In this post, I am experimenting with a different method of recording and reflecting on conversations and data gathered during workshop 2. Inspired by feminist approaches to citation, and in an effort to explore a more socially-just research practice, I am interested in playing with different types of writing (in this case, semi-fiction) as alternative data-gathering methods.
Through the panoramic windows of an over-heated 10th floor room, London’s skyline bore witness to a conversation between 12 students, 2 tutors and myself. Sat on red, green and yellow chairs (the only hint of colour in this de-saturated environment), we shared the space with all the writers, thinkers, colleagues and friends that inhabit our minds. Together we grappled with different methods of gathering, using and presenting data. In the background, police sirens and exhaust engines acted as the soundtrack to the unfolding exchange.
‘I want to reference other possibilities such as citations as learning, as council, as sharing.’ Shared Katherine while looking through Footnotes books and papers scattered across the floor (McKitrrick, 2021). This beautifully confirmed and summarised a lot of the discussions we had been having. Chrisitna had proposed a shift from the use of citations as ‘a form of academic politics that reproduces hierarchies of knowledge [and] institutional racism and sexism’ (Templin, 2021). Inspired by Sarah, she used the argument to show how marginalised groups are continuously excluded from standard forms of knowledge production (Ahmed, 2017). We started to absorb this information and imagine citation methods that might exist in opposition to traditional models. Earlier in the week, Tilly and her peer had witnessed a conversation between Carolyn and Arthur who, while watching the news on their sofa, started analysing analytic autoethnography and in doing so, had proposed a more conversational approach to citation (Ellis & Bochner, 2006). ‘They were weaving referencing inside the conversation’ Tilly shared, explaining how they painted academic writing as a clinical talking head in opposition to its more nuanced counterpart: a speaking, living person. ‘Academic writing ends up being a performance of intelligence’ Tilly added; a performance that very much reinforces academic norms created by dominant groups of people. ‘You’re creating a self, or a self is created for you’ John remarked.
As I was starting to develop a personal interest in using world-building and fiction as a method of resistance against institutional structures, the idea that within the methodology itself, I could start to experiment with these kinds of notions really excited me. Could I embrace a more socially-just approach to gathering data and citations? Encouraged by Malika, I made the decision there and then to introduce informal learning methods to my citational practice, thus celebrating the knowledge created outside of the more standard data collection tools. This approach was nicely echoed by Christina and Sunder’s conversation mentioned earlier, where the pair celebrated alternative knowledge generated through collective experiences not necessarily associate to a single author that might claim themselves as the origin of a proposed idea (Templin, 2021). Forever going back to Ursula’s carrier bag theory of fiction (Le Guin, 2019), I began to ask myself: What if the casual conversations that happened in the in between spaces of the institutions (at the end of lessons, in corridors or coffee break queues) were given as much value as the more formal interviews, surveys and questionnaires? What if those moments morphed into the threads constructing the fabric of and imagined world and into ‘a tribe learning to survive’ within academia? (Wenger-Trayner 2015)
Bibliography:
Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life, Durham: Duke University Press.
Ellis C. S. (2006) ‘Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography’ in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35 (number 4, August 2006, 429-449)
Le Guin, U. K. (2019) The carrier Bad Theory of Fiction, London: Ignota
McKittrick, K. (2021) Dear Science and other Stories, Durham: Duke University Press, Durham
Templin, C. (2021) Why Citation matters: Ideas on a feminist approach to research, Berlin: Freie Universitat Berlin
Wenger-Trayner, B & E. Introduction to Communities and Practices, Available at: https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ (Accessed 25.10.1990)