Sharing the Stage

Researching “in Anguish”

The ethical ramifications of delving deeply into the lives of study participants are a significant concern for social science and education scholars. Guillemin and Gillam divide these concerns into two dimensions—the procedural and practical. ⁸ They define the procedural dimension as the methodological components of informed consent, assessment of risk, guarantee of participant confidentiality, and other measures mandated by review boards to shield the research institution from liability. Practical dimensions of ethical inquiry are “day-to-day” issues arising in the course of a study “not usually addressed in ethics committee applications, nor . . . anticipated when applying for approval” and may not even be understood by the researcher as “dilemmas” because of their “everyday quality.” ⁹ Examples include navigating conflicting conceptions of “truth and right” in a study; ¹⁰ revealing sensitive psychological, social, and legal information about a third party not consulted for the study; ¹¹ and the powerlessness of the participant to alter the repurposing of emotionally intimate stories for academic uses. ¹²

Ellis sifts practical concerns even further into the “situational” and the “relational,” noting that situational concerns are the “unpredictable, often subtle, yet ethically important moments that come up in the field,” while relational ethics are “doing what is what is necessary to be true to one’s character and responsible for one’s actions and their consequences on others.” ¹³ She states,

Relational ethics recognizes and values mutual respect, dignity, and connectedness between researcher and researched, and between researchers and the communities in which they live and work. Central to relational ethics is the question “What should I do now?” rather than the statement “This is what you should do now.” ¹⁴

Josselson claims that the work of narrative inquiry should be done “in anguish,” declaring that “it is with our anxiety, dread, guilt, and shame that we honor our participants.” ¹⁵ While hesitant to ennoble my insecurities, I admit that my research journal, marginalia, and emails with Rie reveal many instances of “dread, guilt, and shame.” The entries gravitate around three nodes of scholarly anguish: cultural competence relating to the transgender community, unintentional or unavoidable subjectification of Rie, ¹⁶ and the desire to honor her expertise in her own life and story. These fears spurred a constant internal debate over what I was doing and how I did it.

My status as outsider to the transgender community and my negligible life experience with gender-variant persons dominated my early concerns and is apparent in the following entry from my research journal the day Rie agreed to share her story with me:

I told Ryan, ¹⁷ and I affirm again in this space, that I have a lot to learn from her. While I am open to the idea of shifting constructions of gender and sexuality, which is reasonable considering my own orientation, I wonder how I will do when confronting the reality of it. I told Ryan that my total preparation for learning from him was watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, With Love Julie Newman. I forgot to add Hedwig and the Angry Inch. . . . So I have this movie construction of transgender persons playing in my head—and I know that will disintegrate very soon. All I have to offer is an openness—but I think it is going to be hard. I can sense my ignorance ready to bite me at the edges of my consciousness. ¹⁸

I had many things in common with Rie. Coming to terms with my own sexuality had been a bewildering part of my schooling. My peers knew before I did that I was a lesbian, and they administered the social code accordingly: isolation, gossip, and taunting. And like Rie, being a musician and belonging to the school band ameliorated the sting of “otherness” that I generally felt throughout the school day. Drawing from my experiences as a school music teacher, I could also understand Rie’s feelings of frustration at the complex interplay of politics, personal beliefs, the instinct to protect the institution, and the concern for the overall welfare of the student body that comprise administrative thinking—thinking that resulted in decisions that were not in her best interests. Yet for all those points of mutuality, I had no lived experience with gender-variant persons or a long trajectory of study in queer issues and transgender ethnography. I knew that I did not know and that I needed to confront my movie-mitigated naiveté.

My trepidation at my outsider, if not trespasser, status was inexorably heightened when I encountered the following accusation aired by transgender activist Riki Wilchins:

Academics, shrinks, and feminist theorists have traveled through our lives and problems like tourists on a junket. Picnicking on our identities like flies at a free lunch, they have selected the tastiest tidbits with which to illustrate a problem or push a book. The fact that we are a community under fire, a people at risk, is irrelevant to them. They pursue Science and Theory, and what they produce by mining our lives is neither addressed to us nor recycled within our community. ¹⁹

Wilchins’s observation drew me up short. Was the study “picknicking on Rie’s identity?” Was I “stealing her pain” ²⁰ just to get a good story with no regard for her benefit or the benefit of the larger trans community? And if this was true, how could I respond to Wilchins’s demand that research drawn from the lives of trans-persons be returned to their community and addressed to their needs?

Another locus of fear was that the research process in and of itself would construct Rie as “subject,” even though I yearned to establish a “narrator-listener” relationship with her. ²¹ I was uncomfortable asking her to come to my office or another quiet room in the building where I taught because my colleagues and students (who also knew Rie) would likely note the regular visits and benignly ask the reason why. While concerned about Rie’s confidentiality, I was also revolted at the thought of putting her on display in any context, whether during data collection or the eventual writing of the research text. With a dose of harsh sarcasm, I wrote to myself,

I don’t want the Ryan study to make her out to be an animal in the zoo. “Hey everybody, look at the transgender kid I am interviewing!” ²²

Finally, the anxiety that broadcasted the loudest throughout the project was that my intentions would overshadow Rie’s purposes in talking with me. In another study, a colleague and I had considered our authorial power to fashion a participant’s story into a different tale suited to our uses. ²³ We explored how the story changed when we attended single-mindedly to what the participants indicated was important as opposed to our own interests. Once again, in this new effort, I was uncomfortably aware of that privilege and of my assumption of power in writing Rie’s story.

Early on in my graduate studies I had been captivated by the power of small narrative portraits, such as Tom Barone’s “Ways of Being at Risk: The Case of Billy Charles Barnett” and Laurel Richardson’s “Louisa May’s Story of Her Life,” to illuminate and critique large, complex issues and institutions. ²⁴ I envisioned Rie’s story serving as a similar lens on sociocultural issues in music learning, but my feeling of entitlement to even the purpose of the article was contested when I encountered the following observation by feminist writer bell hooks:

Often this speech about the “Other” annihilates, erases: No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. ²⁵

I wondered if Barone had asked Billy Charles if he wanted his story used to challenge notions of being “at risk” or if Richardson had consulted with Louisa May before retelling her story as a poem exploring the sociological construct of illegitimacy. Did these respected researchers square their stewardship of these stories with their participants?

Refusing to Be Complicit in the Silence

Originally, I did not intend to focus only on Rie’s account of her schooling experience but planned to interview other people whose stories intersected with hers, particularly those of her teachers. Yet despite my attention to the multiple levels of formal ethical requirements, the teachers and administrators from Rie’s school would not talk with me at even the most preliminary level. None returned my initial phone calls and e-mails even though most were professional colleagues from my own community who already knew me.

The thundering silence from Rie’s school world shifted my perspective on the purpose of the study and impelled me toward writing her experiences in a way that privileged Rie’s perspective of her own life. I wrote,

I don’t want Ryan’s story to be easy. I don’t want to write a moral tale. I don’t want to wag a finger. I want the story to require readers to make a choice of incorporating Ryan’s story into their understanding of the world or to reject it, but I do not want it to be ignored. ²⁶

Rie had passionately explained to me that this study was important to her because it was a venue for “having her say heard,” and the comment reminded me of Barone’s observation that

to be worthy of our privileges, we educational academics produce stories that promote two particular kinds of activities. The first is the introduction to each other of school people (especially teachers to their students) who are locked within the present system of schooling, enabling them to hear, if you will, each other’s heartbeats. The second is inquiry into how schools may be transformed so that the people who live there no longer need to be introduced to each other by external intermediaries such as educationists. ²⁷

Even though I had planned to present a study that explored multiple perspectives of Rie’s experiences in music and education, I realized that the first goal should be for Rie’s story alone to be heard—to introduce her to her own teachers. It was my conviction that to turn aside from the study because the educators did not wish to speak was to become complicit in the silence, complicit in what appeared to me as the school’s erasure of Rie.

As I brooded over my insecurities, the nonresponse from other stakeholders, and the clarion calls of Wilchins and hooks to resist appropriating the pain of others, it became evident to me that the only way forward was to invite Rie to be more than an informant and to include her in meaningful ways as a collaborator throughout the project. Researching with Rie instead of researching Rie would position her as the guide to her world, not as the object of my gaze, and would attenuate my anxieties for the project. But as with most aspects of narrative inquiry, the nature of this collaboration would unfold over time and in context.

Researching with Rie

From the outset of the interviews Rie and I quickly settled into a comfortable rapport. She seized my invitation to become an active contributor to the project and quickly moved to being more than a passive interviewee. She planned which “chapters” of her story we would cover in each session, then provided artifacts and original songs that coincided with each segment. As the weeks went by, it was not that she grew to trust me, it was that I learned to trust her. I wrote,

I am thinking that Ryan may have the most potential for collaboration of any of the other participants that I have encountered in my previous studies. He is self aware. I can only imagine the pain she has encountered as she has negotiated her “two spiritedness” over the years. Pain makes you wise, makes you know, makes you aware and Ryan has this “old soul” quality that may be more evident if I allow him (ack! a power statement!) the greatest amount of control/contribution that I have ever made room for in a study. ²⁸

Much has been made of establishing trust with participants and protecting their vulnerability in participatory research, but researchers rarely reveal that they came to their own place of vulnerability and learned to trust their participants. ²⁹ Rie deftly charted our course in the data collection process, and I followed her lead. We worked together assembling the data record for just over two months and amassed a rich trove of interview transcripts and artifacts. By the end, I not only had useful data materials, I also had insight into Rie’s feelings about the events of her life and a nuanced understanding of what she thought was important to share.

When the moment arrived to end collecting data and begin the process of writing, I wrestled with rupturing the research relationship and moving forward alone into the interpretive and writing phase of the study. The thought of excluding Rie seemed wrong, antithetical to a participatory research model. I felt guilty, convicted by the voices chanting my theoretical commitments of mining Rie’s life (with her help) and now carrying off the gain to be reworked into something of my own fashioning. Josselson characterizes this dilemma as a pull between two relationships:

My guilt, I think, comes from my knowing that I have taken myself out of relationship with my participants to be in a relationship with my readers. I have, in a sense, been talking about them behind their backs and doing so publicly. Where in the interview I had been responsive to them, now I am using their lives in service of something else, for my own purposes, to show something to others. I am guilty about being an intruder and then, to some extent, a betrayer. ³⁰

Susan Chase examines the “distinct but entangled influences” of professional, feminist, and intellectual commitments that guided her decision making in a study of women school superintendents. ³¹ In this study, Chase observed many conventions consistent with participatory research throughout the data collection process, but when she moved into the process of analyzing the data and writing about her findings, she did not share the analysis in progress nor any of the textual drafts with the women in the study. Chase admits that she struggled with this course of action but believed that the exigencies of the study warranted the decision:

I claimed my authority as narrative analyst by articulating a distinction between what I wanted to communicate through my interpretations and what women superintendents wanted to communicate by narrating their experiences. Although initially in conflict, my feminist and intellectual commitments grounded this exercise of authorship. My intellectual interest in cultural and language processes pushed me to develop my own story about women’s narratives whereas my feminist interest in non-exploitive research relationships pushed me to articulate the consequences of claiming authority in this way. ³²

Richardson laments that the relational nature of ethnographic practices “connect us to people in deeply human ways, then we become (solo) authors of ‘true’ texts that have unintended, often hurtful, consequences for those who have trusted us.” ³³ Visweswaran goes further, characterizing the rupture as a “betrayal” when the researcher moves from the field to the writing desk. ³⁴ Chase is sympathetic to these concerns and answers:

although feminist commitments require that we address questions of authorship and authority, no specific rules can be outlined for answering them. Who should control the interpretive process in any particular case depends in large part on the aim or purpose of the research and thus what kind of material needs to be collected and what kind of interpretation best suits that material. ³⁵

Chase’s decision to end collaborating with her participants at the end of the data collection process was based on three considerations: (1) the purpose of the research, (2) the kind of material/data collected, and (3) the kind of interpretation suited to that material. In my deliberations, I adopted this counsel but added two more concerns to the list: (4) the researcher’s theoretical commitments (which Chase alludes to but does not list) and (5) the desire of the participant to be engaged in the study throughout all of its phases. In the case of this project, I arrived at a different conclusion than Chase when I considered the following: (1) The purpose of the research was to present Rie’s story of music learning in and out of school; (2) the collection of data included interview transcripts, photographs of Rie at multiple life stages, concert programs, newspaper clippings, Rie’s Internet presence on MySpace and Facebook, and recordings of her entire opus of compositions, almost all of which had been collected and provided by Rie herself; (3) my analysis of these materials would proceed according to a framework of critical storytelling, the purpose of which is to present Rie’s school experiences as a critique of the social institution of schooling and music education; (4) my theoretical commitments were unified in support of emancipatory participant research; and (5) Rie had been an interested, engaged, and invested collaborative partner throughout and someone in whom I trusted. In consideration of these aspects, I decided to move forward with Rie and to make myself accountable to her for the duration of the project.

In our last interview session, Rie and I talked about how to continue working together as I moved into actually writing the research text. She had already been reviewing interview transcripts, correcting details, and expanding on some points. I offered to send her drafts of the manuscript and explained that I was willing to discuss any aspect of the work in progress and make any changes that she recommended. “You hold the veto,” I said. “If we can’t agree on something, then you can say that it doesn’t go in, and it won’t go in.” While some may recoil at the thought of ceding that level of power to a participant, I was confident in Rie, confident that she was as invested in the project as I was and certain that her continued influence would make the final product a rigorous and worthy work of scholarship.

My first writing goal was to produce Rie’s biography as an intact text, and the first dilemma was how to thoughtfully refer to a person whose gender identity was fluid and in transition using a language that offers only the dualistic options of male or female. Even my own journal entries betray my limited dichotomous thinking at the time:

I asked Ryan what pronoun he wished for me to use and he said that he didn’t care as long as I didn’t call him “it.” He said that his family called him by the male pronoun but that his friends and boyfriend used “she.” I told him I connected the name “Ryan” to “he” so I would go with that for a while—and he was fine. Ryan told me that he considers himself “both.” Our grammatical structures don’t allow for “both.” ³⁶

I wrote the first draft of the story using male pronouns and the proper name Ryan then sent it to Rie. A few days later, following a band rehearsal, she walked with me back to my office to talk about the paper. She was kind. She told me that she thought I was doing a good job of writing, but then she faltered. She explained that she did not like being constantly referred to as male. “It’s like little flies crawling all over the page,” she said. “I’m just not THAT male!”

We talked for a while. As I had been writing, I noticed that the use of one pronoun over the other enabled Rie’s transgender status to textually disappear. Readers could proceed along and forget her trans-presence while they navigated the story. I mentioned that I had discussed the “pronoun problem” with a colleague, who had suggested alternating gendered designations. Rie was intrigued by the idea, and after considering several options, we chose to alternate the pronouns with each paragraph. I sent her another draft of the manuscript with the new arrangement. She answered with one more suggestion:

I’ve reread the previous draft that you’ve sent me prolly [sic] a hundred times and the only thing that has been sort of pulling at me is the fact that I’ve been only referred to as Ryan throughout the piece, when in fact very very few people actually call me Ryan, even my parents have always called me Rie . . . so I was wondering if there could be maybe some sort of switch up in uses, just as is done with the “hes” and “shes”. Because personally I do feel that Ryan is my “slave” name LOL . . . it doesn’t bother me to be called it but to see it written so many times in reference to my story sort of bothered me. ³⁷

Rie’s suggestion to alternate her names along with the pronouns worked beautifully, disorienting the textual flow in such a way as to create a useful tension that kept Rie’s transgender status present in the mind of the reader.

With no prompting from me, Rie also conducted member checks of her story. Using early drafts of the manuscript, she shared the project with her parents and with others whose stories had intersected hers. She wrote to me, “You just did such a beautiful job at putting everything together and helping to tell my story, I want to do everything that I can to have both our work be honoring to all involved and completely accurate.” Our e-mails became a volley of detail changes as I reworked passages based on her feedback from the field and Rie double-checked further drafts to make sure I had made the corrections.

“It’s MY Story, but It’s YOUR Paper”

The question of authorship began to weigh on my mind just as the first coherent draft of the paper emerged and as I began to present the study at conferences. Not only did I question my assumption of sole author, but trusted colleagues and audience members also asked whether Rie should be included as a second author. I was deeply conflicted about the matter. On one side, I conceived and initiated the project and then produced the manuscript. Even the decision to collaborate with Rie in all aspects of the work was a decision that was mine to make. The paradox of participatory research is that the act of relinquishing power is in effect an act of power. Conversely, Rie was an arbiter who read, clarified, and corrected my efforts to write her story. We both contributed significant content and, in our respective roles, shaped how her story was presented. I came to the conclusion that the only way to proceed was to rely on the collaborative structure we had established and to ask Rie how she felt about being identified as an author of the paper.

I had barely broached the topic before she began shaking her head in bemused exasperation and said, “Look, it’s my story, but it’s YOUR paper.” She stared at me, daring me to argue as the issue hung in the air. “You’re sure?” She nodded, and we moved on to other matters. Upon reflection, I could see how her response was consistent with her work as a songwriter. I could just as easily imagine her saying, “Look, it’s your life, but it’s MY song!”

Her refusal of authorship did not mean, however, that she was willing to be disenfranchised from the work. Rie chafed at the Institutional Review Board (IRB) mandated confidentiality agreement as publication of the study became certain. Her story would be told in pseudonyms and obscured details; her music would be unacknowledged. She “facebooked” to me:

i did get your email and i have re read the project for final approval and one thing has been bothering me . . . I’ve sat and thought about it for quite some time and if you disagree with me that’s fine, however the more i think on it the more i am bothered by the complete anonymity of it. Now obviously we don’t want to plaster “<my proper name>” in it . . . but as part of my voice and my yearning to be heard i would like the people who are reading about this and interested to be able to find the music that is an integral part of my story. Even if it is just citing the source of my lyrics . . . or one mention of my full pseudonym “Rie Daisies” . . . like i said i’m not exactly sure how this works or if that is even possible . . . however i felt that it was important to voice my concern and ask your opinion. ³⁸

A common bond among qualitative researchers is the struggle with university research boards to preserve confidentiality while satisfying the methodological mandate for trustworthiness through “thick, rich description.” Scholars have questioned the application of IRB rules and procedures meant to ensure safe treatment of human subjects in experimental studies to qualitative work, and they are united in their assessment that these policies are insufficient, if not obstructive, to the complex, intimate endeavor that is qualitative research and, in this case, narrative inquiry. ³⁹ The irony for this project was that a well-meant guarantee of confidentiality divorced Rie from a work in which she wanted to be known. I agreed that we should strive for the degree of “known-ness” Rie desired, but I could not predict the response of the institutional review board or the journal editor. Additionally, Rie’s account of her schooling is pointedly critical of her community’s school officials and reveals personal details of the lives of those who are her friends, family, and intimate others. What of their confidentiality?

Fortunately, Rie had established an online and performing presence using the stage name “Rie Daisies” well before our interviews. We decided to use this name and include social media URLs in the manuscript. Readers could follow these links to hear her music, see photos, and read more about her in her own words but would not have access to her legal name and place of residence. The institutional concerns were satisfied through a waiver of confidentiality, and the journal editor did not balk when we asked for these changes to the accepted manuscript. Rie was elated, and I was at peace; the solution was elegant, equitable, and acknowledged our joint ownership of the work in ways that were satisfying to us both.

Transformative Inquiry

Wolgemuth and Donahue argue that narrative inquiry is inherently an intervention in the life of a participant. ⁴⁰ Drawing on Boler’s “pedagogy of discomfort” and Gubrium and Holstein’s active interviewing, the authors propose narrative research as an “inquiry of discomfort,” one that promotes the “intentional and conscious shift from dualistic, categorical, and entrenched positionality to a more ambiguous engagement with social reality.” ⁴¹ The authors posit that this shift has transformative potential for the participant whose “questioning of the familiar may lead to greater sense of connection, a fuller sense of meaning, and in the end a greater sense of comfort with who we have chosen to be and how we act in our lives.” ⁴²

In speaking her story to me and subsequently to the readers, Rie also speaks the story to herself and in so doing achieves a particular power over it. ⁴³ First, she narrates her story of schooling as a whole work, told after the passage of time, with an opportunity to reflect on events and decisions. She “has her say” to herself, reconciling her past in light of her current understanding of herself and her world. Second, she moves her story from the private domain wherein others have cast her as troubled or troublemaker and into the public domain where her experiences serve to generate insight into the everyday lives of transgender students in school and the important role that music learning can play in support of those who are in transition. It is a redemptive act, strengthened by her ownership in its production. Rie transforms her own story and in the process reconstructs her sense of self. Her Facebook post, on the occasion of our acceptance for publication, testifies to the transformative nature of the project for her:

I am so proud and grateful to announce that my life is making a difference in this world. . . . On September 30th, 2009 i made my way down to the basement of the college library to meet with a very kind professor who had approached me with the idea of being her “case study” for an article she wanted to work on, exploring the musical themes of education and creation throughout my life as a transgender student living in a very unwelcoming rural area . . . every week we would get together to speak with the tape recorder in action and my song-lyrics, scrapbooks and tears laying on the table . . . since we finished with the data collection aspect of this project the Doc has been toiling away . . . working and reworking . . . presenting the piece at different colleges across the U.S. and Canada and most recently has been working, trying to get this thing published. . . . i received word from her yesterday that our project has been accepted and will be published . . . it is a BIG DONE DEAL!! . . . EVERYTHING THAT I WENT THROUGH AND EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE SUFFERED I NOW TRIUMPH OVER!!! i am empowered by all of the dirt and grime from the past. . . . i am focused on the healing power of tolerance . . . I AM PROUD TO BE BOTH RIE AND RYAN!!!! ⁴⁴

Rie’s joy at the positive reception to her story is evident, but note that she also traces her path from being the object of inquiry to a collaborator in the inquiry. She begins by describing my invitation to her as “being a case study,” but as she continues narrating, the language shifts. Her ownership of the work is clear as she writes, “since we finished with the data collection” and then claims the work as “our project.”

According to Wolgemuth and Donnahue, the efficacy of narrative as an “inquiry of discomfort” depends on the presence of two “research conditions”—an ethic of empathy and an ethic of friendship between the participant and the researcher. ⁴⁵ What the authors fail to take into account is that empathy and friendship is not a one-way exchange. Far beyond a “research condition,” empathy and friendship mark a relationship in which both parties are impacted. As Rie learns and grows, so I too learn about my self, my world, and my commitment to moral, human-centered inquiry. As Clandinin states, “narrative inquiry reminds us who we are, and are becoming . . . no one leaves a narrative inquiry unchanged.” ⁴⁶

Through this project, I grew to understand that an ethical research practice is created and recreated at each step in the process; that it is the accumulation of granular decisions to be accountable to the participant, to the community, to academia, and to the reader that ultimately shapes the researcher’s ethical orientation and determines the moral arc of a study. Baarts agrees, affirming that

ethics is not grounded in prescriptions, norms and ideals external to society. Rather, it is located in the social, the cultural, and the political. Ethics is close to the ground. And it is on the ground that the moral life, the life of decisions and practices, takes place. ⁴⁷

Whose story is being written? Whose purposes are being furthered? Who is making the decisions? Researching with Rie taught me the importance of asking these questions and the value of struggling with the answers.

Relational ethics may be at the heart of narrative inquiry, but it is not limited to that domain. The music education research community’s ongoing exploration and adoption of a range of social science methodologies warrants a concomitant consideration and discussion of ethical and relational research practices. The following questions may be useful in advancing this conversation:

Finally, I implore music education researchers who pursue sociological topics related to race, sexual orientation, ability, or gender or any other field of inquiry that relies on in-depth, extended accounts of lived experience for data to be cognizant of the moral responsibility that comes with exploring these dimensions of human existence as well as the rich possibilities that shared, participatory inquiry can offer to their work.