Current Narratives

Narrative Coherence, Co-incidence and Listening In-between (Book Review)

Julie McLeod — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:53:39 PST

This collection of essays explores the challenges of researching personal narratives and the many levels of ambiguity that beset such an endeavour. The volume aims to disturb the dominance of an interpretive and ethical paradigm that privileges ’narrative coherence’. As such, it immediately invites meditation on where (in)coherence lies – the teller, the tale or the listener, or the in-between relations among them. The collection is framed as an attempt to move away from or beyond the conventional structure of narrative form as following a beginning, middle and end. It argues for a more generous sense of narrative possibilities, ones not confined by what the editors characterize as Aristotelian conceptions of narrative coherence that favour linear sequencing and thematic closure. Of course, fictional narratives take many forms – they play, subvert, parody, delight in and disappoint conventions – but so too do personal narratives, as the authors elaborate in their diverse examples. Related to this, the editors propose to question what they see as a dominant presumption that ‘persons live better and in a more ethical way, if they have a coherent life-story and coherent narrative identity’ (p.2). There is, then, a strong voice questioning perceived assumptions about narrative form and effects, and a corresponding interest in elaborating some alternative ways of recognizing and writing about narratives that may take different a form, or struggle to be recognized. I have some mixed responses to these ambitions, in part because I had thought that the conceptions of narrative coherence which the editors dispute had already been profoundly unsettled – by, among others, modernism, psychoanalysis, memory studies, and numerous variants of post-structural theorizing. It was, however, with somewhat of a refreshing jolt that I encountered reflections on the authority of narrative coherence and its necessary undoing, making me think again about making meaning from personal or identity narratives and the constellation of aspirations animating narrative enquiry.

Inauthentic Tales or Resonating Voices?

Mark Vicars — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:53:38 PST

As folk taxonomies of contemporary sexual identities continue to proliferate, this paper positions narrative research as a productive methodology for troubling the coherence of the ‘normal’. Re-presented from life-history interviews, conducted within a friendship group of gay men over a six month period, are reconstructed accounts of the ‘…processes, procedures, and apparatuses whereby [our] truth and knowledge are [became] produced (Tamboukou & Ball, 2003, p.4). Our endeavors attempt to show something of how we talked ourselves in and out of our scattered, obscure and partial stories of self. Throughout this paper, our disjointed and chaotic narrations aim to undo ‘normalizing’ narratives of educational research. In piecing together our adolescent queering experiences, our fragmented and incoherate voices mingle on the page to show something of the complexity of our narrative experience(s) of self.

Broken Narratives in the Immigrant Folktale

Senem Yekenkurul — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:53:38 PST

Folktales contain a life-force embedded within their structure. Life narratives are carried along in an autobiographical form as folktales are transmitted from one generation to another. This autobiographical nature of folktales inspires the unique approach of narrative identity in understanding the construction of a meaningful self-identity. Growing up, my mother would tell me Turkish Arab folktales. Today, I realise not only the impact they have had on my life but also on my mother’s. One folktale, which I title The Angel, when contextualised in accordance with the storyteller’s (my mother’s) life, produces some dazzling insights into the reason behind the telling. The Angel is embedded in the life histories of my grandmother and mother and is abundant with insight into their life-worlds. The experience of the fragmentation caused by migration and the choices made has turned The Angel into a ‘broken narrative’. Their life story is the driving force behind the telling of the folktale and can be a touchstone for children who seek to locate themselves within the narratives of significant others and broader social structures.

The Haunted Photograph : Context, Framing and the Family Story

Stefan Schutt — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:52:14 PST

In this paper we examine conceptions of framing and context as they apply to photographs and other visual historical material. In particular we focus on the ways that context and framing are operationalised in the intimate, fragmented space of family history and how they play out through the construction of narrative coherency, what these sites are, what we bring to the sites, and how the interactions between beholder and object manifest as encounters. To investigate this we present a selection of photographic items representing key moments from our own European family histories. Throughout we ask: is meaning primarily created through devices such as framing and context, or may there be subtle, inherent meaning embedded in items that we can sense?

Discontinuous Narrative : The Trace Dance

Julia Prendergast — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:52:14 PST

I am working on a novel, which takes the form of a collection of interrelated stories. In each story, the narrative is framed by the idiosyncrasies, and prejudices, of a different first-person voice. There are gaps in narrative time, and there is disparity between the narrators’ voices. The result is a ‘discontinuous narrative’; this term describes the early work of Frank Moorhouse: ‘an innovative narrative method using interconnected stories’ (Griffith University 2011). This paper explores Derrida’s concept of alterity: specifically the ‘trace’ of ‘otherness’, as it corresponds to presence (Rivkin & Ryan 2004, p.278). I call this trace of otherness: The Trace Dance, because of the way alterity operates in discontinuous narrative. The playoff between the narrators’ voices occurs in the shadowy place: in the realm of alterity. Derrida’s concept of alterity explicates the gaps and disparity in discontinuous narrative: the process whereby reverberations simulate presence. I compare the act of narrative representation with the process of remembering. In particular, I compare the relationship between the historical event of the memory, and the rememberer’s sense of that event. Idiosyncratic associations determine the shape of the memory and, crucially, these associations need not be either consciously determined or logical. I argue that remembering is an act of Experiential Representation; I formulate this concept to clarify the metaphorical manoeuvre that occurs in remembering: the attempt to capture the meaning of one thing in terms of the other. This metaphorical manoeuvre connects memory with narrative: which is the attempt to capture an idea in the context of a story. The concept of alterity allows for a new way of looking at discontinuous narrative, because it reconfigures gaps in narrative time, and disparity in narrative voice, as crucial rhythmic forces that give the narrative its shape.

Magical Realism and Experiences of Extremity

Jo Langdon — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:52:12 PST

Examining magical realist texts including Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato (1991), and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2006), this paper discusses how magical realism examines the extremities of trauma and fear, proposing that magical realist narratives afford a unique ability to represent trauma in a way that is not open to the stylistics of literary realism. Blending the real or believable with the fantastically outrageous, magical realist narratives typically destabilise and disorder privileged centres of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, demonstrating the constructedness of knowledge and history. Accordingly, magical realist strategies are frequently used in interventionist or counter narratives that refuse to adhere to privileged versions of truth or history and insist upon a multiplicity of experience. The majority of magical realist scholarship explores how the genre undermines hegemonic perspectives of history to clear a space for marginal representations of the past. However, as this paper argues, magical realist narratives also provide a unique space for writing about experiences of extremity. Examining the role of fantasy in representations of violence and trauma, this paper proposes that rupturing a realist narrative with the magical or un-real accommodates representations of extremity by conveying the ‘felt’ experience of trauma.

'Portraits of Moments' : Visual and Textual Entanglements in Narrative Research

Maria Tamboukou — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:52:12 PST

In this paper I consider questions of coherence and sequence in narrative research and explore their conditions of possibility and their effects. What happens, I ask, when the Aristotelian plot and the coherent self cannot be identified? Who gets excluded and to what effect when narratives are trapped within restrictive models of analysis? In focusing on a quantifiable and divisible model of time that underpins the conception of narratives in terms of linearity, completeness and closure, the paper charts a plane of analysis wherein narratives are taken as ‘portraits of moments’—textual and visual traces of eruptions and events. Such an analytical stance draws on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy and particularly the connections she has made between life histories and the discourse of History. In this context completion is examined not in terms of narrative closure but as an agential cut in making meaning about ‘the lives of others’.

Introduction : Losing the Plot - Tangling with Narrative Complexity

Ruth Ballardie — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:50:50 PST

What is narrative? The question lies at the heart of narrative approaches to research. The simplicity of the common response to this question, however, ‘a story with a beginning, a middle and an end’, with its implied coherence, veils significant tensions and ambiguities. This special edition brings together a range of papers from a recent conference that explored some of the uncertainty around the role of coherence in narrative and narrative research. The conference ‘Losing the Plot – Tangling with Narrative Complexity,’ held in Melbourne, in July, 2010 was inspired by a recent publication, Beyond Narrative Coherence (Hyvarinen, Hyden, Saarenheimo and Tamboukou, 2010). This present collection of papers is a response to these questions and ideas from an Australian perspective and it represents a range of disciplinary backgrounds including media and communication, creative writing and psychosocial studies.

Current Narratives 3 : Contents

Ruth Ballardie — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:50:49 PST

Table of contents for Current Narratives, issue 3, 2011.

Commentary: Getting behind closed doors: The process of conducting research in a criminal justice setting

Jenny Wise — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:07:48 PDT

Engaging with narrative inquiry research methods, such as indepth interviews, can provide researchers with valuable qualitative data. However, the processes involved with conducting in-depth interviews can often be problematic. This paper examines the barriers in the way of conducting research into criminal justice organisations within New South Wales (Australia) and in the Thames Valley (United Kingdom). It presents the personal experiences of the researcher in trying to gain access to organisations such as the police, judiciary, corrective services and forensic science services. Such organisations are often considered to be ʻclosed organisationsʼ because they are resistant to externally-based research. The paper also examines the practical difficulties of interviewing criminal justice practitioners even where official permission to conduct research has been granted. Some of the problems that were faced included fear and suspicion about what the research was examining and fear of reprisal from senior colleagues about what was said to the researcher. This fear led to some participants declining to answer certain questions, or when they did answer, using the ʻofficial organisation lineʼ.

Commentary: Narrative inquiry as a means of moral enquiry in higher education

Corinne Buckland — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:07:47 PDT

Narratology has long been a formal, major strand of literary studies, and narrative theory has more recently entered the fields of social science, psychology and theology. In all these fields, analysis of narrative reveals valuable insights into the structure and meaning of story-making, and narrative is now a widely used therapeutic tool. This paper revisits an original source of narrative inquiry, literary texts, to show how they can be used in higher education as a significant means of ethical and moral thinking. More than any prescriptive moral code or set of professional ethics, these texts have the capacity to enlarge our sensibility, sharpen, yet soften, our judgements, and make an immense contribution to human flourishing.

Gimmelife: Listening for dialogic voices in the email self-narratives of gifted young adolescents

Lisette Dillon — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:07:46 PDT

The art of listening for voices within narrative research is a positive endeavour that has specific value within research design and subsequent approaches to analysis. This paper details an investigation into the dialogic nature of voices among gifted young adolescents who engaged in the co-construction of email-generated self-narratives. Data are drawn from a study involving ten adolescents, aged between ten and fourteen years, diagnosed as gifted according to Australian guidelines. Individual participants were asked to produce self-managed journal entries written and sent as asynchronous emails to the researcher who was the sole recipient and respondent. Within this approach, specific techniques of listening were used to examine a series of multi-vocal narratives generated over a period of six months. This paper proposes that an adaptation of the everyday convenience of email with the traditional journal format as a self-report mechanism creates a synergy that fosters self-disclosure. Individual excerpts are presented to show that the harnessing of personal narratives within an email context has potential to yield valuable insights into the emotions, personal realities and experiences of gifted young adolescents. Furthermore, the co-construction of self-expressive and explanatory narratives supported by a facilitative adult listener appeared to promote healthy self-awareness amongst participants. This paper contributes to narrative exploration in two distinct ways: first, in using online methods for gaining access to the everyday, emotional realities of participants; and, second, in demonstrating the value of listening as a narrative technique for uncovering layers of voices across a body of texts produced over time. These methods represent an innovative attempt to move beyond face-to-face approaches and away from a focus on content and coding techniques that might oversimplify complex emotions.

Narratives within narratives: One young Chinese– Australian boy’s exploration of ideas of difference, identity, and friendship through his drawings

Rosemary D. Richards — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:42:07 PST

Engaging in conversation with immigrant children about selfinitiated home art experiences can reveal valuable insights into the complex world of immigrant children, and what constitute their ʻfunds of knowledgeʼ (Moll 2000). Lee Wong, a five-year-old Chinese–Australian boy, is one of four young children involved in a visual ethnographic research project investigating childrenʼs art experiences in their homes, preschool and school. Lee is equipped with a digital camera and through regularly sharing and discussing his photographs Lee reveals how he explores complex ideas and experiences through his drawings. This article will share, in narrative form, one of Leeʼs graphic stories, ʻFarmer Bob: Bobʼs Farmʼ to demonstrate how he explores concepts of difference, identity and friendship. Employing a Vygotskian perspective I will discuss how this personal, semi-fictional story provides insights into Leeʼs creative processes (Moran and John-Steiner 2002), and how drawing and storytelling function as cultural tools and mediating devices (Vygotsky 1962/1934, 1978) for multilingual and immigrant children to make sense of their social and linguistic worlds.

Narrative research across cultures: Epistemological concerns in Africa

Johnnie W.F. Muwanga-Zake — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:45:00 PST

Narratives among Bantu in Africa are complicated by introductions of Western knowledge such as Information and Communications Technology. Narrative research suffers from and is challenged by the inferiorities due to colonialism and by African academia that rejects African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Narrative research about Information and Communications Technology among Bantu requires a combination of Western methodology in the context of Afrocentric approaches, such as Ubuntu, to yield authentic and valid data. The challenge in introducing Western knowledge such as Information and Communications Technology into Bantu communities is to develop research hybrids that recognise Bantu Indigenous Knowledge Systems and use Western knowledge, with sensitivity to cultural biases. The other challenge is for Indigenous Africans to get involved in serious research to develop their own Information and Communications Technology.

Using narrative ideas to learn about mental illness in the classroom

Paul Morrison — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:44:59 PST

Narrative ideas provide an interesting basis for teaching health practitioners. The specific notions discussed here have been referred to as reflecting teams and as outsider-witness practices. These practices involve offering feedback in non-evaluative ways as a means of exploring new possibilities and perspectives for participants. The emphasis is on the acknowledgement and resonance that occurs when a story is told and witnessed through connecting the story with the lives of the listeners. This paper offers an example of classroom work linked to studentsʼ assignments that was designed to help general nursing students learn about people with mental health problems. The assignments focused on the media representations of people with a mental disorder. The notions of reflecting teams and outsider-witnesses were used in a classroom exercise to witness the stories described in the assignments. The primary aim was to help students to develop richer understandings of people with mental health problems that might lead to more caring ways of practising nursing. The reflecting team process helped students to go beyond the media stereotypes of mental illness and the people who suffer from it. It promoted new understandings of mental health consumers. The exercise enabled students to learn more about stigma and its undermining influence on peoplesʼ lives, to pay close attention to their own language use, and to commit to an enhanced advocate role for vulnerable groups in their care in future practice settings.

Analysing and representing narrative data: The long and winding road

Sally V. Hunter — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:44:58 PST

The analysis stage of a narrative inquiry project presents particular challenges. Finding the most suitable method of data analysis and presentation of the findings takes time and effort. It is important to make the most use of the data collected and to represent participantsʼ narratives in a coherent and meaningful way. This paper reviews some of the analytic lenses used in narrative inquiry and explores some of the difficulties in representing narrative data. Using an example from a PhD study conducted into childhood sexual abuse, the researcher describes reasons for choosing a social constructionist approach, the intertwined processes of data analysis and writing up the thesis. Several data analysis processes were explored the process of analysis of narrativebiographical interviews was chosen (Rosenthal and Fisher-Rosenthal 2004). The practicalities of finding a suitable approach to data analysis are described. How this process could have been improved is examined, with the wisdom of hindsight.

The lived experiences of families and individuals affected by haemophilia in relation to the availability of genetic testing services

Dilinie Herbert — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:43:37 PST

Ill health may be related to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Haemophilia, a rare congenital bleeding disorder, predominantly affects males and females may be identified as carriers. Genetic testing is available for individuals and family members who are interested to know their predisposition to the condition Thirty-nine members of a cohesive haemophilia community in Victoria, Australia, were interviewed about their attitudes towards genetic testing. The transcripts were analysed using thematic and narrative analysis techniques. The themes reflected the meanings people attached both to the disease itself and to the use of genetic testing to detect it. Narrative analysis was then employed to investigate these patterns of meaning further. We identified three typical narratives models within this haemophilia community: those of a male with haemophilia, of a female carrier and of a female non-obligate carrier (female without a familial predisposition to haemophilia). Close examination revealed a distinct pattern where aspects of the narratives tended to ʻclusterʼ according to thematic categories. While people in the haemophilia community are broadly in favour of genetic testing and genetic counselling, males with haemophilia have concerns that arise in relation to biological data banks, female carriers are cautious about antenatal testing and support greater communication of risk within families, and female non-obligate carriers are specially concerned about the safety of obstetric practices. The pattern of responses we have identified indicates that, despite the proliferation of issues and themes across the narratives, the number of possible personal narratives in which they are embedded is in fact quite limited. In this sense narrative analysis offers a supplementary dimension to thematic analysis in the elucidation of qualitative data.

From the periphery: Experiencing being an academic newcomer

Ros Foskey — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:43:00 PST

We humans share our life stories, as Bauer, McAdams and Pals (2008: 84) have suggested, ʻto try to derive some sense of unity and purpose out of what may otherwise appear to be an incomprehensible array of life events and experiencesʼ. Yet as Holtgraves and Kashima (2007: 91) have pointed out the sharing of stories is also an inherently communal event for what is shared and how it is expressed is also dependent upon the audience. The complex story I am sharing is centred on my experience of transition and change as a rural mid-life female and junior academic. I consider whether gender has been the most salient aspect of my identity in creating meaning within my story of transition and change. I explore how, for me, the performance of gender is intertwined with the performance of many other aspects of identity. I also describe how my relationships to, and in, place have influenced the story I share. The telling of my story was shaped with two audiences in mind. The first and more interactive audience occurred within the conference session. The second is an audience of academics interested in narrative theory and methodology who will silently read, and evaluate, my written story. Additional layers are inserted as I consider what must be left out of my narrative, as well as what I have chosen to include in order to portray the sense of unity, purpose and professionalism anticipated by an academic audience.

The active role of interpreters in narrative development in two cross-cultural studies in Thailand

Mary Ditton — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:42:58 PST

This paper details steps that were taken to ensure authentic narrative development in two cross-cultural studies of oppressed participants when interpreters were used actively in the research process. The recent interview-based studies of migrants from Burma living in Thailand highlighted some important issues of narrative methodology and analysis when interpreters were used not just as language translators but as cultural conduits. Recruitment, selection and training of the interpreters were important, and review of their translations was essential, in ensuring that the narratives were authentic. Throughout the interview-based cross-cultural studies we learned to understand the complexity of narrative methodology and analysis in exploited populations; appreciated that a ʻlife storyʼ is complex and determined and shaped by socioeconomic and political forces; and identified ways of optimising the active role of interpreters in narrative development in cross-cultural research.

Current Narratives 2 : Contents

Helen Edwards — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:42:57 PST

Embracing Multiple Dimension - Papers from the 2nd Australasian Conference on Narrative Inquiry, University of New England, 1213 July 2009. Guest Editors: Helen Edwards and Myfanwy Maple. This conference explored the depth and breadth of the many different voices and stories of Narrative Inquiry research. The conference covered a broad range of themes related to aspects of methodology and creative applications of this approach, including but not limited to: * Gender, * Indigenous Research, * Health and Social Care, * Education, * Humanities, * Ethics and * Methodology and Analysis.