Storyworlding: An Outline of the Philosophic and Methodological Commitments of a New Feminist Methodology

• In Event: Being Irresponsible: A Feminist Undoing of Academic Research

Abstract

In this paper, we outline the philosophic and methodological commitments of a new feminist methodology, storyworlding. Storyworlding is a feminist, participatory methodology that utilized ArcGIS technology to narrate and disseminate culturally informed and ethnographically rich stories. The methodology highlights the integration of technology and participatory approaches and leverages inclusivity, democratic engagement, community collectivity, and global intra-connectedness. It emerged iteratively and reflectively from the feminist work that the panelists of this session conducted together. We consider the methodology useful for both research and other types of projects that aim to amplify and integrate stories often not told (Fine, 2018).

Through our qualitative research project, WomenWeLove, we illustrate how we have moved our critical and feminist philosophic and methodological commitments to praxis. The WomenWeLove Project is anchored at the onto-epistemological and ethical commitment of collectivity and intersubjectivity. The term “worlding” in its early formulation in Heidegger’s works has obtained the practical and pragmatist orientation, as one always exists as “being-in-the-world.” One thus makes sense of their surroundings through the care relationship that one forms with the world through praxis. In a postcolonial re-conceptualization, Spivak (1985) argued the colonial project of “worlding” oppressed one’s sense of agency by delimiting how one would perceive of themselves in the given world. Our work releases a counter-oppressive potential of women’s stories. “By fostering the interconnectedness of the women we love, we reversely use the Spivakian sense of worlding, not as a strategy to govern and to repress, but as an approach through which we both nurture and act freely and agentically in the spirit of good will” (Dennis et al., 2020, p. 24).

Linking philosophic and methodological commitments to praxis, we borrow insights from Judith Butler as she explains the significance of improvisation in realizing commitments in a liminal and unconventional space. Butler quote Berlant and Warner in discussing same-sex wedding before the recent legalization, “ ‘Improvisation’ [was] always necessary for the speech act of pledging, or the narrative practice of dating, or for such apparently noneconomic economies as joint checking…” (Berlant & Warner, 1998, as cited by Butler, 204, p.106). Therefore, in storyworlding, improvisation brings commitments to reality in a creative and non-dogmatic approach.

Three methodological praxises we identify as key momentums of storyworlding are: culturally informed and ethnographically rich storytelling (Dennis, et al., 2020), participatory counter-mapping (Gubrium & Harper, 2013; Rattray, 2015), multimodal narrating (Chazan & Macnab, 2018; Graizbord & McPike, 2020). Through these methodological practices, we transformed the life stories of women we love through digital counter-mapping using ArcGIS. In an effort to create a global space for the appreciation/adoration of women through the eyes of someone who loves them, we challenge the typical boundaries of “research” or “project implementation” as aloof, dispassionate, or bounded engagement. Our methodology centers on love, connection, and meaning in our work through storying and then to build networks of people through digitizing those stories.

Storyworlding resists the colonialist worlding of neoliberalism to instantiate opportunities for collective self-agency without our methodological practices.

Authors

• Barbara Dennis, Indiana University

• Pengfei Zhao, University of Florida