The white light vibrations of Norman K. Denzin

Seismic disruptions and academic discourse

On 10 September 2001, I taught my first class as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Very late that evening, after several delays, I boarded a flight to Europe. By the time my plane landed the next morning, two hijacked planes had brought down both World Trade Center towers in New York City, another had crashed into the Pentagon, and fourth was grounded just short of its U.S. Capitol target. That morning, as I soared blissfully through international airspace, the world below me took a dark and immutable turn.

A few days later a message popped up in email inboxes across the country. It began, “Yvonna and I are writing to invite you to contribute a short piece to Qualitative Inquiry for the issue to be put into production December 1.” Norman’s message acknowledged the intense emotions of the moment and expressed concern about “hatred and intolerance.” The invitation was to:

… talk about the terror, about its implications for an interpretivist social science, and about ways in which a radically reformulated social science directed toward communitarian ethics and social justice might address our understanding of this horror, and perhaps our ability to resolve those issues that have seemingly created the circumstances that prompted this attack.

Would be writers were asked for short pieces that “capture how you have worked through these issues.” The message concluded that the pieces had to arrive no later than 12 November to make the next issue. This submission deadline was just 60 days after the catastrophic events of 9/11 itself. I put aside everything else and began to write. In the chaos and grief of the moment, the invitation had granted me permission to unleash emotions I had been trying to keep at bay under a veneer of behavior I deemed appropriate for a newly installed assistant professor.

The first set of 9/11 essays was published in a “special partial issue” of Qualitative Inquiry (QI) in April 2002, lightning speed in the world of academic publishing. The editors acknowledged the “shared grief, a sense of mourning, a sorrow that is almost unfathomable” in their opening editorial but also reasserted the journal’s commitment that “interpretive scholars have the moral responsibility to record and analyze such events as those of 11 September and to do so because a genuine democracy requires no less” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2002). Additional essays were published in subsequent issues of QI, including my own (Staller, 2003). Later, all these contributions were bundled into a book of 52 chapters that captured the gestalt of the moment (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003).

Nearly two decades later, I sat in a very different position. I was still at the University of Michigan but was now a tenured faculty member and co-editor of Qualitative Social Work: Research and Practice (QSW). That year the world faced a different kind of crisis. On 23 January 2020, the city of Wuhan in China was locked down due to a mysterious and deadly illness. The rest of the world followed suit and life as we knew it came to a grinding halt as a global pandemic, COVID-19, took hold. Less than 2 months later, in late March 2020, I launched a call for papers for QSW. I asked for short reflexive essays for a special issue called Reflections on a Pandemic: Disruptions, distractions, and discoveries. I gave authors a brief submission window of 90 days.

The response was both unexpected and unprecedented. We received 174 manuscripts from 35 unique countries (and every continent except Antarctica). Eighty-five of these were published in a double special issue in the beginning of 2021 (Staller, Aaslund and Starks, 2021a).

The full power of reflexive interpretivist scholarship was on display. In the opening editorial, I wrote:

The authors in this special issue used photographs, poems, narratives, diaries, and artwork in their efforts to make sense of the pandemic. They also turned to classics in literature, music, and art. They explored physical things, places, spaces, and contexts. They reflected on existential ideas and esoteric topics such as normalcy, precarity, resilience, order, disorder, chaos, and time. They focused on the pandemic’s emotional impact discussing isolation, loneliness, anger, exhaustion, as well as compound uncertainty, and complex grief. (Staller, 2021)

Also documented in the opening editorial were my reasons for undertaking the special issue in the first place. Among other things, I noted the disproportionate impact—both personally and professionally—on certain identity groups who already bore heavy burdens; the unprecedented strain being placed on scholars (particularly those early in their careers) to continue to publish; and observed that “sustained intellectual concentration was difficult, distractions many, new burdens enormous, and personal priorities reshuffled during the pandemic making producing-as-usual unrealistic” (Staller, Aaslund, and Starks, 2021). The closing paragraph read:

The pandemic has merely exposed pre-existing societal fault lines. It is in those spaces that social workers often ply their trade. So, paradoxically while the pandemic disrupted normalcy of the privileged, it also exposed structural racism and other forms of oppression which compounded inequities, disparities, and injustices. It was a cruel reminder of just how much work is left to be done. So, the manuscripts which follow also serve as a call to action.

Of course, QSW’s pandemic issue was a direct descendant of Qualitative Inquiry’s 9/11 initiative. The speed of the response, the disruption of business as usual, the belief that interpretivist scholarship had something unique to offer in a moment of crisis, the call to action, and the desire to keep social justice at the fore paralleled lessons learned. Like a pebble first cast by Denzin and Lincoln skipping across the surface of an academic pond, there was an intergenerational ripple effect.

White light vibrations

If I tried to summarize the ways I have been influenced by Norman Denzin’s words and deeds, I would quickly become overwhelmed. However, I’ll start with five ideas that I hope have been on display in this essay.

Norman K. Denzin took bold action in the face of paralyzing situations. Even in fraught environments—be they emotional, empirical, or political—he never shied away from being the public face of leadership. In so acting, he not only called upon others to join him, but he emboldened us by demonstrating we were not alone in our thoughts, fears, or beliefs.

Denzin repeatedly carved out academic spaces in which others could not only participate but flourish. He created opportunities where few appeared to exist in the academic world. More importantly, once created he also legitimized them. In doing so, he gave homes to radical scholars and critical scholarship, demonstrating its value.

Denzin continually challenged normative academic views about what counted as valuable. He understood and cultivated the connections between personal and professional, between emotion and intellect, between narration and performance.

Denzin believed in the transformational power of qualitative inquiry. He never lost his faith that it could provide answers in the face of seemingly dire situations and complex contexts. He remained optimistic that we would emerge better for it.

Finally, Denzin’s moral compass was set on creating inclusive, compassionate, and socially just communities. His work was always political, always courageous, and he always called upon others to join the ranks in a tireless crusade for a more utopian society. He prodded the rest of us into believing that just might be possible. Denzin’s death leaves the world a darker place, but I have no doubt his white light vibrations will continue to provide a source of energy for all those looking to perform a better version of humanity than we thought possible.