(Be)Longing and Resisting: A Narrative Excavation of Critical Ontogeny

• In Event: Narratives at the Boundaries: Research Positioned in the Borderland Spaces

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the psychoanalytically “desirous” ways in which individuals who commit themselves to organized counter-hegemonic movements have developed critical dispositions despite their immersion in normative discourses of American schooling and public life. For this exploration, I interviewed and observed active members and leaders of two separate, ideologically diverse activist groups, all of whom share long-term, entrenched commitments to social justice-based ideologies. From this data, I developed critical stories around how these individuals have produced and maintain their identification with and desire for their respective causes in spite of the overwhelming centrifugal force of dominant culture. These stories detail the primordial learning, experiences, and traumas that guided my informants to resist dominant ontological narratives and normative cultural scripts.

Author

• Jake Burdick, Purdue University