To do their research and to write their stories these reporters damaged their own health, they renounced their names and identities, one almost got raped and another one became a guinea pig for the chemical industry. They all became famous when returning to their former, privileged lives, and their stories gained a large readership. But what did they learn, in their position of an Other? Or should we rather ask: were their endeavours part of a process of unlearning?

Literature professor and critic Gayatri Spivak claims that doing one’s homework in the interest of unlearning one’s privilege marks the beginning of an ethical relation to the Other (Landry & Maclean 4-5). What does such an unlearning entail? As a totalising experience it is difficult to imagine. One way of interpreting unlearning is as a temporary rejection of a taken-for granted privileged existence, and a willingness to experience the life of the less privileged. This means of course also putting oneself at risk – the risk of changing.

For more than a century, some reporters and writers have done their homework in a drastic manner, by actually taking on another person’s identity. Usually this other person belongs to a lower social class, at times also to an ethnic minority. These experiments have taken various shapes. Some individuals changed the colour of their skin and/or eyes, and thereby posed as an ethnic Other. In the USA, John Howard Griffin and Grace Halsell did this, in Germany Günter Wallraff. Other reporters presented themselves as someone presumably at the bottom of society – for example writer Jack London among the destitute of London’s East End, and reporter Ester Blenda Nordström working as a maidservant at a Swedish farm.

Their work has acquired several labels: ‘role reportage’, ‘participant reporting’, ‘experimenting with the self or with reality’ and even ‘anti-authoritarian action art’. Swedish editors Stig Hansén and Clas Thor call role reporting "the most difficult, but also the most exciting of all journalistic genres" (Hansén & Thor 1998:xx). In the following I shall try to summarise some important experiences gained from these experiments.

To my knowledge, most of the discussion on role reporting has concentrated on the ethics of being undercover, on basing journalistic work on a fundamental lie about the reporter herself – and thus also provoking situations which would otherwise not have been heard of or reported. I shall leave this part aside, and concentrate on other questions:

How were these reporters motivated? To what degree may we actually speak of cross-identification? And what is the possible impact of this kind of journalism – for journalism – and for the Others – ‘down under’?

The examples I highlight are all from reporters who experimented with other identities for at least one month, thus excluding the Norwegian experiences I know of.

The tradition can be dated back to the late 19^th century in the USA, and from the 1900s it was inspired by the Chicago School of Sociology. Students were pushed out into a hard reality, taking low-paid jobs, living in the slums of the city and posing as anonymous strangers and thereby getting access to information they would otherwise not have obtained.

A similar tradition can be traced in Germany and Austria from the 1870s, where some reporters became industrial labourers to report on horrible working conditions. Today the most famous representative of role reporting in this tradition is Günter Wallraff. His name has been appropriated to make a new verb: to wallraff, rather undeserving, since role reporting started long before he was born.

Some reporters went through a process of trans-culturation – such as Swiss-Russian exile Isabelle Eberhardt, who converted to Islam and in her adult years travelled in men’s attire using an Arab name, reporting from the Maghreb countries. In other words; one extreme of this tradition of reporting may be, after years of experience, ‘going native’ for good, which Eberhardt to a large extent did. The other extreme would be short stunts, such as reporters posing as someone else for a day or two.

The way in which reporters act while being ‘down below’, differs. Some reporters concentrate mainly on ‘blending in’ – doing what the Others do, while some – like Wallraff and Halsell – more actively provoke situations which expose the oppressive forces and mentalities of their societies. Here is an overview of the texts to be commented. (OVERHEAD 1)

Grace Halsell, US reporter, whose book "Soul sister" from 1969 reports changing her skin from white to dark and thus enabling her to pass as a ‘normal’ Harlem dweller, writes that she wanted to create a story

This statement suggests three interrelated motivations. First, a universalistic one: emphasising all human beings’ likeness to each other. In the USA of the1960s this was still a controversial point of view. The second one is an urge for personal experience, presumably motivated by an acknowledgement of the difficulty of emphatising with the Other as Black from an ethnic White position. Third, through this new-gained authority of direct experience Halsell felt she would be able to communicate her sense of ‘being like the Other’ to her readership, presumably mainly white. Thus, her method may be seen as a short cut to the African-American Other, who might otherwise, due to centuries of oppression, reject her or meet her with justified suspicion.

Halsell in her statement presupposes a very segregated society, in terms of life style, privilege, social experience and media consumption. She also presupposes that this role reporting is a better – or indeed more feasible – way of mapping the life of the (in this case ethnic) Other than it would be to venture into Harlem or the black areas of the South as Grace Halsell, celebrated white reporter. On the other hand, as a reporter visibly from the outside, you are able to ask questions about phenomena that as an insider you would have to take for granted. In spite of this, by seemingly being ‘one of them’, Halsell feels more able to represent the Other, or report on her behalf. It is not as if the Other had not spoken. Writers like James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and numerous others had published novels and writings, but nevertheless African-American literature was largely marginalised, and the mainstream media were almost exclusively manned by non-blacks.

In the introduction to her book Halsell asks herself whether her determination is founded on "an unconscious guilt feeling" or on a professional urge to have the first-hand experience.

She did not, though, go about it like this, but more modestly. Her first job was in a hospital office. Her ultimate experience was an attempted rape by the father in a Mississippi family, where she was working doing household chores as a day labourer.

John Howard Griffin, who published Black like me almost a decade earlier, says his work began as a scientific research study of "the Negro in the South, with careful compilation of data for analysis". He filed the data, but published his journal from six weeks of experiences, as he puts it; "in all its crudity and rawness". It seems that, as one of his colleagues wrote, his experiences grew on him. He failed to make sense of the journey with an objective, ‘scientific’ approach, which was his original aim. This may point at a more universal experience. When being near or almost ‘one of them’, a researcher may recognise the limitations of the distant, scientific approach. Colleague Robert Bonazzi writes of Griffin that he became "entirely immersed in the experience itself, rather than being the "I" or ego observing some "it" out there". He discovered gradually that beneath his own dedication to racial justice, there was an unconscious sense of white supremacy – long denied. In other words, a slow process of unlearning seems to have taken place.

Ester Blenda Nordström writes that she wanted to concentrate not on farm life as such, but on the work and lives of the maidservants. In her preface to the book, a collection of reportage, most of them previously published in Svenska Dagbladet, she expresses her admiration for these human beings and their

By stating that nobody knows about these toiling women, Nordström confirms their invisibility in the public sphere. Media professor Terje Rasmussen, in his referral to Bauman, writes of three alternative fates for the individual: to win, to survive or disappear. The disappearing ones are at times a topic for the journalism of guilt, of remorse (Rasmussen 2001:171). Rasmussen also claims that the modern media transform us all into tourists who in a flexible and superficial way may gaze at people’s ways of living all over the world, this again granting us cultural resources for our own identity work (Rasmussen 2001:172). As I see it these cultural resources may be meagre, and a long way from the process of unlearning. The question thus remains: May the role reporters offer more than such small fragments, if not something quite else? And may they be motivated by more than guilt?

Jack London, in his preface to "The People of the Abyss" (London 1903) tells that he went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind akin to that of an explorer. As Halsell he also emphasises the supremacy of first-hand experience:

Thus London explicitly states some criteria for good and bad factors in determining the lives of the Others ‘down there’. Eighty years later, Günter Wallraff writes that for ten years he has postponed the role reporting he now wants to take on. This because he knew from scientific reports how the Others (Turkish workers in Germany) lived, that their working conditions were beyond belief, that many of their children were traumatised. "But I had never felt it to my body (på kroppen)." This was not his first endeavour in role reporting. Writer Heinrich Böll, in his preface to another of Wallraff’s books, writes of him that he "subjects himself to a situation and describes it from the perspective of the submitted person", like Griffin, being an instrument immersed in the experiential moment, as Bonazzi writes. For Wallraff the choice is one of positioning himself as a victim:

Wallraff’s work comes close to what might be labelled as ‘action reporting’. A good proportion of his royalties were placed in a fund called "Solidarity with foreign workers", which aimed at financing free judicial and other assistance to these workers. Jack London, besides reporting on the misery of the people of the Abyss, applies Marxist inspired sociologist analysis to explain their situation and he advocates social uprising. And Ester Blenda Nordström proposes some reform for female farm hands, like one day off per week and more regulated working hours, arguing that farmers’ difficulties in recruiting maid servants might be explained by the lack of such reforms. Griffin became for years a lecturer on justice and a negotiator between the white and black communities.

The urge for a personal experience and a strong sense of injustice seemsNBNB to be common denominators for the role reporters examined here. Does this mean a special sense of responsibility for the Other? When encountering an Other, according to Levinas, I am automatically responsible for him, even if I have not actively chosen this. The responsibility comes before norms, rational choices and interests linked to duties. It occurs when encountering the Other’s face. And when this face is out of sight, as in modern warfare, catastrophe can happen (Rasmussen 2001). The Other is no longer a fellow human being, the gap is widened. May it then be partly bridged when reporters of much higher rank in a hierarchical society, try to understand the Other – down under?

Levinas claims that ethics – that is, responsibility for the Other – must come prior to attempts at understanding, a rejection of the intellectualist model where the human being becomes human by understanding. To my mind an alleged understanding – made visible in journalistic text – is a representation of the way a reporter sees the Other. And to what degree the Other may recognise herself in this representation, depends on the degree of fairness – and identification – in representation. It also depends on the degree to which the reporter rejects paternalism. A challenge is often recognising the Other’s right to be different, to her own identity.

I think it is fair to say that one can not here speak of absolutes. If identification is seen as inhabiting the Other’s identity, it is truly impossible. But may we speak of degrees of understanding, seeing life as being underway both to acknowledge our (given) responsibility and to further understanding?

Wallraff, in an interview (Hansén & Thor 1995) says that he never planned his role reporting very meticulously: "Most of my roles ‘contacted me’." This may be seen as related to the given, ethical imperative of the Other.

Let us now remember Spivak’s suggestion, that to do one’s homework in the interests of unlearning one’s privilege marks the beginning of an ethical relation to the Other. She advocates unlearning one’s privilege by considering it as one’s loss. This marks a meta-perspective on the hierarchies of modern society, since it may be interpreted as a question. What do these hierarchies make of us human beings? It also marks an ethical challenge to privilege as such.

An illustration of this is the way Indian professor of social psychology Ashis Nandy analyses how British privileges-as-losses grew under colonialism: Often, hardness and rigidity won, and the meeker aspects of human nature were deemed irrelevant to the public sphere. Prized values were competition, achievement, control and productivity, new forms of institutional violence and ruthless social Darwinism. The British became more homogenous by exporting their rebels to the colonies. An undeveloped heart separated the British from each other and from the Indians – thus the coloniser had the magic feeling of omnipotence and permanence (Nandy 1990:33-34). This way of defining loss – as undeveloped empathy and a narrow masculinity combined with violence – may be likened to a ‘negative privilege’ – seeing the Other as a distant, dehumanised being. The loss then means not being able to learn to know him or her.

Does seeing one’s privilege as one’s loss entail a recognition of the limits of one human existence, framed by social reality, a limitation, an emptiness of sorts – a void which makes us unable to recognise the interdependency of human beings? This is an argument that has been put forward by feminists, suggesting that rigid boundaries between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ limit the individual potential and development.

To take on another identity may be seen as recognition of this interdependency, a way of filling the void by transcending one’s ascribed societal role, taking responsibility for one’s own actions in a very special way, which at best may entail taking responsibility for the Other. But is such an active, conscious ‘taking-responsibility’ more of a paternalistic appropriation of the Other, in Levinas’ perspective? There is a fine distinction between helping the Other – to gain control over her own situation – and maintaining a hierarchical relation and thus helping one’s narcissistic self.

Are the role reporters, if guided by critical self-reflection, able to see from the Other’s point of view the constraints and limits of their own social position? Are they able to see the way in which this position leaves the bridges to many Others closed or at best half-open? May they serve as generous keepers of open gates?

In their accounts the reporters examined how the I persons are being seen by others who were previously their presumed equals – and by other people at the bottom where they now find themselves. Jack London tells of a particular way of being seen by persons of the opposite sex, who would otherwise have been his potential mates. Together with two acquaintances he is waiting outside a workhouse:

London here explores the limitations of pity. Interestingly he does not dwell so much on being pitied himself, as on the tragedy of his co-travellers not being worthy of empathy.

The sexual aspect is more visible in Grace Halsell’s experiences, as a black woman catching the eye of the white man:

John Howard Griffin hitches several rides with white drivers in the Southern states of the USA. Often, they initiate conversation about sex, for instance asking him if his wife ever ‘had it’ with a white man, implying that for her this would be an attractive experience.

In this situation Griffin can not speak his mind. He feels at risk, since the driver describes what he and his friends do with dark-skinned troublemakers.

The difference between these experiences, however, and the experiences of the people living permanently in the situation that Halsell and Griffin want to map, is of course the long-term process of suffering, risk and internalisation. The reporters can stop their experiment. Halsell is in danger, but she manages to escape from the white man’s house, a black maidservant might have had to endure his sexual violence to provide for her family. On the other hand, the non-permanence of their role reporting also make these reporters less patient, less able to cope with the hardships and oppression. Thus, Halsell and Griffin did not learn the permanent urge for patience felt by people being permanently black. Wallraff recognises this, prolonging and intensifying his stay among the destitute workers of Turkish origin.

But what happens when a reporter steps out of his role, while still among the Others, down under? At one stage of his wandering Jack London, being hungry and without shelter, decides to reveal his original self. He extracts his golden coin, being sewn into his jacket, and invites two of his co-fellows for a decent meal. He then has to explain more about himself, and he immediately recognises their change of attitude:

London’s description of this encounter tells of the people of the abyss unable to accept positive experiences with people from ‘above’. The class differences are too dominant for communication to develop. Wallraff experiences a different attitude, being observed by a twenty-year-old Turkish colleague, Yüksel, when he is taking notes during their short breaks. Yüksel encourages Wallraff to continue his work, and in the following days supplies him with information – including his own life story – without interrogating him further about his intentions.

Not all the studied reporters have an aim as explicit as Halsell, of ‘proving’ – as she puts it – the ‘likeness’ of all human beings. As can be seen from London’s writings, he depicts how the people in London’s East End are crippled both physically and psychologically by the horrific conditions they must endure. He gradually becomes convinced that the people at the bottom of society should not marry, should not have children.

He concedes that there are instances where a fair measure of happiness may be found, but

Nordström on several occasions mentions the uncleanliness of both the farm wife and of her own bed companion, Anna, the other maidservant. She finds these conditions disgusting, and also, maybe not intentionally, includes in her stories, very negative characteristics of the farmer himself and of the two women. Because of this, she met with severe criticism from her employers, who recognised themselves, although all names were changed (Stål 2001).

London’s and Nordström’s observations may be linked to historic moment, and also in London’s case with the fact that he, unlike the other reporters, visits a country which is not his own. He poses as a stranded sailor from the USA; he belongs on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, where workers earn three times as much as the labourers he observes during his study of London’s destitute. More than 50 years later, Griffin admits that he has looked for ‘inferiority’ among the African-Americans:

In the same way as Halsell quoted earlier, Griffin here underlines the universality of being human, bad or good, as seen from living as one of the Others. But as he withdraws from his role, he becomes a person of authority.

To a certain extent we may compare the role reporters to anthropologists. An important part of their work is attempting to share, to take part in the life of the Other. With the exception of Wallraff, though, the role reporters do this for a shorter time than an average period of anthropological fieldwork. When writing about the Other, reporters, as well as anthropologists, shift from a mutual experience, a dialogue of sorts in a shared ‘room’ – to the creation of an authoritative version, a monologue characterising the world of the Other. This part of the relationship is by necessity hierarchical, as social anthropologist Marit Melhuus puts it. But the written result does not have to be hierarchical. The ‘I’ might, as Bonazzi writes in his afterword to "Black like me", become an instrument immersed in the moment of the experiment. Thus it may connect the "story" and the reader, so that the reader "can imagine the reality by losing the "self" in this moment". If so, it will have an effect on our emotions and all our senses. This may be read as an all-too-positive recommendation of the book, but also as an optimistic view of role reporting as a contribution to healing society’s wounds.

Role reporters and anthropologists write from privileged positions, after having shared the social conditions of Others for a while. In both positions it is important to maintain the professional detachment and not ‘go native’. The difference, of course, is that anthropologists live among the Others in an open way, and thus do not risk being seen as ‘one of them’.

At times the reporters seem to be in a state of enthusiasm when encountering the Other ‘down there’, which may come close to recognising privileges as precisely a kind of loss – or, alternatively – be seen as a temporary attack of romanticism. Grace Halsell declares her love for Harlem, she writes of beginning to feel that she belongs there. Griffin highlights the generous hospitality of a Black family in Alabama, letting him sleep on the floor of their humble house, and also describes how an elderly shoe shine man shares his meal with a beggar.

Ester Blenda Nordström, at 24, working at least 16 hours a day for a full month, expresses her admiration for Anna, her hard-working colleague. She also describes how and the joys of Saturday evenings dance event compare favourably with the tango of the city.

Nordström, enthralled by a bright summer evening paints a longed-for experience as an exception to the rule, and soon returns to the hardships of the daily chores, such as the slaughtering of pigs, when she almost drops everything and runs away,

In this passage Nordström’s sense of belonging is clearly elsewhere, in a civilised urban world far from the observed so-called inhuman practices. All the reporters to a certain extent express both their admiration for the people they encounter ‘down there’ – and their difficulties in coping with similar situations.

This ‘duality’ underlines the relativity of closeness, of the extent to which the reporters were able to feel as ‘one of them’. Their temporary situation seems to follow them into the dream world, though, as Griffin writes:

Griffin was an academic. But this study of reality differs from previous ones by touching him at a more personal level. Wallraff also experiences the sensation of being the Other, to a certain extent:

In the eyes of people around him, he was Ali, but deep inside, in his own view, after all he was not. He learns what the Other has to tolerate and how much contempt he is met with, but he admits that he can not know how a real Ali digests this, that is, his knowledge of the whole internalisation process is missing.

Halsell visits Puerto Rico to sunbathe in an attempt to speed up the pigmentation effects helped by medical treatment. Before entering the ‘Other world’ she is not without fears and hesitations.

The last phrase may be interpreted as if it is possible to retain one’s own full personality, and also temporarily add a new one. But as Amin Maalouf says, identity can not be thought of in absolutes. The better one learns to know others, the more one also learns to recognize one’s own identity. In discussing the dangers of polarization, Maalouf adds that if people feel

The more multiplicity contained in an identity, the more compatible it may become. Halsell refuses to choose and claims she has room for both her old self and the Soul sister. But the role reporters all change to a degree. Wallraff tells of his childhood, full of deprivation, and a sense of loss of identity. He wonders what it meant that he voluntarily ventured into the most extreme and unfamiliar situations without feeling lost. What felt like constraints in the beginning, was later applied in a productive manner:

But the question of role reporting has more important aspects besides the development of the reporter’s identity. In addition to the Self, there is an urge to change the situation for the Other, ‘down there’ – and society as a whole. Just communicating a presumed understanding of the Other is, as mentioned, a hierarchical exercise. You leave a one:one communication situation, you stop being with the Other to represent her to the world; and thus the Other loses control.

In my studies of the five reporters’ work, I recognise two main motives. First: the personal experience found necessary to understand more of the Other’s situation (that is, to find out how the Other lives by presumably being the Other). Secondly a will to expose something else: an oppressive, discriminatory society, and the conditions of the people living permanently at the bottom of this society.

A role reporter risks – by the character of her identity-leap – to literally overshadow the experience of the Other who is left ‘down there’ in her continuing distress. Thus what should have been a sensational exposure of the living conditions of the Other risks being seen – not least by the media – as the sensational deed of a daring individual. Some reporters take measures to prevent this – by continuously focusing their writings on other fates than their own – and by being explicit about the need for reform or more fundamental social change. And their work may also be seen in accordance with what Ashis Nandy calls an alternative universalism, taking as a starting point the experiences of the oppressed.

Julia Kristeva writes that to live with the Other, with the foreigner, confronts us with the possibility or the impossibility of being an Other. It is not only about our humanistic ability to accept the Other, but to take his place, which means to think and make oneself different from oneself (Kristeva 1991: 28). Again, let us not think of this as an absolute transformation. But to take the Other’s place seems to have been the ambition of serious role reporters like the ones examined here. A role reporter for a while experiences being different from her former self – since this self is not recognised by her new environment.

Still, the problem of representation remains. To what extent will the Other speak, and to what extent will she be backgrounded? Does a reporter, taking on the role of the Other, to an extreme extent speak on behalf of this Other, or is the identity leap a way of letting the Other speak – more freely, a humble attempt to take responsibility and inspire others to do the same? Is it an urge for documentation – or a variety of extreme-sport narcissism? Extreme-sport because this living is dangerous. Griffin’s health is said to have deteriorated after his role experiment. Wallraff risked his health in the perilous industries of Western Germany. Narcissism because it is the fictious ‘I’ as the Other who is the main character, although the reader gets to meet many other Others, as well. The intentions may be the best, but the role reporter still, because of the backwardness of society, risks becoming a mediator of sorts, between the two societies he has experienced. In an epilogue from 1977 John Howard Griffin looks back at the years following the publication of Black like me:

In other words: To whom do the media ascribe an ethos? Is one rationale for role reporting that the media do not attach any reliability to the Other – down there? As has been shown by numerous researchers, to be heard in the media one should preferably be a well-known person from the upper or middle classes, reflecting the hierarchy of society. By aiming at a majority readership, the media may further marginalise minorities who differ from the ‘norm’ are.

People denied a voice in the public sphere are often in a situation where too much risk is involved: of getting sacked, of getting expelled, of getting harassed. Wallraff and the other role reporters have friends in high places who may defend and rescue them if necessary.

The impact of role reporting may go far beyond the publication of an ‘account from the inside’. In a wider context, it may be seen as a way of contributing to a public sphere of the oppressed, a liberating counter-sphere to the bourgeois one, as Wallraff’s Danish editors of 1978 express it. Could this have been done without role reporting? A competitor to this genre is the documentary reportage, in which the reporter in an open role maps the living conditions of people often unheard-of. But at times these open methods are not accessible to aspiring muck-raking reporters. Journalism might thus be poorer without it. As Wallraff himself suggests, journalism is always something filtered. It presents something one has looked at from the outside. He feels that what is experienced at an existential level, "something that also threatens one’s own existence", may be translated so that it makes an entirely different impact (Wallraff 1978:7).

The dilemma of speaking for the Other remains largely the same today. Some role reporters no doubt make serious efforts to experience a fragment of what Others have to endure for a lifetime. To merely call this tourism may be to undervalue their efforts. At least it is not the easy and short charter tourism, it may come closer to strenuous trekking. As a result, the situation of the destitute is highlighted. And some of the powerful ones may be forced to examine their role. But the risk is that the reported-upon who still find themselves ‘down under’ may shrug and say ‘So what?’

Future role reporters’ are bound to tread a fine balance between a desire to unmask the injustices of society – aiming at change – on the one hand, and on the other a society’s desire to insist on the people down below being represented by these reporters, rather than speak for themselves. If role reporting is to counter marginalisation, the role reporters need to continue unlearning yet another privilege to create more space for the ones who would otherwise disappear from the public sphere.