and Swedenburg (1996: 154, 174), for example,
move beyond examining texts to situate their
exploration of the boundaries of culture in the
everyday, a ‘terrain of practice and theory’. In
her exploration of the postcolonial in the modern
city, Jacobs uses the space of the contemporary
city to embrace the ‘unstable negotiation of iden-
tity and power’ (1996: xi). She calls this space
the ‘edge’; ‘the “unsafe” margin which marks
not only a space of openness but also the very
negotiation of space itself ’.
Having challenged the hall of mirrors with its
own contradictions, and through glimpses into
multiple knowledges, we will now further
explore the notion of situated engagement.
Drawing on D. Rose’s (1999) Levinasian notion
of ‘situated availability’ and Jacobs and
Mulvihill’s (1995: 9) concept of ‘viable inter-
dependence’, situated engagement is introduced
as an approach which encourages noisy and
unruly engagement in situated, interacting mate-
rial, discursive and conceptual places. Situated
engagement opens up these places in an ethical
sense so that everyone’s ground is destabilized
and everyone expects to be surprised, challenged
and changed (D. Rose, 1999). In a practical
sense, self-reliance and equitable sharing are cel-
ebrated (Jacobs and Mulvihill, 1995: 9).
Engaging (conversing, interacting, thinking,
doing) therefore moves into the realm of consi-
dering not only how knowledges form, but also
how they interact and how this matters.
From within the hall of mirrors it is almost
impossible to imagine talking, thinking, writing,
doing, smelling, imagining and realizing worlds
without ‘law’, ‘spaces’, ‘places’, ‘time’, ‘scale’,
‘nature’ and ‘self’. However, local and indige-
nous communities are doing this as they con-
struct processes, experiences, thoughts and
actions. In this diversity of experiences, there can
be no singular, correct, model, process, alter-
native or notion of resistance, empowerment
and decolonization that can apply globally. As
Escobar argues:
instead of searching for grand alternative models or
strategies, what is needed is the investigation of alter-
native representations and practices in concrete local
settings ... One must ... resist the desire to formulate
alternatives at an abstract, macro level. (1995: 19, 222)If nothing can be generalized or universalized,
how does one deal with diversity and multipli-
city? By focusing, contextualizing and positioning
in terms of specific material, conceptual and dis-
cursive places, one can practically and actively
engage with and recognize diversity. What is
vital is recognizing that these places are crossed,
permeated and saturated with knowledges andexperiences that the hall of mirrors is constantly
straddling, conflicting, parallelling and/or not
touching. It is necessary to simultaneously reach
in, reach out and reach across (Ellis, 1998), so
that one can recognize and engage with these
processes, experiences, discourses, systems and
structures. This avoids reinforcing and recentring
practices and concepts within the constraints of
the hall of mirrors, within the globalizing essen-
tialism of the colonial and postcolonial narrative.
In the context of the confrontation of contested
epistemologies, local and indigenous episte-
mologies confront multiple permutations of
knowledge–power relations constructed by the
hall of mirrors. Concurrently, within diverse
local and indigenous settings, multiple individual
and collective identities are formed and
reformed. In terms of the analysis proposed here,
reconstructing this multiplicity and complexity
into a set of experiences relevant to specific
situations can be neither solely abstract nor solely
empirical. Rather, this occurs in the interface and
interplay of discursive, material and conceptual
spaces that occur in contextualized inter-
actions and dialogue – in situated engagement.
Communication and interactions aimed at break-
ing down assumptions and recognizing diversity
and multiple knowledges are vital because:The difference of cultures cannot be something that can
be accommodated within a universalist framework ...
The assumption that at some level all forms of cultural
diversity may be understood on the basis of a particular
universal concept, whether it be ‘human being’, ‘class’
or ‘race’, can be both very dangerous and very limiting
in trying to understand the ways in which cultural prac-
tices construct their own systems of meaning and social
organisation. (Bhabha, 1990: 209)Fothergill’s analysis of Heart of Darknessargues
proximity challenges stereotyping:when Marlow specifies the African subject’s historical
or political context, the representation tends to be criti-
cal of typical European representations. When Marlow
erases the specific context, the representation tends to
endorse the stereotype. (1992: 50)However, Fothergill also warns that an engage-
ment with the specific that brings with it its own
cultural assumptions and projects these onto the
‘other’ can reinforce stereotypes by denying dif-
ference. Strategies to empower the ‘colonized
victim’ often simply invert relationships. These
‘new’ relationships are still based on the same
beliefs, with the local, traditional, community or
indigenous represented as separate and con-
tained, yet this time superior and progressive.
Dialogue remains closed with the other’s silence
further reinforced behind mirrors of romantic566 SPACES OF KNOWLEDGE3029-ch31.qxd 03-10-02 11:10 AM Page 566