Purposeful Profanity in Addressing the Grotesque: Pursuit of Truth Through Poetry in a Doctoral Seminar

• In Event: Challenging Western Notions of Truth: Toward the Construction of Epistemic Justice

Abstract

Blending poetry, narrative, memory, and scholarly works, threaded with the thick uncertainty of the global pandemic, two faculty members and seven doctoral students worked to explore what it means to “humanize research” (Paris & Winn, 2014) and collaboratively seek truth in a profoundly neoliberal context. In our weary, grieving, loving scholarly community, we explored critical narrative analysis through a 1963 Malcolm X speech, generating collaborative poems. The poem created by two faculty quaked with outrage and frustration, toying with tensile distinctions between the observational, “that’s f*cked” and command-form,“f*ck that.” Through purposeful provocation, violation of academic social norms, and analysis of our positionality as women and feminist scholars, authors ponder the implications and what they suggest for future work.

Authors

• Anita Bright, Portland State University
  Presenting Author

• Dot McElhone, Portland State University
  Presenting Author