingly, the researcher is treated as the sole participant. This type of analysis demonstrates how Lacanian Discourse Analysis enables an investigation of positionality that foregrounds division, misrecognition, and the influence of social and academic discourses, rather than personal identity alone. From a post-structuralist perspective, the article evaluates reflexivity and positionality as fluid, recursive, and contingent processes, arguing that reflexive writing necessarily stages the limits of self-knowledge rather than resolving them.