Peggy Levitt and my insecurities about 2nd Gen LA Iranians

In a few days highly esteemed scholar on Transnationalism, Peggy Levitt from Wellesley College, will be visiting our department. She makes these visits to us from time to time. Last time I told her about my research plans. This time I've recently returned from the field, so I'm expected to have all sorts of interesting things to say about the way Iranians of the second immigrant generation in LA use the internet.

Okay... interesting is not the problem... what I'm dreading is having some semblance of a coherent story/argument to present in the 15-20 mins I've been allotted. Although this is not that big of a deal, really, it does get me questioning the position I'm in to say things about the people and relations I studied over the past year in LA. I think my case is particularly curious given that the journals I publish in these days also feature works from people I spoke to as informants, and who are also writing about overlapping issues and topics concerning the diaspora, themselves. I find it both thrilling and intimidating that second generation Iranian Americans I've been lucky enough to talk to are writing about the diaspora alongside me (although they aren't in the corresponding position of doing ethnographic research on me and other members of the 2nd gen and using our words to construct their arguments). I think this breech of the usual way in which ethnographic authority is fashioned is really interesting but at the same time is also a cause for my insecurity when it comes to really putting things on paper for print or making assertions in front of an audience.

Nonetheless, this is of course what I will inevitably have to do, and have already started doing it. But whichever form the products of this research turn out to take they will place me as one of the several second generation Iranian diaspora whose academic pursuits are by no means separate from self-understanding, much as is the case for the respondents whose words I will draw on to show this. I have to say, I also appreciate being in this position. It's a clear testament to the investment that this generation is making in (re)presenting, defining, and speaking for themselves (and often their counterparts in Iran), and this is what makes me feel part of those I study the most - being part of this generation.

Many of those I spoke with implicated me and my research in their own worlds, as one of them. Whether they wanted me to convey a message for them, found talking to me to be kind of therapeutic in dealing with their complicated positionings as Iranian in the US, or whether they simply urged me to allow the research experience to develop my own Iranian-ness, I think I was seen as united with them in some kind of unnamed struggle or endeavor, and I eventually felt I was too, and still feel that way, even though I had never lived in LA before this fieldwork and have not spent much of my life around other Iranians or involved in "Iranian causes" at all.

The trouble then becomes not about being in a position to speak about others, but a question of whether an academic audience wants to hear about all this insecurity and self-doubt that ultimately relates to the messy business of separating speaking for myself as an Iranian diaspora of the second generation from speaking about my respondents' selves. I wonder what Peggy Levitt will think.