“This Whole Thing of Seeing”: Coming to Know the “Other” Through Bodily, Narrative Encounter

• In Event: Visceral Literacies, Embodied Inquiries: The “Affective Turn” in Critical Research for Social Justice

Abstract

This paper explores the embodiment of storytelling in the social-justice focused classroom, paying particular attention to the ways in which bodies are disciplined through storytelling practices. Using the case study of an undergraduate student recalling his encounter with a transgendered woman, I examine the limitations and promises of privileging narrative in such a classroom.

This project combines narrative (e.g. Bruner, 2004) and feminist poststructuralist theories (e.g. Davies, 2000) focusing on the role that language plays in constructing the ways that stories get told and taken up within classrooms. These lenses make visible stories as constituted of and within larger discursive rules rendering them regulatory forces working to the advantage of some communities over others.

As part of a larger study of the social foundations of education class in which I was the instructor, this paper focuses on Mark, a white, heterosexual, economically privileged male and his encounter with Taryn, a transgendered woman on a LGBTQ advocacy panel invited to class. I use classroom discussion, student work, and three interviews with Mark as data sources. I analyzed data using positioning analysis (Davies and Harre, 2007) and critical deconstructive analysis (e.g. Derrida, 1978/1997; Luke, 1996) to locate how stories work within and create a system of norms that govern not only what gets said, but also how it is said, rendering some experiences more valuable than others.


While Mark initially storied himself as a social-justic advocate, the ease he had with the curriculum diminished as he expressed discomfort considering the LGBTQ community. Mark’s encounter with Taryn, one in which her body was just two feet away from his, suggests her embodied story was critical turning point for Mark’s. Indeed, “this whole thing of seeing” Taryn produced a different response in him than did written stories about those deemed Other. Her stories were seemingly not enough to “mobilize response” (Gannon, 2009, p.73) in order to open Mark up to new possibilities of being amongst trangender individuals. Rather, Taryn’s story seemed to shut down these possibilities as Mark considered this “dude’s body” in relation to his own, explicitly expressing disgust. As such, Mark became a sort of “voyeuristic spectator” enabling himself “to inhabit a position of distance and separation… and abdicate any possible responsibility” (Boler, 1999, p. 184). At the same time, it was Mark’s unpacking of his own story as the “good liberal” as it came into contact with that which was unknowable that had the potential to allow Mark to be other than he was amongst those positioned differently than himself.

This project demonstrates that the embodied story deserves greater recognition as both regulated and regulatory force, suggesting commitment to what Dutro (in press) has termed a “pedagogy of the incomprehensible” (p. 28) when amongst stories that speak to the material realities of marginalized communities and those that implicate oneself in maintaining these conditions. Answering Cruz’s (2012) call to “involve the body present” (p. 268) reaches into new terrain for educators committed to using narrative in social-justice focused classrooms.

Author

• Julia Churchill Kantor, University of Colorado - Boulder