I too am delighted to be heading to Champaign-Urbana in 2011 – and that’s not a sentence that I could truthfully utter in any context other than participation in QI 2011, the attractions of the twin-towns being in inverse proportion to the lure of the Congress itself!
With my paper this year I am attempting to move from my ‘Feminist Qualitative Research’ comfort zone, into the ‘Discourse/Narrative/Counter-Narrative’ stream, in a bid to discover how a potentially less overtly politicised, or at least a differently politicised audience (given that the whole enterprise exists within the framework of social justice) responds to my theories on how narrative research helps/harms the marginalised groups with which it is so often associated. Given that my title features the word feminist, I may fail in my efforts to break-out, but my subject matter goes to the heart of the conference’s theme of the politics of advocacy, so it is possible I may end up with a more mainstream audience than in previous years…
“Challenging Regimes of Truth: A Feminist Perspective on the Narrative Study of Lives”
Twenty years ago, as the crisis of representation was stalking the corridors of the academy, and Lather was urging us to pursue a ‘less comfortable’ social science, Stanley asked whether there was such a thing as a feminist auto/biography. As a feminist engaged in sociological biography, this is a question I am still struggling to answer in and through the process of narrative inquiry. Long lauded for its ability to illuminate lives hitherto hidden or silenced, narrative has found favour with many feminist scholars, and yet there is much in the narrative canon that appears to perpetuate modernist discourses of power and truth, privileging the researcher and imprisoning the researched anew in chains forged by the sacred stories of scholars. In this paper I explore both the spaces where narrative and feminism happily co-exist, and those where tensions emerge, drawing on my own work with female teachers in Yemen over the last decade to illustrate.
(My abstract, titled “Researcher Positionality: The Effects of Revealing My Story to Participants in a Narrative Based Study” has been accepted to QI 2011! Before I go any further, I’d like to share what it was like to find out about the news…)
7:10am
*grumble to self and reach for morning coffee*
*grumble a little more when computer screen lights up, squint until eyes adjust to brightness*
*grumble more and fiddle with the trackpad, accidentally click play, ears are assaulted to “All Along the Watchtower” blaring with sub-woofer super bass*
*pound keyboard randomly until fingers hit stop/pause or mute*
7:12am
*music stops, sigh*
*forget why computer was turned on in the first place and get up to find more coffee*
7:15am
*grumble loudly, return to desk having forgotten mug*
*curse out loud upon opening full inbox, notice absence of QI conference email and curse more*
*carefully click on web browser and open QI bookmark*
*scan website for link to document submission link*
7:17am
*find and click on the document submission link which was in front all along*
*wait for page to load, grumble and mildly wonder why coffee mug is empty*
*sign into website and click on message centre*
*suddenly notice new message on my log in page*
*suspiciously click on link*
*read title: “ICQI Letter of Invitation”
*rubs eyes and re-reads title several times*
*smiles*
*clicks on link and proceeds to download acceptance letter*
*reads acceptance letter, smiling*
*wonders about the abstract that was submitted and begins to search folder “Work in Progress”*
*accidentally clicks play…*
(And now the abstract)
This paper presents various issues of positionality when the researcher chooses to share their own story with their participants when it comes to discussing the interrelationship between race and language when exploring the multifaceted aspects of identity. This discussion is situated within a larger study that explores the stories of experience of visible ethnic minorities who are native English speaking teachers (VEM-NEST). I explore the effect that disclosing my own narrative as an English language teacher of colour has on the narratives presented to me by my participants. I share a similar ethnic and linguistic background with my participants, which places me in an “insider’s” view while at the same time I am “the researcher”, a role that has a distinctly different focus.
(Further thoughts)
This papers follows on from my presentation at Narrative Matters 2010, where there I presented the concept of research positionality related to my own work. Moving forward, the paper I hope to present at QI will draw upon the experiences of actually carrying out the research and the insights I gain from the process. More on this later.
Eljee’s Conference experiences 2011 : Getting to QI (Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA) http://wp.me/p1q9b0-7R
Congratulations to both of you! Will you at some point post your papers here? I’d be very interested in reading them.
Magda
…. as I said, acceptance news indeed. I’ve not been to QI yet – has anyone else apart from Tanya? – so am looking forward to updates after the event 🙂
I too am delighted to be heading to Champaign-Urbana in 2011 – and that’s not a sentence that I could truthfully utter in any context other than participation in QI 2011, the attractions of the twin-towns being in inverse proportion to the lure of the Congress itself!
With my paper this year I am attempting to move from my ‘Feminist Qualitative Research’ comfort zone, into the ‘Discourse/Narrative/Counter-Narrative’ stream, in a bid to discover how a potentially less overtly politicised, or at least a differently politicised audience (given that the whole enterprise exists within the framework of social justice) responds to my theories on how narrative research helps/harms the marginalised groups with which it is so often associated. Given that my title features the word feminist, I may fail in my efforts to break-out, but my subject matter goes to the heart of the conference’s theme of the politics of advocacy, so it is possible I may end up with a more mainstream audience than in previous years…
“Challenging Regimes of Truth: A Feminist Perspective on the Narrative Study of Lives”
Twenty years ago, as the crisis of representation was stalking the corridors of the academy, and Lather was urging us to pursue a ‘less comfortable’ social science, Stanley asked whether there was such a thing as a feminist auto/biography. As a feminist engaged in sociological biography, this is a question I am still struggling to answer in and through the process of narrative inquiry. Long lauded for its ability to illuminate lives hitherto hidden or silenced, narrative has found favour with many feminist scholars, and yet there is much in the narrative canon that appears to perpetuate modernist discourses of power and truth, privileging the researcher and imprisoning the researched anew in chains forged by the sacred stories of scholars. In this paper I explore both the spaces where narrative and feminism happily co-exist, and those where tensions emerge, drawing on my own work with female teachers in Yemen over the last decade to illustrate.
(My abstract, titled “Researcher Positionality: The Effects of Revealing My Story to Participants in a Narrative Based Study” has been accepted to QI 2011! Before I go any further, I’d like to share what it was like to find out about the news…)
7:10am
*grumble to self and reach for morning coffee*
*grumble a little more when computer screen lights up, squint until eyes adjust to brightness*
*grumble more and fiddle with the trackpad, accidentally click play, ears are assaulted to “All Along the Watchtower” blaring with sub-woofer super bass*
*pound keyboard randomly until fingers hit stop/pause or mute*
7:12am
*music stops, sigh*
*forget why computer was turned on in the first place and get up to find more coffee*
7:15am
*grumble loudly, return to desk having forgotten mug*
*curse out loud upon opening full inbox, notice absence of QI conference email and curse more*
*carefully click on web browser and open QI bookmark*
*scan website for link to document submission link*
7:17am
*find and click on the document submission link which was in front all along*
*wait for page to load, grumble and mildly wonder why coffee mug is empty*
*sign into website and click on message centre*
*suddenly notice new message on my log in page*
*suspiciously click on link*
*read title: “ICQI Letter of Invitation”
*rubs eyes and re-reads title several times*
*smiles*
*clicks on link and proceeds to download acceptance letter*
*reads acceptance letter, smiling*
*wonders about the abstract that was submitted and begins to search folder “Work in Progress”*
*accidentally clicks play…*
(And now the abstract)
This paper presents various issues of positionality when the researcher chooses to share their own story with their participants when it comes to discussing the interrelationship between race and language when exploring the multifaceted aspects of identity. This discussion is situated within a larger study that explores the stories of experience of visible ethnic minorities who are native English speaking teachers (VEM-NEST). I explore the effect that disclosing my own narrative as an English language teacher of colour has on the narratives presented to me by my participants. I share a similar ethnic and linguistic background with my participants, which places me in an “insider’s” view while at the same time I am “the researcher”, a role that has a distinctly different focus.
(Further thoughts)
This papers follows on from my presentation at Narrative Matters 2010, where there I presented the concept of research positionality related to my own work. Moving forward, the paper I hope to present at QI will draw upon the experiences of actually carrying out the research and the insights I gain from the process. More on this later.
Now where is that coffee mug…