Researcher as Hostess

Researcher as Hostess: Power,Gender,Loss, and Cookies Sophie Tamas An act of hospitality can only be poetic. —Jacques Derrida.1 I am at my desk staring down my doctoral research groups. There are decisions I cannot take to make or break these meetings of survivors and service providers working their way through abuse. My partner is around the corner in the bath, reading. Baby? If I make poppy seed cake with chocolate ganache two kinds of grapes and pistachios crackers and brie would ginger cookies be too much? I dunno. Well, what would youserve? (Is he paying attention to the enormity of the question? Each dish tells a story, positions me.) Nothing, probably. FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Sophie Tamas 484 Sophie Tamas 485 Come on, really? I might opena bag ofchips. And it hits me he's not kidding. I could say I am the woman feminist research sees chatting in the kitchen of the social sciences making nice, meticulously setting places for my subject positions and relations laying the blade of each knife facing in. I could say this is no simple ethic of care or reciprocity passing the coffee over their coffins to see if post traumatic recovery is a lie or possibility. They get cake I get their stories and a PhD. 486 Sophie Tamas I could hang the grapes green beach glass and black pebbles big as the end of your thumb on the ears of some respectable theorist like Levinas, who summons me to an infinite and absolute responsibility for others2 measured in cups of tea or the Derridan dissection of hospitality3 but the tightrope theory where I stand with a bin of ginger cookies in one hand ties power to femininity. This is the line my grandmother walked through the war, in London saving sugar and splitting sausages into little links to share with lonely Canadian officers welcomed to dinner each week. When my father married my mother for her roast chicken dinner this line was the white string around its feet. Her consolations simmering on a slow fire, soup broth steam in the windows. With this line the value of women is tied to butter or margarine, Kool whip or cream. Overcooked veggies and processed cheese flabby and shameful as public deformities, the icing of grocery store cakes left in reproachful lumps on dirty plates. Sophie Tamas 487 This line glistens on a sticky bun glazed with obligation. So what ifyou're late? She baked. Take offyour shoes and sit down. Behind this line women hide in the sink letting their casseroles take on the risk of rejection. This is how power is served: waiting for my supper with my feet tucked away from the African fire ants under the table while my mother fills platters for the watchman and houseboy so they never eat our leftovers; spreading jam on pilot biscuits and picking at my plate of moose banoc salmon macaroni salad and green foamy tutti frutti mini marshmallow goo at the potlatch, while Crow people pass around apples oranges notepads socks mixing bowls money and Styrofoam cups of cigarettes; the way no kid would ever trade their Wagon Wheel for my thermos of lentils; the way my babies suckled in milky bliss; the way visiting teens will not eat. Sophie Tamas I get up and walk to the bathroom my clothes falling like leaves I strip he scooches up and I slip into my end of the tub. Why? It'syourthing butthey're not family,notpeople I need to impress. I'm not jealous but I don't have strangers providing mewithjucking pistachios. You'rewasting money. Most ofthem won't see you again. It's pure insecurity. What would you serve ifyour research participants were men? A switch inside me flips: Pizza, soda, and chips. Sophie Tamas 489 Food is emotional currency in the female economy of hospitality. There are articles on recruitment, interviewing, questions, recording, transcription, analysis descriptions of every ethical and practical inflection of the problems a researcher is meant to face but the place of refreshment in this space is silent. It goes like this: The firstmeeting is in my mother's empty house he's

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