An Epistemology of Pedagogical Resistance: Narrative Research as Critical Intervention and Preparation

• In Event: Working Toward Racial Justice in Narrative Research: #RaceJusticeNarrativeSyllabus

Abstract

In “The Future of Narrative” Hendry offers a frame to reconceptualize narrative research. She describes an ‘epistemology of listening,’ a technique where respect is given not only to the participants but also their narratives. Inherent in this practice is a commitment to foregoing suspicion in favor of faith. Hendry encourages narrative researchers to resist tendencies towards objective investigation that dissect and sterilize people’s lives into appropriate ‘research texts’ in order to later prepare them to become ‘narratives.’ She asks scholars to lean wholeheartedly into the research process, allowing the necessary breathing room for relationships to construct the narratives.

An epistemology of listening offers not merely methodological, but also ethical and philosophical intervention. Hendry argues for a rethinking of not only the ‘whats’ but also the ‘whys’ of narrative research. An epistemology of listening provides a deeper more nuanced critique of positivism masquerading as progressive research approaches.

Modeling Hendry’s epistemology of listening, this essay endeavors to explore an ‘epistemology of pedagogical resistance’ as narrative intervention. Like Hendry, I am less interested in methods or the ‘whats’ of narrative inquiry. I hope, instead, to take a more substantive look at the purpose of narrative inquiry in the midst of educational and national crisis. How can we reimagine our roles as researchers responsive to the lives and stories of people of color suffering under a wholly dehumanizing national agenda? What methodological strategies will emerge in a relational context committed to resistance, survival, and justice?

I assert the lynchpin for a turn towards racial justice narrative inquiry is essentially a preoccupation with pedagogical resistance, the practice of engaging in storytelling that deliberately acknowledges and resists unequal relations of power, while recognizing the responsibility of the researcher to offer the reader strategies for resistance. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) note “the regulative ideal for [narrative] inquiry is to generate a new relation between a human being and her environment—her life, community, world” (p. 39). An epistemology of pedagogical resistance calls for that “new relation” to be resistant and preparatory.

Narrative inquiry has long been preoccupied with offering space for interpretation and questioning in the research process (Coulter & Smith, 2009). This commitment to epistemic dexterity has served the field well in regards to abandoning conventional research practices that rely on objectivity to the disregard of human emotion and context. However, it still has room to grow in regards to approaches that are less invested in interpretation, and more concerned with the exposure and action needed to respond to the ‘nightmare which is the present’ (Pinar, 2004).

The present model pays close attention to the work of Black activists resisting state-sanctioned police brutality who have turned to unconventional spaces, such as social media, for storytelling, specifically to expose systems of unjust power, as well as prepare lay-readers for action. Similarly, I ask, “What would it mean for narrative inquirers to deploy unconventional methodologies in order to resist racial injustice and develop scholar-activists?”

Author

• Kirsten T. Edwards, University of Oklahoma