Purpose,Practice,and (Discovery) Process

Hilarity and Tragedy: A Collection of Cultural Narratives

The following story excerpts demonstrate how the process of self-reflection through writing as inquiry allows for accessibility, transferability, and critical analysis. As a collection, they demonstrate how irony, laughter, culture, family, and ritual interact with one another through playful frames that make the process of discovery (as method) uniquely accessible to each reader’s interpretation. As readers of an embedded “bigger” narrative, the audience is encouraged to actively engage with and reflect upon the moving story parts while negotiating the complex meanings of humor and death.

****

In Donghai, China, a farmer passes away. His family, enticed by the local tradition, yet fearful of the risk they are about to take, begins to make funeral plans. As the custom goes, the more mourners a funeral procession can attract, the more honor is attributed to the deceased. Desperate for a crowd, the farmer’s family decides to call their ensemble, stripper-troupes. Exotic dancers scantily clad clutter the colorful altar, luring smiling onlookers with their sexual performance just as the family had hoped . . . There is a clever charm to the custom; not the one that ends in arrest, but one that reveals the risk family members would take for one another in the name of honor; one that also (ironically) couples entertainment with despair; the juxtaposition of humor in a time of sadness.

****

I am naturally drawn to these out-of-the-ordinary stories not only because I find them strangely hilarious, but due to my own bizarre family memorial experience. My dear Aunt Judy passed away on October 4, 2011, from a stroke that rendered her body all but lifeless. Aunt Judy was a gambler . . . and she was the kind of woman that truly laughed at everything . . . and she loved telling stories, the same stories, and the family loved when she told them! This was how we bonded, how we showed our love through laughter over her embellished plots, exaggerated stories about past holidays, family trips, her life as a child, and most of all, strange and embarrassing moments together. Aunt Judy would have loved the story about the Donghai farmer’s funeral.

****

Although Aunt Judy never had the chance to explain her post-death memorial preferences, my family was sure she would have wanted her memorial service close to home. Sierra Lakes, a sleepy mobile home community nestled in the gently rolling hills off interstate 80 in Rocklin, CA, had been the place she called home for as long as I could remember . . . October is a gorgeous month in the Sacramento Valley, a time where the trees burst with vibrant colors, fat pumpkins and lumpy gourds line suburban driveways, brisk winds carry the sweet scent of fallen fruits and leaves, and the spirit of the holiday season begins to unfold. My Aunt loved the holidays.

Judy’s daughter arrived early to the Clubhouse that day to be sure everything was in place for the memorial service later that afternoon. To her surprise, giant plastic bins, cardboard boxes marked by black Sharpies, and heaps of tarped materials lined the entryway and stacked high on all floors. What was all this junk? What was in those boxes? With the memorial service set to begin in just a few short hours, they quickly marched to the front desk to inquire about these unwelcome guests.

Although I was not present for the conversation with the clubhouse employee, I imagine it went something like this—Leslie and her son find their way to the front desk while discussing their frustration. A woman, probably named Marge, who has worked at Sierra Lakes for at 30 years, greets them. Marge’s hair is fashioned into a permanent beehive held in place by bobby pins and Aqua Net hair spray, her clip on Halloween earrings dangle from her wrinkled ears. Marge says, “don’t worry dears, it will all be taken of.”

Hours later, they return to the clubhouse. Here is where the story, rather the day, gets interesting . . . The entire venue- from the entryway to the main hall to the small kitchen set back in the corner had been decorated as an elaborate haunted house! Spider webs lined handrails, tombstones cluttered bushes outside the main doors, skeletons and bloody cloaked ghouls swung from the rafters in the entryway, hollowed skulls and human bones were neatly arranged atop black tablecloths inside the main hall, and haunted laughs and blood curling screeches of mechanical witches echoed from all corners of the room. It was truly unbelievable, a job well done by Marge and her Halloween helpers!

****

It’s 13 A.D., and a small group of elderly men set out in search of fallen logs in the Sagada province of the Philippine Islands. The men know they will eventually inhabit these logs in an eternal slumber, a clear case for “size does matter.” They carefully choose among the tumbled pines, searching for their perfect home. In the following months, the men hollow the logs and slowly carve them into life-sized chests. These will be their coffins, each man creating his own.

Once deceased, the men’s corpses are smoked then wrapped, a tradition the Sagandan people have been practicing for generations to preserve the bodies of their ancestors. Their delicate charred bodies are then tucked inside the tight crevices of their wooden masterpieces . . . but what happens next, and how it happens, no one knows for sure. The coffins are hung high over the massive limestone cliff sides, perhaps by ropes that lower the coffins, or by scaffolds that raised and fastened the coffins to the cliff side in vertical rows. Historians believe this bizarre display, known to modern tourists as “hanging coffins,” resembles the belief that the “higher up” a body is placed, the closer it is to heaven. Despite their origin or purpose, hanging corpses have been displayed in civilized communities and ritualized in funerary fashions for centuries. So, perhaps my family’s vampire-ish memorial service is not as outlandish as I had thought. Aunt Judy would have loved the story of the Sagandan Hanging Coffins.

****

I notice my Uncle Jim, (who I might add is very large man who prides himself on being able to “pop out” his front teeth on command) is distracted by the centerpiece at his table, a life-sized, human skull. He can’t stop looking at it, moving it, playing with it . . . Uncle Jim doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the skull from the center of his table, hastily looks around the room to make sure everyone, ANYONE, is paying attention, and starts to laugh out loud. He slowly draws the plastic skull closer to his oversized body and looks down toward his waistline, (which I wonder if he can see) . . . bobbing it over his lap in what I will call the most inappropriate thing a young woman could ever witness with a male family member. “Oh My God!” is all I can think . . . But I can’t help to laugh, at least a little. I wondered if Aunt Judy could see her brother now.

****

The thought of being called “grass” for the dead was not a flattering one . . . Yet, they knew better than to flee, for they would surely be caught and their husbands put through torture, a punishment worse than the inevitable doom that lied ahead . . . As the adornment rituals commence, the two appointed diggers begin preparing the grave, being sure to make it wide enough to fit them all. What is loloku to the Fiji foreigner? It is a historical Fijian custom more commonly known as strangling the deceased man’s friends and family, then laying them side by side in the floor of the grave as “grass,” or bedding for the deceased Chief’s body. Learning of this ritual for the first time, I had to pause for guilty laughter. Not at the brutality and unfortunate fates the servants had to suffer, that was horrible. But pause to laugh at the thought of sharing this story with Aunt Judy. I can just hear her now, “Hell, there’s a few people in this family I’d be glad to strangle” she might say. AND NOW! She would surely want to strangle Uncle Jim now, especially in light of his recent sexual escapade with the plastic skull. Suddenly, the Fijian custom loloku didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Aunt Judy would have loved that story too.

****

This collection of stories places my family’s bizarre memorial experience alongside diverse cultural traditions of memorialization to explore how the strange may be mundane and vice versa. The theme, hilarity and tragedy, provides a play frame for author and audience to reflect on their own experiences of laughter and entertainment in an otherwise solemn ritual.

Self-Reflection as Method

Shortly after the death of my mentor and teacher, H. L. “Bud” Goodall Jr., in the fall of 2012, I enrolled in a class with Dr. Sarah Amira de la Garza (Spring 2013), where she taught us what she called “Self-Reflection as Method.” Following, I share the insights I gathered in her class, while also reflecting on the ways that my time with Dr. “Bud” Goodall prepared and equipped me for putting the method to practice.

Self-reflection as method requires that we, as researchers, observe ourselves—how we behave, what we say, and how and what we write—and describe and reflect upon these observations as possible moments of innovation and learning.

The purpose of self-reflection as method is not focused on gaining insight or experiencing affect through a personal journey of self-discovery, but rather to enable the description of moments of self-discovery or insight. When we use self-reflection as a method, our personal observations of our own journeys function to enhance shared knowledge about the ethnographic focus of our self-inquiry. (S. A. de la Garza, personal communication, November, 2013)

This knowledge is gained through “an explicit discussion on how the self affects and is affected by research and the writing process” (Sanger, 2003, p. 36). Unlike alternative social scientific research methods, self-reflection seldom demands an overt, systematic analysis or in-depth interpretation of its processes on behalf of the researcher, but rather an authentic commitment to be focused and contemplative (Zajonc, 2009) while observing one’s own behaviors, effect on, and response to the research and writing process.

Nightingale and Cromby (as cited in Goodall, 2008) explained two types of reflexivity unique to the research process: personal and epistemological reflexivity. According to the authors, personal reflexivity “involves reflecting upon the ways in which our values, experiences, interests, beliefs, political commitments, wider aims in life and social identities have shaped the research” (p. 40). This style of methodological reflexivity requires an honest and intimate interrogation of the researcher’s positioning to the topic of inquiry. Epistemological reflexivity, however, “requires us to engage with questions such as: how has the research question defined and limited what can be ‘found’?” (p. 40). Here, the researcher must mindfully examine their epistemological (as well as their ontological and axiological) predispositions so as to identify how their positioning narrows the scope of inquiry. Taken together, these styles of (self)reflexivity highlight the importance of recognizing one’s assumptions and biases, as well as understanding the implications of one’s role as knower in relation to the research study.

As many qualitative scholars know, emotions naturally (and appropriately) occur in various naturalistic research settings, and thus carry the potential to either distract from or enrich the research process. For example, Ellis (2004) shared her personal experience conducting an acutely emotional interview, and explained how the steps she took to observe and record her emotional reactions during the interview, later allowed for a more holistic understanding of the relationship between topic and researcher. Self-reflection encourages researchers to look back on their record of personal thoughts and feelings, and to ask questions about the ways they behave, the meanings they hold, and the influence they carry to the process of discovery. However (and perhaps a word of caution), it is equally important to recognize that self-reflection is not a set of therapeutic practices set on resolving the experience of affective states (such as journaling, meditation, or yoga, although helpful to the process). Instead, self-reflection is a complex and introspective method that exposes various conditions (i.e., assumptions, frames, affective states) to us which can later be interpreted alongside the research toward a more holistic representation of the data and research process (Bateson, 1969; Zajonc, 2009).

Goodall (2000) additionally offered a meaning for self-reflection: “To be reflexive means to turn back on our self the lens through which we are interpreting the world” (p. 137). In doing so, self-reflection allows researchers to see how their imagination is at play, how they project ideas onto others, how they situate/position themselves within historical contexts and modern society, and how to identify the factors involved in framing one’s research practices. Recalling Bateson’s (1969, 1972) work on the ecology of the mind, the author argued that true discovery occurs when researchers are able to identify patterns in their thought processes and behaviors, and why and how they function in particular ways. Through the process of self-reflection, researchers are able to identify these “frames” or “metamessages” that convey information about communication patterns, relationships, attitudes, and actions, and to understand how the frames influence research methods and lines of inquiry (Cheng, 2003).

The dedicated practice of self-reflection is often a messy one, time-consuming, and demanding, as we engage our minds and hands in a series of self-observations and subsequent written texts. Therefore, researchers should also be aware of the potential stumbling blocks that may impede the method: the ego (i.e., pride), narcissism, therapeutic reliance, and or affective states that may disrupt the innovative process. For these, and several other reasons I presume, self-reflection as a method has endured its share of critique in the field of communication. Often attacked for looking like self-focused “me” search, some social scientists have, therefore, neglected the deeper, more meaningful contributions that self-reflection as method makes to the field of communication, when practiced skillfully (Goodall, 2000). Of the many benefits and contributions mentioned above, I have learned that self-reflexivity makes research accessible to both author and reader not only in a way that encourages and perpetuates the practice itself but also by showing ourselves to ourselves through an authentic and creative representation of research data.

Self-reflection brings humanness to the inquiry process and, in many ways, allows for the transferability of shared cultural knowledge to occur between the writing and the reader through the historical positioning of modern texts (and vice versa). In the above story about a memorial service that took place in my family in late October 2011, I juxtaposed my family narrative alongside historical data of cultural memorial rituals around the globe to reflect upon the communicative (and moral) behaviors of my family, and to understand how similar practices exist throughout humanity by engaging self-reflection in the writing process. Throughout the narrative, metaphors, story plot, and character development make the scenes visible as they come alive in past and present tense, inviting the reader to participate in the discovery process. In addition to developing this piece while studying with Dr. “Bud” Goodall, I was also able to share my story to a live audience. By reading it performatively (as situated in history but alive in the present), the content was open for critical analysis, discussion, and self-reflexivity. Eventually, I was able to perform it during an evening of narrative performance of ethnographic works in November 2013, honoring the legacy of H. L. “Bud” Goodall Jr., at Arizona State University.