Me

As an ethnographer, I’m trying to think and write about my own interactions with the Carapace community. These interactions go back to a time before this research. I have insider status as a former Carapace regular. But I have felt that in being away for the last several years since I moved to Chapel Hill I gained a little bit of distance. For example, there are a number of new regulars that I didn’t know at the start of this study. However, just positioning myself in terms of insider/outsider does not totally do justice to the complexity of relationships within the Carapace community. My mom has continued to be a Carapace regular throughout the time I’ve been gone. I often stay with her when I’m in town for Carapace and we even ride to the show together sometimes. And there are other people at Carapace that I know from other contexts, like Southern Order of Storytellers, and the Phi Kappa Literary Society. Benjamin talked about the complexity of our relationship:

This is so weird

‘cause I’m talking to you in an academic context

but I’m also talking to you

about you

in stories that I’ve heard about you

that you were characters in.

But then I’ve also heard you tell stories.

It’s like, Carapace is this

hydra

we’re a multi-headed animal

where I’m coming at you five different ways

because I’ve also known you for a while.

And also I can call you Sister

and you would get what I was talking about

and not in a Mormon way.

He and my mother worked together. We are both alumni of Phi Kappa. We are both in the Carapace community. And at the moment of this interview we were coming together for this research project on Carapace. These are a lot of entanglements for a researcher. But, this is no less the experience of others in the community. Lots of Carapace attendees know each other from multiple contexts. So, I’m putting it out there. I’m not just an insider. I’m deeply tied to some of the other people here. And I’m not apologizing for it. It is part of the Carapace experience.