Diane's Response to Ely

Ely, M. (2007). In-forming re-presentations. In Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 567-598). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
In-Forming Re-presentations

Summary:

In-Forming Re-presentations Margot Ely examines a wide variety of possible rhetorical forms for narrative inquiry. Re-presentation refers to the rhetorical forms researchers use to convey their findings and also what is experienced and learned through writing in these forms. She argues that form and content are inseparable and that the choice of form by the researcher is an important “method” for research. Forms discussed in this chapter include: first person stories, poetry, layer stories, pastiche, and drama.

Personal Refection:

“ The goal is not only to know but to feel ethnographic “truth” and thus to become fully immersed aesthetically, emotionally, and intellectually.” (Bochran and Ellis, 1996 p.4)

Before reading this article I had no idea of the range of forms becoming acceptable for narrative research. The range of creative possibilities for honoring and expressing the essence of the voices of the participants is an especially important reason for employing a wide-range of narrative forms.

Understanding the relationship of form and content has always been one of my strengths in creating my artwork and experiencing other people’s work in a variety of disciplines including music, dance, film and literature. I love the conscious choice of a particular structure to construct meaning, and the invention of new forms that stretch cognition. Before reading this article, I was already thinking about the idea of “layered stories” for a dissertation although I didn’t have a name for it. A story told from multiple perspectives has great potential to create a more thorough understanding of an event or concept. Where do the stories told by different people coincide? Can a more profound truth be understood through listening to multiple perspectives? What would happen if each participant read or heard other participants view points? How much interpretation is left to the reader? Although like the author I first got the idea from film and literature, there is also a precedent in law as the witnesses tell their particular stories from different vantage points.

“In the case of narrative research writing, lifting is never a matter of priority, of reaching the “highest, most important” findings. That view is both simplistic and dangerous. Indeed, all pieces of the presentation are equally important. If that were not so, the Lifting would be baseless. Lifting is a matter of intent. It is the researcher’s product from striving to make overarching meaning.” (593)

I enjoyed Ely’s nuanced discussion about lifting, meta-themes, metaphors that embody meta-themes and moments of revelation. The poem she started this section with was perfect for beginning her discussion. Again I liken the research processes she explains to processes involved in painting (which is research after all). The radical listening, waiting, searching, digging deeper, honoring, hoping, and finally lifting required in research seems similar to my painting process at its best.

I can see now that my first efforts writing the article describing Community Based Arts Teaching (a class I developed and taught) were what Ely and Zaleski describe as, “flabby and shallow.”(593). I was in some instances trying to impose ideas rather than lift them from the research. As I mentioned in our class introductions, I am somewhat unrealistically hoping to bring to my dissertation a myriad of experiences that I have had teaching and making art for the last 20 years. I have been thinking that my dissertation question had to somehow incorporate these experiences in an explicit way. Now I am thinking that some of the connections that I am hoping for might be a more implicit transfer of thinking processes learned from my past experiences.