Dear Teena,
What you've said here seems reasonable to me. I tended to agree with other
notes here, too -- Chris, Gavin, Richard Rorty, Keith and Duann.
What I did NOT agree with (and still don't) is that all writing is fiction.
What you've written here is quite different. Without agreeing completely
with your position, I certainly accept that we wrtie from perspecgives and
that our perspectives influence the way we recount what others have said.
Within that frame, I am still ready to argue that we owe a responsible
effort to the voices we recount, and an attempt to sort out their stories
and words from our interpretations.
One thing I often bring up in research seminars is that the words we place
in quotation marks belong to the authors of those words. The statements
and beliefs we atribute to others belong to them. Our analysis of what we
quote and our intepretations of their statements and beliefs belong to us.
As a lapsed would-be theologian, my organs of truth may have withered. As
someone who knows enough to check that something is in a source document
before attributing it to the cited author, I do make claims to reasoned
responsibility. Having just reviewed a load of papers for a project where
Chris also reviewed some of the same load, I hope he's willing to agree
that it is this kind of thing that I am speaking of rather than absolute
truth.
If we're genuinely ready to recognize that writing has different purposes,
reasons, styles, and media, then we cannot argue that all writing is
fiction. That was the provocative statement that provoked my comment.
Like Richard Rorty, I too wish I'd read more poetry. Perhaps one day we
will meet and discuss it. Hobbes the Tiger says that when we die, if we
have been good, we shall go to a honky-tonk in New Orleans where the piano
player is especially good. That's the Hobbes who belonged to Calvin the
cartoon, not the stuffed tiger who belonged to Calvin the Calvinist. I'm
guessing that is where Richard Rorty is right now, and that is where I
hope to meet him. Presumably Chris Rust will be there tickling the ivories.
Yours,
Ken
On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:49:30 +1100, teena clerke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Dear Ken,
>
>In research events, the act of 'recounting the voices of others',
>involves the researcher in a multitude of ways, however, this is not
>often acknowledged in research writing. By arranging the event for
>the purposes of the research, through the question/s asked, within
>the relations of power between researcher and interviewee (the
>researcher is often understood as being more powerful because by
>asking questions, interpreting answers, and 'writing up' the event,
>they get to choose what counts as 'knowledge'), and in many other
>ways. See references below for much better explanations.
>
>Again, this is my epistemological position. And again, it is a
>provocation, depending on your position. In writing this, I am
>constructing this account for the purpose of establishing my point of
>view, as a product of my experience, in the context of what has
>already been written so far, and within the meaning-making community
>in which I am socialised. And thus it is a kind of fiction. It is not
>'true', just as a philosopher's writing is not 'true', as it depends
>on one's understanding of 'truth' or 'reality'. However, from my
>position, if an account 'rings true' (an expression for feeling like
>it's more or less what one believes) for me when I read it, then it
>has integrity and is reliable for me, and perhaps also for others.
>This is of course, context-dependent.
>
>In calling for others to tell stories of their experiences, I may
>then interpret and make judgements about whether the stories 'ring
>true' for me. But either way, they are stories, constructed within
>the specific context of this discussion. Yes, there will be bias
>(even as one might attempt objectivity), yes, there will be
>embellishment, yes, there will be omission, yes, there will be
>rhetoric, yes, there will be narrative convention. As in all writing.
>Hence, all writing is fiction of a kind.
>
>Ethically, the 'responsible recounting' of the research event that
>you demand is dependent on the researcher's ethics, the purpose of
>the research, to what knowledge product it may be applied and whose
>interests it serves. As Gavin has suggested 'reasonable or valid
>might be exchanged for useful', when making decisions about what
>counts as knowledge, and my position is not 'more useful or
>illuminating than any other'. I am however, interested in reading
>about other people's stories of their experience in design,
>particularly graphic design or visual communication, and particularly
>in the university, women and men.
>
>cheers, teena
>
>
>
>Rhodes, C. 2000, 'Ghostwriting Research: Positioning the Researcher
>in the Interview Text', Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 6, no. 2, p. 511-25.
>
>Scheurich, J.J., 1997, Research Method in the Modern, The Falmer Press,
London.
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