A Story Located in “Shoulds”

1

We should continue to fund our work with philosophical and theoretical thought, but we should not let philosophy and theory trump the power of a teller offering a narrative that demands cognitive and affective engagement. Foucault’s (1977) notion of power carries more power when we show readers the weight of power on human bodies. Derrida’s (1976) ideas about erasure are most compelling when we demonstrate how individual lives are erased by how language functions. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) conceptualization of the rhizomatic gains force when we put on display how each rhizome that appears carries consequences for those who live within a given system. Philosophical thought and theoretical tenets may point us in fruitful directions, but they should not be our final destination. The story, told through an assortment of dramatic, narrative, and lyric arrangements, makes its compelling case by creating space for productive consideration and potential action. In short, the story allows our lives to take form. This is the point Poulos (2013) makes when he notes,

As I write my life, through these words, and through the words of all the stories I have written and will write, I write new ways of being for myself, and for others . . . In writing autoethnography, I find possibilities. (p. 476)

Poulos, like so many others (e.g., Bochner, 2014; Eakin, 2008; Goodall, 2000, 2008; Holman Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013), trusts that stories are fundamental to our sense-making, to making our lives meaningful, and to what drives our hearts. In the stories we tell, we discover ourselves and each other.

2

Postmodern logics are useful reminders to be suspicious of the tales we tell. We are, indeed, limited by our historical and cultural positioning, our language, and our individuality. We exist as a multiplicity of notes, some that seem to harmonize into a coherent sense of self and some that seem quite dissonant, leaving us feeling fragmented and unsettled. We should not, however, let such persuasive arguments keep us from letting readers know what we believe and how we feel at a given moment. Our intent should never be to offer the final account; instead, we should give the best account we can in our given circumstances. Doing so opens the door to dialogue. Intentionally leaving readers uncertain about our positions and feelings makes us poor conversational partners. Our fear of closure and resistance to taking a stance may be driven by good postmodern intentions, but it leaves readers to deal with language structures instead of engaging with people. Ideas cut from their speaker are hollow—they fail to show their consequences, to put on display why ideas matter. We must guard against letting our interests in “post-this and that” and “post-post this and that” lead us into being such nervous narrators that we are afraid to speak of anything except our uncertainty. Relationally, we owe each other more than that. Politically, we must have a place where we can stand. Our stories must connect, person to person, before personal or political actions gain force.

3

We should continue to call on the literary in our writing, and we should, as Gingrich-Philbrook (2005), Faulkner (2009), and Leavy (2013) advise, continue to grow as creative writers. That means doing the labor to learn the craft. The same holds true for all arts-based inquiry—the better we are as artists, the more our art will offer as a research practice. The artist with the greatest range of artistic abilities can be more articulate and more complex than the artist with limited range. Craft is a necessary methodological tool. Without craft, our efforts may be appreciated by the limited few who have a stake in the story we tell, but we will be unable to create nuanced accounts that engage broader audiences. Artfully rendered stories, told through a variety of artistic forms (see Bartleet, 2013), depend on the aesthetic for their power. Although not all our research must strive to be art, borrowing from artistic practices can enrich our work. The artistic gives space to the sensuous, to the embodied, to the evocative. It moves through the body into the head and into the heart, into the heart of what matters.

4

We should do more work speaking across identities. We have done much more work in creating space for various voices than for speaking across differing positionalities. Too often people who represent the majority simply move aside when people who represent the minority speak. Standing aside positions the majority for listening which is a needed educational step in the homework that must be done. But, if we are to engage in meaningful dialogue, if we are to create a better social world, we must learn to speak to each other across our differences.

Keeping in mind that what individuals in the minority have to say is not always about people in the majority, we should story our lives together to address the social injustices of our time. It is insufficient just to provide space. We should call into play our own honesty, vulnerability, and sensitivity as we strive to make the world a better place for us to live. We should use our lived experiences, examined with keen reflexivity, coupled with an ethic of care as the basis for social change.

5

We should continue to ask what our research accomplishes. Fundamental questions should drive our concerns: What work does the story we are telling do? Whose interests are being served? Why tell this story now? As we proceed, we should speak as one academic to another, understanding how our efforts align with ongoing scholarly conversations. Doing so helps us measure the strength of our ideas within a community of scholars who do and who do not share our perspectives. Assessing our work within academic circles, like this issue on the future of qualitative inquiry, tells us where we are and where we might go. We should also do more work to carve a place in academic circles for qualitative inquiry. Although we have made significant gains in this regard, still many within the academy dismiss or merely tolerate qualitative work. And we should reach across disciplinary boundaries, showing how qualitative work might enrich traditionally driven quantitative research. But most importantly, we should reach beyond the walls of the academy. At times, this might mean pursuing collaborative community-based research. Designing our work based on the needs and desires of community members establishes a ground-up relevancy. It is a way we can be responsible citizens. At other times, this might mean demonstrating how our autoethnographic and narrative accounts might matter to a given community, how telling a personal story might function in the social world, how sharing a tale might do needed cultural work. At still other times, this might mean theorizing everyday practices, showing how reflection about embedded structures and the taken-for-granted can open possibilities for social change. In short, we must be rhetorically savvy with the stories we tell for different constituencies. They must be persuasive to granting agencies and to elected political representatives, and they must be accessible and useful to the lives of those living beyond the academy. We should continue to work on the social issues of our time. We should tell our stories on behalf of social justice.

Perhaps this list of “shoulds” might best be seen as an agenda for my own work. It tells me where I want to go, how I want my stories to unfold. It also marks for me how I believe the best scholars in qualitative inquiry have been working. The growth in qualitative inquiry is in part explained by the persuasive power and significance of the ongoing research that we continue to do. Our research puts on display its own relevance, seduces others by what it offers. I find myself, then, speaking on behalf of the traditions we have forged, of our labor that has made qualitative inquiry such an important force, and of our willingness to tell stories that matter.