I must be a profound thinker, and men like that naturally don’t speak very much

I was intrigued by Magdalena’s recent reflexivity post, but – in a shamelessly selfish way – what I took away from reading the post seems to reveal more about myself than her. This extract was quite illuminating, especially if one considers what could be there but isn’t:

There was also the discussion on the narrative-reflexivity link, which helped me to articulate my desire to ‘tell the story’ of my research experience. It was also moving to learn from Eljee’s and Richard’s research trajectories (MA to PhD) in terms of reflexivity, because in many ways they were similar to my own. Achilleas’s AT triangle offered a very clever and useful perspective on the whole reflexivity issue, as did Juup’s arguments on the factors affecting the decision to use reflexivity or not. Then Eljee’s contribution on range of positionality made me question how far I had shared my own story and the possible impact of this positionality on my relationship with the participants.

In this paragraph, Magdalena obligingly summarised five reactions to reflexivity: four personal trajectories and a theoretical contribution that went out of its way to be abstract and impersonal. I do not particularly feel like discussing the difference between these approaches or its possible causes in this space, and I certainly don’t want to compare the value of each contribution. Still, I couldn’t resist commenting on the irony that at the end of her post, Magdalena chastised herself for being ‘good at the espoused theories but not putting them into practice’.