The Many Facets of Storytelling PDF

The Many Facets of Storytelling:
Probing the Boundaries
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith
Advisory Board
James Arvanitakis Simon Bacon

Katarzyna Bronk Stephen Morris
Jo Chipperfield John Parry
Ann-Marie Cook Karl Spracklen
Peter Mario Kreuter Peter Twohig
S Ram Vemuri Kenneth Wilson
A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/
The Persons Hub

‘Storytelling’
2013
The Many Facets of Storytelling:
Global Reflections on Narrative Complexity
Edited by
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti,

Nina Sabnani and Mahesh Nivargi
Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/
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ISBN: 978-1-84888-166-2
First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani
and Mahesh Nivargi
Part 1 The Functions of Stories: Education and Social Change
Changing the World through the Stories We Tell 3

Gavin Fairbairn
Storytelling and the Moral Tradition: An Examination of the

Pedagogy of Storytelling for Moral Enculturation 13
Elaine M. Bennett
Kōrero Whakapapa: Stories from Our Ancestors, Treasured

Legacies 23
Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan
Staying with the Detail: The Use of Story as a Pedagogical

Tool within Teacher Education 35
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles
YouTube to the Rescue: Visual Retellings of Short Story

in the Foreign Language Classroom 45
James Gustafson
Part 2 Researching Violence, Trauma and Conflict through Story
From a Narrative Understanding of Conflict to a Narrative

Resolution of Conflict: The Challenges of Storytelling
in Conflict Transformation 55
Melanie Rohse
Narrative of Resilience from the Grassroots of the Southern

Philippines 69
Gail Tan Ilagan
Sewn Narratives 79
Nina Sabnani
Telling Lives: Narrative Experiments in Research on
Children’s Experiences of Domestic Violence 87
Jennifer Jean Infanti
Part 3 Narrative and Identity
Story and the Making of Identity: The Stork and the

Elephant 105
Lariane Fonseca and Gregoria Manzin
Disability, Inclusion and First-Person Narrative 117

Kiel Moses
Once upon a Time: The Lonely Cruiser, and All the Other
Men of the Park 127
Stefano Ramello
Identity, Ideals and the Inevitable: Stories of Experienced

Doctors Revealing Personal Perspectives behind
Professional Actors 139
Sharon Spooner
Part 4 Visual and Performative Stories
When to Hold and When to Fold: How Dying People Tell

Their Story 153
Mary Gavan
An Invitation to the Wedding of Inanna and Dumuzi:

A Contextual Paper on the One Woman Performance 161
Raelene Bruinsma
To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood: Tearing Air to Draw

Displacement 175
Catherine Hamel
Part 5 Alternative Stories in the Media
Public Relations Campaigns as Ante-Narratives: New

ROM Chocolate and Romania: The Carpathian Garden 187
Lavinia Cincă and Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie
Stories Representing Disabled People in the British Press 205
Lucy Reynolds
Part 6 Stories in Myth, Legend and Folk Religion
Legendising: From History to Story 215

Jo Henwood
Storytelling as an Act of Embodying Reflexive Selves

among Alevi-Bektashi People in Turkey 225
Nuran Erol Isik
Part 7 The Politics of Literary Storytelling
Narrative Distancing and the Space for Compassion in

Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’ 235
Allison Shelton
Bring on the Velvet Revolution: The Politics of Individual

Subjectivity in Tom Stoppard’s Rock’N’Roll 243
Madelyn Farris and Anna Morlan
Introduction
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani

and Mahesh Nivargi
This eBook contains a selection of chapters that were presented at the first
global conference entitled Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative, held in
Prague, Czech Republic, in May 2012. The conference marked the start of a new
Inter-Disciplinary.Net project aiming to provide a space in which ‘stories about
story’ can be told, and the use of stories in the widest possible range of aspects of
human life can be reported. With this intention proclaimed, delegates were invited
to contribute papers on a series of core themes: story as a pedagogical tool in
academic disciplines; narrative and the gathering of stories of lived experience; and
the place of story and storytelling in any area of professional practice. The chapters
in this volume reflect this cross-disciplinary dimension with contributions from a
range of fields and backgrounds - media studies, anthropology, political science,
literary studies, medicine, and visual arts, among others - and, crucially, from
around the world too, enriching the content with a variety of international
perspectives.
The opening statement from the call for papers for the conference provides an
apt description for the overall project, stating that:
Human life is conducted through story, which comes naturally to

us. Sharing stories is arguably the most important way we have
of communicating with others about who we are and what we
believe; about what we are doing and have done; about our hopes
and fears; about what we value and what we don’t. We learn
about and make sense of our lives by telling the stories that we
live; and we learn about other lives by listening to the stories told
by others. Sometimes, under the influence of the culture in which
we are immersed, we live our lives in ways that try to create the
stories we want to be able to tell about them. 1
The conference thus invited an exploration of the nature of narratives and their
various features, but also their various functions, from communicating to
socialising, remembering, meaning making and creating identities for ourselves
and the communities in which we live. The papers presented, including those
featured in this publication, tackled these issues and went beyond them by
revealing the sheer complexity of what lies behind the concept of ‘narrative.’
Some authors covered the subject of knowledge transmission and meaning
making, whether at a personal or collective level. These discussions raised
questions about our everyday narratives and the truth(s) we choose to tell, to whom
and in what circumstances. We were reminded of the finite characteristics of a
x Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
story told at a specific time and place. Others presenters considered the morality,
ethics and social values that are transmitted through stories - how stories influence
the ways we think. In addition, the conference highlighted how narratives are often
used across disciplines as a method of enquiry, and the potential of stories at all
stages of research as methods, data and results are uncovered.
Through many creative presentations, we were also reminded that storytelling
is an art: performances entertained us, whilst carrying their messages. And, indeed,
storytelling was explored for its communication function and capacity to carry
messages, whether the aim is to argue, persuade, convey or convince. It became
clear, too, that talk alone about stories and their messages was not enough. Instead,
the audience was brought into the discussions; and the relationship between the
teller and the listener was explored.
Memory, in particular linked to concerns about absent voices, but also in
reference to oral history and intergenerational interaction, was another theme
developed throughout the conference. On this topic, several authors explored how
storytelling acts as a medium for transmitting culture through folktales, legends
and myths, and how there may be cause for concern if the only stories available in
a society are those which are publicly approved. Many presenters drew attention to
the positive power of stories - for example, where stories act as agents of change
and have the capacity for restoration, transformation, empowerment, catharsis and
therapy. Others showed us the converse side of stories; that is, where stories may
be negatively implicated with perpetuating a single story that might fuel conflict;
or with the danger of propaganda, with its potential to dehumanise the ‘other;’ or
the re-traumatisation of those who have recovered from hurt, though reminders of
the hurt suffered.
The reader will find a snapshot of these discussions in this volume. In an effort
to stay true to the conference proceedings, the authors were asked to make only
minor amendments to their chapters so that the written word would closely reflect
what was discussed over the course of the conference. For readability though, the
chapters have been arranged in seven sections so that they ‘speak’ to each other:
1. The Functions of Stories: Education and Social Change

2. Researching Violence, Trauma and Conflict through
Story
3. Narrative and Identity
4. Visual and Performative Stories
5. Alternative Stories in the Media
6. Stories in Myth, Legend and Folk Religion
7. The Politics of Literary Storytelling
In the first section (Part 1), five chapters illuminate different approaches to the
use of stories in education. The section opens with Gavin Fairbairn’s reflections on
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani and Mahesh Nivargi xi
__________________________________________________________________
stories as agents of change. Namely, Fairbairn believes that stories come to us
naturally and not only reflect personal viewpoints but also actively change the
ways in which we think and relate to others. From this premise, the author argues
that since stories change the world, it is crucial to tell the right stories. Chapter 1
employs various examples from the author’s career as a special educator and social
worker to provoke reflection and challenge practitioners in education, health and
social care to reconsider their established behaviours and values.
In contrast, Elaine M. Bennett’s chapter is focused on the particular function of
morality and moral enculturation through stories. While Fairbairn’s observations
are rooted in his professional practice, Bennett’s consider stories that are part of a
society’s cultural roots. She uses the example of the Latin American folktale, La
Llorana, in particular, to consider the three-way interaction between the teller, the
listener and the story, and to explore the implication of this interaction in terms of
moral education and pedagogical goals in the teaching of ethics.
Similarly, in Chapter 3, Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan introduces the reader to
Māori epistemology, considering how storytelling can be used in the classroom to
transmit and study ways of knowing. This chapter focuses in particular on kōrero
whakapapa or ‘stories from our ancestors’ to illustrate that indigenous knowledge
shared through storytelling is a unique and valuable educational tool. Like Bennett
in the previous chapter, Te Awe Awe-Bevan uses stories available in a people’s
culture. In addition, she gives very practical examples of her classroom practice
which is based on this technique.
Te Awe Awe-Bevan’s work resonates with what others have written,
particularly with the fourth chapter, by Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles. Brown and
Coles build on 17 years of collaboration to share practical experiences of using
story as a pedagogical tool, particularly in teacher education. Through a number of
examples, the authors demonstrate how stories can facilitate reflection by future
teachers and by extension contribute to the personal and professional development
of teachers.
Part 1 concludes with fifth chapter by James Gustafson, which is also rooted in
his experience and observations from the classroom, and interestingly brings in
new media in the practice of teaching. The technique of a ‘visual retelling’ of a
short story is discussed as a particularly attractive teaching tool in the foreign
language literature classroom where unfamiliar vocabulary, grammatical
structures, and cultural references can present challenges to a student’s
comprehension of a story. Gustafson explores the advantages of the phenomenon
of free visual retellings of short stories on internet sites such as YouTube to
overcome such teaching challenges. The chapter also considers the potential
disadvantages of using such visual, narrative techniques in terms of a student’s
overall learning experience. Ultimately, the author sheds light on a tool with
implications not only for pedagogy, but also for literary theory and film analysis.
xii Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
In Part 2, four chapters tackle issues around researching violence, trauma and
conflict through story. In the opening chapter (Chapter 6), Melanie Rohse builds on
the findings of a number of scholars to make a case for a narrative understanding
of conflict, demonstrating the crucial role that storytelling plays in conflict
resolution. This chapter begins with an examination of the social functions of
narratives in their specific contexts and then discusses the challenges of using
storytelling in conflict resolution. Drawing examples from diverse resources such
as the Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and various storytelling
workshops, the author notes that such endeavours are only effective when carried
out on a long-term basis. Rohse’s chapter poses some open questions and real
challenges for the investigation and significance of storytelling initiatives in
conflict resolution.
The following chapter (Chapter 7) functions to some extent as an illustration of
Rohse’s more theoretical one. Through a case study in the Philippines, Gail Tan
Ilagan demonstrates how oral narratives can help communities deal with the
trauma associated with violence or natural disaster. The author describes the
methodological approach that allowed her to uncover some of the ‘social
imaginaries’ held by villagers, and to link these imaginaries to the resilience of the
communities and their capacity for post-disaster recovery. Gail Tan Ilagan also
highlights the importance of collective narratives in emergency planning and
disaster prevention.
Nina Sabnani offers an illustration of the power of storytelling to give a voice
to a community. Her chapter deals with the unique phenomenon of narration
through embroidery. It presents the case of embroiderers who came together to
record their agony and stake their claim as artists following the traumatic
experience of displacement due to the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, India. Sabnani
also examines a film recording the plight of these women, leading to an analysis of
the broader concepts of collaboration between memory and art and telling and
retelling. The author succinctly juxtaposes the film and the embroidery as art forms
which help the women to reinterpret the past and infuse it with new meanings.
Finally, Jennifer Jean Infanti’s chapter closes this second part of the volume
with some reflections centred around research methodology. Infanti takes the
reader on an exploratory journey of a methodological use of storytelling in
research: narrative interviewing. She considers the benefits of using such a
technique to elicit stories of life experience, particularly with children, in terms of
what the participants can gain through the research process and how the researcher
can capture the participants’ voices and their context. Finally, she discusses the
benefits of storytelling to the research relationship as a whole, given that it can
allow a deeper engagement for both the researcher, as listener, and the participant,
as narrator.
Part 3 is concerned with narrative and identity. In the first chapter of this
section, Chapter 10, Lariane Fonseca and Gregoria Manzin draw on their doctoral
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani and Mahesh Nivargi xiii
__________________________________________________________________
research to examine the role, power and exercise of story-telling in terms of
articulating meaning, understanding and a sense of identity. The authors premise
the chapter on the understanding that ‘we are our stories.’ 2 They present two
stories; the first illustrates that the pattern each human being leaves behind is
nothing but a life-story. This pattern becomes visible in detachment, either through
self-narration or when someone else narrates the story. The other story, which
takes the form of a fable-narrative from an Indian tradition, provokes a reflective
type of self-inquiry narratives to unify the fragmented and disjointed events which
make up life.
In Chapter 11, Kiel Moses also investigates autobiographical narratives.
Specifically, he explores a few narratives written by individuals with Down
syndrome, noting that people with disabilities are increasingly finding new and
creative opportunities to express their experiences in their own words. Moses
reviews the narratives from three perspectives or lenses, to demonstrate that our
interpretations of disabled narratives are affected by prevailing beliefs and values
in medicine, society, culture and the language used to capture or write about these
experiences. Ultimately, he argues that first-person narratives have far-reaching
power to increase our understanding of the lived experiences of people with
disabilities.
Chapter 12 invites the reader to move from autobiography to biography. The
author, Stefano Ramello, writes about his ethnographic fieldwork in an urban park
in northern Italy. The chapter responds to the historical absence of literature on
masculinity and particularly non-heterosexual male identities in Italy. Following
three years of extensive observations and interviews with non-heterosexual men
‘cruising’ for same sex acts in the park, Ramello proposes a classification system
of six nuanced and fluid types of cruisers in this chapter.
Still concerned with personal biography, the final chapter in this section invites
the reader to consider representations of personal stories. Based on individual
biographical narrative interviews with doctors in the UK, Sharon Spooner argues
that the expression of medical identity involves appreciation of the culturally-
determined constructs within which such identities exist. At the same time, the
chapter demonstrates that a doctor’s medical and cultural identities are mutually
interdependent. Spooner incorporates a mode of poetic narration by varied
fictitious personas to reveal the spectrum of identities held by doctors, including
sense of self, sense of relations within an inner circle, the role expected of doctors
by a wider public and how a doctor’s responsibilities are fulfilled.
From the written word, we move in Part 4 of the volume to a focus on visual
and performative stories. First, Mary Gavan’s chapter (Chapter 14) delves into an
unspoken form of story which thrives in the context of the breakdown of
conventional communication between a listener and a teller. From her perspective
as a palliative care nurse and a Celtic storyteller, Gavan discusses the mental and
visual domains of narrative that emerge in the context of communication with
xiv Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
individuals at the end stages of their lives. A critical understanding of the
relationship between the teller and the listener is offered through an exploration of
communication by images and metaphors. The chapter also examines the role of
stories in relating the phenomena of living and dying.
In the next chapter, readers move from professional practice to research
practice with Raelene Bruinsma describing the journey of discovery she has made
while researching the 5000-year-old mythic stories and poems of the Ancient
Sumerian goddess, Inanna. At the heart of the chapter, Bruinsma uses her
autobiography to explore feminism and sexuality in a creative, practice-led form of
research that employs performance and song-writing. The author also demonstrates
the importance of critical thinking in light of the unravelling complexity she finds
in the goddess Inanna’s story.
In the third and final chapter in this section, Catherine Hamel describes a
performance piece based on work she did during a residency with the One Yellow
Rabbit Theatre group, echoing with some of the chapters in Parts 2 and 3 of the
volume that explore the roles of narratives in experiences and modes of identity
construction and fragmentation in post-conflict situations. Her chapter reminds us
of the layers of complexity we face when studying narratives. Using the war in
Beirut, Lebanon from 1975-1990 as her reference point, she discusses the way the
human body becomes a ‘memory theatre’ in difficult circumstances, taking on the
roles of author, performer and ‘foolish witness’ 3 to difficult knowledge. Finally,
Hamel explores how life demands constant reinterpretations from different points
of view; it incorporates sketches, reflective words, script and performance.
The two chapters in Part 5 deal with the crucial issue of alternative stories in
the media, provoking readers to consider the role of the media in creating,
reproducing and disseminating stories with particular agendas. Both chapters in
this section work as case studies of the issue of what content and meaning is
communicated through the mass media. First, in Chapter 17, Lavinia Cincă and
Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie explore the context of radical change currently witnessed
in the post-modern public relations strategies of a number of Romanian
organisations. Cincă and Hîrtie examine how consumers and stakeholders such as
journalists, bloggers, interest groups and online users have harnessed the
possibilities of the internet to become the additional narrators in public relations
campaigns. Through a content analysis of two branding campaigns in particular,
they seek to reveal the nature of the micro-stories that are circulating in cyber-
space, arguing that these polyphonic narrations, distributed along personal online
networks, form ‘ante-narratives’ which challenge the dominant or grand stories
created by the organisation’s public relations teams.
Secondly, drawing on her doctoral research, Lucy Reynolds’ chapter
investigates how three journalists independently tell the same controversial story of
a British teenager, Katie Thorpe, with severe Cerebral Palsy. In her chapter
Reynolds demonstrates the power of the news media to manipulate and perpetuate
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani and Mahesh Nivargi xv
__________________________________________________________________
societal values, perceptions and behaviours in regard to disabled people and
disability in general.
The next section, Part 6, contains two chapters, each exploring what is perhaps
our stereotypical definition or understanding of storytelling: stories in myths,
legends and folk religion. Both of the authors in this section consider the functions
of legends and myths traditionally associated with older generations in our
contemporary societies. Jo Henwood’s chapter (Chapter 19) begins with a short
discussion of the functions and importance of stories to human identity, values and
relationships. Henwood then focuses her attention on a particular type of story, the
legend, exploring where legends come from; the various meanings they are imbued
with; and the purposes they serve, for tellers and listeners. Her chapter considers
the interplay of storyteller and story listener; folklore and history; facts, myths and
representations. Finally, it explores the role of contemporary storytellers in
selecting, shaping and passing on legends.
In Chapter 20, Nuran Erol Isik considers the narrative structures inherent in
folk religious traditions in Turkey, specifically the religious ceremony known as
the ‘cem’ practiced by the Alevi-Bektashi sect. The cem is essentially a storytelling
ritual which invites narrators and listeners to engage in introspection, self-
reflection and moral evaluation. Isik’s chapter recounts a story of an ex-bandit told
by a spiritual leader and then considers various potential interpretations of this
story based on positions in a spiritual hierarchy.
Finally, Part 7 of the volume offers a discussion of the politics of literary
storytelling. Allison Shelton’s chapter examines Mahasweta Devi’s short story,
‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha,’ from the vantage points of the author; the
translator, Gayatri Spivak; and the characters of the pterodactyl, Bikhia and Puran -
each considered as a narrator in their own right. Shelton uses this strategy to
address crucial questions about the truth of the story. Her chapter explores the
nuances of recounting someone else’s history and translating someone else’s past.
She posits that the truth suggested by this particular story concerns the existence of
a soul, which refers to a real connection to the past. This is a truth seemingly
impossible to grasp, but the story leads the readers to embrace the impossibility.
Equally concerned with interpretation and language, the final chapter in this
volume, by Madelyn Farris and Anna Morlan, examines the language and staging
in Tom Stoppard’s play, Rock’N’Roll, which presents an alternative story of the
Czech Velvet Revolution. The authors argue that theatre is ‘naturally poly-vocal’, a
characteristic setting it apart from other art forms. Stoppard’s play in particular
presents a multitude of voices that refuse to be contained within a single, coherent
message. Rather, Farris and Morlan point out, the audience is left questioning the
validity of each of the arguments made by the characters in the play as well as the
legitimacy of the historical account of the Velvet Revolution that Rock’N’Roll
offers.
xvi Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
The editors and contributors would like to thank Inter-Disciplinary.Net for
creating an open space for debate and reflection, and for advancing questions and
concerns around the importance of storytelling in human lives. The conference was
acclaimed for its trans-disciplinary cooperation, for bringing people together from
diverse and numerous backgrounds, and for allowing for a productive, stimulating
encounter between academics and practitioners. We hope the reader will enjoy this
volume and find in it the essence of the conference.
Notes
1
Gavin J. Fairbairn, ‘Call for Presentations’, Storytelling: Global Reflections on
Narrative (1st Global Conference), accessed February 15, 2012, http://www.inter-
disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/storytelling-global-reflections-on-
narrative/story-2-call-for-papers/.
2
Lariane Fonseca and Gregoria Manzin, ‘Story and the Making of Identity: The
Stork and the Elephant’, in this volume, 105.
3
Catherine Hamel, ‘To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood: Tearing Air to Draw
Displacement’, in this volume, 175.
Bibliography
Fairbairn, Gavin J. ‘Call for Presentations’. Storytelling: Global Reflections on
Narrative (1st Global Conference). Accessed February 15, 2012. http://www.inter-
disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/storytelling-global-reflections-on-
narrative/story-2-call-for-papers/.
Fonseca, Lariane, and Gregoria Manzin. ‘Story and the Making of Identity: The
Stork and the Elephant’. In The Many Facets of Storytelling: Global Reflections on
Narrative Complexity, edited by Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina
Sabnani, and Mahesh Nivargi, 105–115. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012.
Hamel, Catherine. ‘To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood: Tearing Air to Draw
Displacement’. In The Many Facets of Storytelling: Global Reflections on
Narrative Complexity, edited by Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina
Sabnani, and Mahesh Nivargi, 175–185. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012.
Part 1
The Functions of Stories: Education and Social Change

Changing the World through the Stories We Tell
Gavin Fairbairn
Abstract
In this chapter I discuss my belief that through the stories we tell we can change
the world. I focus especially on the way in which the stories we tell about others
not only reflect how we think about them, but can change the ways that we think
about and relate to them. I will also talk about ways in which the stories we tell
about others can, at times, change the ways that they think, both about themselves
and about us. I end with an example of the way in which story can be used to
challenge practitioners in education, health and social care to re-think and to re-
feel in relation to their behaviour and their values.
Key Words: Story, social change, disability, mainstream schools, Down

Syndrome; disablism, neonatal care.
*****
In January 2012 I had the great fortune of experiencing winter in Samara, 500
miles or so to the east of Moscow, on the river Volga. The centre of the Russian
Space industry, Samara was for a time during the Second World War, the capital
of Russia, and during the Cold War it was a ‘closed city,’ which foreigners were
not allowed to enter. The sun was bright; snow was on the ground; it was cold -
around -20 to -25 degrees Centigrade.
I was in Samara to speak at its State University’s Winter School on the
possibility of social change. 1 My aim was to persuade my audience that we can
change the world through the stories we tell. Unlike most of the other speakers,
who talked with great authority about, for example, political movements and
economic models, I spoke about matters of a more down to earth kind, drawing on
my experience in education, health and social care. Truth to tell, when I was
invited to speak I was a bit concerned about what I might add to the discussion,
because social change as an idea was not something to which I had ever given any
real thought. Then my wife drew my attention to the fact that for much of my
career as a practitioner and academic, I have been involved in social change.
For example, as a young school teacher I was a participant in the early stages
of the move, within the UK, to educate disabled children in mainstream schools,
alongside their non-disabled peers. And twenty years later I became involved, for
several years, with Polish colleagues who were promoting the movement towards
inclusive education in their country after they read Integrating Special Children:
Some Ethical Issues 2 a book my wife and I had edited. I have worked with
teachers, psychologists, social workers and others - both in the UK and in Poland,
on changing the ways that people think about the sexuality of folk with learning
4 Changing the World through the Stories We Tell
__________________________________________________________________
difficulties 3 and, more recently, I have worked with museum and gallery staff
from all over Poland, on ways of making their institutions and art galleries
accessible to disabled people, and especially to people with learning disabilities.
Story has been central in my work in all of these areas, providing a medium
through which to engage and challenge those with whom I have worked, to reflect
on their beliefs and values and behaviours, as a prelude to changing their
behaviour.
1. Stories as Bringers of Change

In this chapter I want to discuss my belief that both the stories we hear and the
stories we tell, can change how we think and how we act. Not only that, but since
the stories we tell can change what other people think; what they believe, and what
they do, I argue that by choosing the right stories to tell, or choosing to tell the
right stories, we can change the world in ways that we want it to change.
Conversely, of course, it is important to recognise that if we do not think carefully
about the stories we tell, we might change the world in ways that we do not intend
or wish it to change.
2. Living through Story

Our lives are made up of stories. We tell them to our children; our hairdressers;
our students and colleagues; our friends and our enemies. We tell them in letters
and emails; in research reports and in the bids we make for research funding. In
order to obtain funding to attend the conferences at which they share their work,
most academics find it necessary to tell stories about how much they and their
institution will benefit from their participation.
Telling stories comes naturally to us. Through the stories we tell we let people
know what has happened to us, and about our hopes and fears; our beliefs; what we
value, and what we do not. We make sense of our lives by telling the stories we
live. And we learn about other people and their lives, by listening to the stories
they tell about what has happened to them; about what they are looking forward to,
and about what they are dreading. In this way we learn about the people we work
and live with; those we hear about, but will never meet; about those we care for,
and about those we do not.
3. Stories Engage Us; and They Change Us

For some people the idea that the stories we tell can change the ways people
think, what they believe and what they do, will be so obvious that it needs no
argument. They know, for example, about lawyers, whose aim in prosecuting or
defending is to tell a compelling story that demonstrates either the guilt or the
innocence of the person on trial. Everyone who works in the narrative arts
including theatre, film and literature, knows that their success is likely to depend
on the ability to engage their audience by changing how they think and feel. Of
Gavin Fairbairn 5
__________________________________________________________________
course, the changes at which practitioners of narrative fiction aim will often be
short lived, because their stories are intended to do no more than entertain people
by offering them another world to inhabit for a while. However, it is clear that
fictional narrative in all its forms, is also capable of changing values, thinking and
lives.
We are subjected every day to stories by means of which others attempt to
change how we think, believe and act. Consider, for example, the ways in which
advertising companies try to persuade us to buy products that we did not know we
needed, with money that we did not know we had - from designer clothes and
exotic holidays, to the latest smart phone or computer based gadget. Through the
stories they tell, advertisers aim to seduce us into believing that our lives will be
better; more exciting; more sophisticated, and more fulfilled if we buy the products
and services they are selling. Their business has much in common with the ways in
which politicians set out to persuade us to support their policies by telling stories
about how much better things would be if those policies were enacted.
Through the stories they tell, newspapers and other media, including television,
film and the internet, help to shape societal values and frequently facilitate social
change by influencing the ways that people think. For example, over recent years
in the UK, the stories told by newspapers and by the other media, have
undoubtedly helped to increase support for so-called ‘assisted suicide,’ by
repeatedly focussing public attention on to stories about individuals who are
campaigning for the right to decide the time of their death through euthanasia,
portraying them not only as victims of injustice, but as heroic characters of a
romantic kind.
4. The Stories We Tell about People

The stories we tell about people represent how we think about them, and can
also change how we think about and act towards them. Not only that, but the
stories we tell about people can change both the ways that they think about
themselves and the ways that others think about and act towards them. I had plenty
of opportunity during my pre-academic career as a special educator and social
worker, to notice how the stories folk told about my pupils and clients, not only
changed the ways that others thought about them, but the ways that they thought
about themselves. For example, I once received a report from a headteacher
describing a 15 year old who was transferring to my school, which said only that
‘John is a very handicapped boy. He cannot even write his own name.’
The story I could tell about John a few months later was rather different. At
first he had refused to do anything I asked. Then one day I noticed him throwing a
tiny piece of screwed up paper into the waste bin as he left class at the end of the
day. It was a drawing, which I took home, ironed and mounted, before displaying it
next day labelled with his name. John kept on drawing and gradually his pictures
got bigger. After a while, rather than simply displaying them with a label saying,
__________________________________________________________________
for example, ‘John drew a picture of a dog’ I began to ask him what I should write;
later I began to encourage him to overwrite and then copy what I had written. I
knew John had turned into a writer, who was at least able to write his own name,
when one day he told me he could write his own story for a picture, which he then
signed, after writing ‘Her is a man wif a pik hat.’ (Here is a man with a pink hat)
underneath. A few days later he drew a portrait of me, dressed in a kilt, and
looking like a pig, which he labelled, ‘Mr Fairbairn is a pig.’ I hasten to add that I
do not believe John really thought of me as a pig.
Supporting John as he began to learn, involved finding ways of helping him to
develop a new story about who he was, by recognising what he could do and what
he was good at, rather than dwelling on stories about what he could not do and
how disabled he was. Even as a young teacher, I knew that the stories you tell
about people change the ways that both you and others think about them and often,
as in John’s case, what they think about themselves. And I knew then, as I do now,
that if you help one person to grow, you change the world, making it a better place.
So the message I shared with my Russian colleagues in Samara, about changing
the world through the stories we tell, was nothing new.
5. Stories That Disvalue People Who Are Disabled

It is probably a fair guess that the head teacher who reported that my pupil,
John, was ‘a very handicapped boy,’ who could not ‘even write his own name,’
had simply heard too many stories about how children who score very poorly on
standardised tests of intelligence, are unable to do very much. Stories of this kind -
about how little people with certain disabilities will be able to do, help to lead to a
situation in which some disabled people are devalued or even disvalued. They are
common. One was shared by Kiel Moses 4 at the conference from which this ebook
arose. Like me, he is aware that sometimes parents of disabled babies are
encouraged to think of their babies as substandard and replaceable commodities.
He tells the story of Jason, a boy born with Down Syndrome, whose mother
reported being told, after his birth, that her son would be ‘mentally retarded:’
He’ll never sit or stand, walk or talk. He’ll never be able to

distinguish you from any other adults. He’ll never read or write
or have a single meaningful thought or idea. The common
practice for these children is to place them in an institution
immediately…
Go home and tell your friends and family that he died in

childbirth. 5
I often use another story about a child born with Down Syndrome, in ethical
workshops with practitioners such as teachers, social workers, paediatric nurses,
Gavin Fairbairn 7
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midwives and psychologists. It concerns a baby whose parents, like Jason’s
mother, are told that as a result of his intellectual disability their child will have a
more limited life than most children. They are also told that without a routine
operation to unblock his intestine he will die, and asked to decide whether it
should be performed. My intention in using this story is to provoke reflection on
the way in which disabled people are often disvalued by comparison to their non-
disabled peers.
I find it surprising that so many people, including professionals who work with
people who have learning disabilities, believe that the parents of a child born with
Down’s and a life threatening condition, should be allowed to choose whether or
not their child should receive the treatment he needs in order to live, in other
words, whether he should be helped to live, or allowed to die. Interestingly, most
people who hold this view, are unlikely to think that it would be permissible to ask
the parents of a non-disabled baby with the same life threatening condition,
whether the operation necessary to save his life should be performed. In other
words, whereas they believe that it would be OK to allow the Down’s baby to die
even though it could be saved, they are unlikely to think that it would be OK to
allow a non-disabled baby to die in such circumstances.
Challenged to consider whether their views might arise from disablism - from
valuing non-disabled children more than disabled ones, people often explain that
the reason they believe the disabled child’s parents should be allowed to choose
whether their child should live or die, is that it is they, the parents, who will have
to care for him if he survives. Sometimes they reconsider their view if I point out
that it is just as true that the parents of the non-disabled child will have to care for
him if he survives, because by doing so I nudge them into realising that their
decision is based, at least in part, on the greater value that they attach to the non-
disabled child. But sometimes they do not.
6. Stories That Change How People Feel (and Act)

Engaging with my story about the child born with Down Syndrome frequently
leads people to change the ways in the ways they think about disability, because it
leads them to reflect on the ways in which people may be valued or disvalued
because of what they can do, rather than because of who and what they are.
I want to end with another story about a disabled neonate, which like the story
of the baby with Down Syndrome, I have often used in challenging people to
reflect on their practice, though this time the way in which the baby is treated is
not the main focus of the story. It appeared in print in my very first academic
article ‘When a baby dies: a father’s view.’ 6 That article begins:
When my wife had our baby girl, Hesther Frances, by caesarean

section, I was told pretty soon that she was unlikely to live. The
paediatrician who was sticking tubes down her throat in an effort
__________________________________________________________________
to help her breathe asked me whether I wanted him to continue
doing so or whether I would rather that he stopped, since it was
unlikely to do any good. He explained that he was sure that
Hesther was suffering from a chromosomal disorder called
Edward’s syndrome which made it very unlikely that she could
live. I decided that he should stop and that we should allow
Hesther to die rather than continuing this undignified attempt to
make her live for few extra hours.
They took Hesther out of her special care cot and gave her to
me. I was in great emotional upheaval….
I was left holding Hesther while people, as it seemed to me,
backed off into the corners of the room. I spoke to her and cried
with her. As I welcomed her into the world and said I was sorry
that she would not be able to stay with us, I held out my hand to
the retreating figures and asked for help. They retreated further
and further away. They seemed to vanish into every available
corner of the special care room and into the adjoining office -
safe behind psychological or glass partitions, able to deceive
themselves into thinking that what I wanted was to be alone with
my baby, able to ignore my outstretched hands and eyes. 7
In writing this article I wanted to impact on the thinking and behaviour of

neonatal care staff. In order to do so I set out to engage readers emotionally, before
going on, later in the article, to make some suggestions about changes that might
make things better. Unusually, for an article published in an academic, peer-
reviewed journal, I wanted to make readers cry, because it seemed to me that
doing so was likely to have more impact than an argument that appealed only to
the intellect. My reasoning seemed to overlap with that of the editor of the journal
in which it was subsequently published, with whom I shared a draft during a
conference, who cried while she was reading it, then told me that she would like to
have it for her journal, because it would make her readers cry. Interestingly, about
fifteen years later, a colleague told me that she had, for years, been using my
article in a workshop about bereavement, because she also wanted to make people
cry.
I have often used my experience as a bereaved father during professional
development sessions. I have used it as one in a set of stories that raise both
professional and ethical issues, with the intention of helping practitioners to reflect
on practice in ways that will enable them to develop empathy, by helping them to
imagine the world from different points of view. In doing so I hope to invoke
changes that might make it less likely that others will have experiences similar to
mine. The extract I have shared has not yet touched on the worst aspect of that
experience and in drawing to a close I would like to do so.
Gavin Fairbairn 9
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The paediatrician, who looked after Hesther during her short life after birth,
said two things to me before she died. First, as I have already said, he asked
whether I wanted him to continue trying to get our baby to breathe Secondly, to
quote again from the article, he asked me:
…to give him permission to do a post-mortem. How was it

possible that he could ask me such a thing while my baby was
still alive in the next room? How was it possible that he could
think it appropriate to back off from me in my anguish and yet
ask me that minutes later? How was it possible that it could be an
important part of his job to be aware of the “need” to gain
permission to perform a post-mortem, while failing to be aware
of the need to care for parents in their bereavement, of the need
that I had to have someone to be my friend while my baby died? 8
Sometimes the best way to change the world is to engage people not only with
intellectual argument, but through their heart and soul. My use of the story about
my grief following the death of our daughter is an example of such an approach. I
know it to have been successful.
Notes
1
Gavin Fairbairn, ‘Can Social Change Be Brought about by the Stories We Tell
and the Stories We Hear?’, Invited plenary address at the Winter School on Social
Change, State University of Samara, Russia (2012).
2
Gavin J. Fairbairn, ‘Integration, Values and Society’, in Integrating Special
Children: Some Ethical Issues, eds. Gavin J. Fairbairn and Susan A. Fairbairn
(Aldershot: Avebury, 1992).
3
Gavin J. Fairbairn, ‘SEX MATTERS (Knowing What to Do about the Sexuality of
People with Learning Difficulties, and Wondering Whether to Do It)’, Studies in
Psychology 11 (2003): 247-262. Gavin J. Fairbairn and Denis Rowley, ‘Etyczne
Aspekty Seksualności Osób z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną’ [Thinking
Ethically about the Sexuality of People with Learning Difficulties], in XXVIII
Sympozjum Naukowe Życie Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z Niepełnosprawnością
Intelektualną w Aspekcie Seksualności, ed. Anna Firkowskiej-Mankiewic
(Warszawa: Polish Association for Persons with Mental Handicap, 2003), 51-72.
Gavin J. Fairbairn and Denis Rowley, ‘Ludzie z Niepełnosprawnością
Intelektualną jako Rodzice’ [People with Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: Some
Practical and Ethical Considerations], in XXVIII Sympozjum Naukowe Życie
Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną w Aspekcie
__________________________________________________________________
Seksualności, ed. Anna Firkowska-Mankiewicz (Warszawa: Polish Association for

Persons with Mental Handicap, 2003), 73-89.
4
Kiel Moses, ‘Disability, Inclusion, and First-Person Narrative’, paper presented at
conference on Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative, Inter-
Disciplinary.Net, Prague, May 2012.
5
M. Levitz and J. Kingsley, cited by Kiel Moses, ‘Disability, Inclusion, and First-
Person Narrative’, in his paper.
6
Gavin J. Fairbairn, ‘When a Baby Dies - A Father’s View’, Nursing Practice 1,
No. 3 (1986): 167-168.
7
Ibid., 167.
8
Ibid., 168.
Bibliography
Fairbairn, Gavin J. ‘When a Baby Dies - A Father’s View’, Nursing Practice 1,
No. 3 (1986): 167–168.
—––. ‘Integration, Values and Society’. In Integrating Special Children: Some

Ethical Issues, edited by Gavin J. Fairbairn, and Susan A. Fairbairn, 142–160.
Aldershot: Avebury, 1992.
—––. ‘SEX MATTERS (Knowing What to Do about the Sexuality of People with
Learning Difficulties, and Wondering Whether to Do It)’. Studies in Psychology 11
(2003): 247–262.
—––. ‘Can Social Change Be Brought about by the Stories We Tell and the Stories
We Hear?’ Winter School on Social Change. State University of Samara, Russia
2012.
Fairbairn, Gavin J., and Susan A. Fairbairn, eds. Integracja Dzieci o Specjalnych
Potrzebach. Warsaw: Centrum Metodyczne Pomocy Psychologiczno-
Pedagogicznej, Ministerstwa Edukacji Narodowej, 2000 [Polish translation of
Integrating Special Children: Some Ethical Issues. Aldershot, Avebury, 1992.]
Fairbairn, Gavin J., and Denis Rowley. ‘Etyczne Aspekty Seksualności Osób z
Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualna’ [Thinking Ethically about the Sexuality of
People with Learning Difficulties]. In XXVIII Sympozjum Naukowe Życie
Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną w Aspekcie
Seksualności, edited by Anna Firkowska-Mankiewicz, 51–72. Warszawa: Polish
Association for Persons with Mental Handicap, 2003.
Gavin Fairbairn 11
__________________________________________________________________
—––. ‘Ludzie z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną jako Rodzice’ [People with

Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: Some Practical and Ethical Considerations]. In
XXVIII Sympozjum Naukowe Życie Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z
Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną w Aspekcie Seksualności, edited by Anna
Firkowska-Mankiewicz, 73–89. Warszawa: Polish Association for Persons with
Mental Handicap, 2003.
Moses, Kiel. ‘Disability, Inclusion, and First-Person Narrative’. Storytelling:

Global Reflections on Narrative. Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Prague, May 2012.
Gavin Fairbairn is a teacher and ‘jobbing philosopher’ who has on-going research
interests in the ethics of health and social care, including issues in mental health,
disability and at the end of life. He also has strong interests in philosophical and
ethical issues that arise in relation to peace and conflict, including nuclear
deterrence and the relationship between reconciliation, truth, apology and
forgiveness. Finally, he has strong interests in the use of storytelling in teaching
and research and as a model for academic writing of all kinds. In the past he
worked for many years as a practitioner in special education, social work and
teacher education, and he is currently Running Stream Professor of Ethics and
Language in the Faculty of Health at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
Storytelling and the Moral Tradition: An Examination of the
Pedagogy of Storytelling for Moral Enculturation
Elaine M. Bennett
Abstract
Storytelling plays an important role in the informal enculturation of humans in all
societies and stories are often a vehicle for transmission of morals and values. This
chapter will argue that stories, when told within particular social and cultural
contexts, are valuable pedagogical tools for transmitting morals and values and that
their function in this regard parallels the pedagogical goals of formal education in
practical ethics. Using examples from diverse oral traditions, I will examine the use
of storytelling, particularly the telling of morality tales, as a method for
transmitting moral ideas and encouraging moral analysis. This examination will be
framed in terms of five pedagogical goals for formal education in ethics, identified
by Callahan. 1 It will argue that storytelling, particularly as it is practiced in many
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of the world’s oral traditions, fulfils the goals of: stimulating the moral
imagination; teaching people to recognise ethical issues; eliciting a sense of moral
obligation; developing analytical skills; and, teaching people to tolerate and reduce
ethical disagreement and ambiguity. Considering storytelling to involve a triadic
interaction between the teller, the listener and the story, this chapter will discuss
the ways in which the social roles of the teller and listener interact with, and
sometimes change, the content of the story itself to effectively teach values and
moral reasoning in cultural settings. The culturally structured social roles of the
teller and listener are shaped by dimensions of age, gender, status and generation;
consequently the pedagogical dynamic is shaped by the same dimensions. This
raises questions regarding the factors that facilitate or inhibit the effectiveness of
story as a method for moral enculturation.
Key Words: Moral enculturation, moral education, storytelling, ethics teaching,

cross-cultural.
*****
Storytelling plays an important role in the informal enculturation of humans in

all societies and stories are often a vehicle for transmission of morals and values.
Discussion of the mechanism by which storytelling transmits morals has been
taken up in fields as diverse as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy
and art criticism to name just a few. In this chapter, I draw from work from
multiple disciplines and use examples from multiple cultures to make the argument
that the function of stories in transmitting morals and values parallels the
pedagogical goals of formal education in ethics. While the distinction must be
made between morals, the values and rules that guide one’s action as right or
14 Storytelling and the Moral Tradition
__________________________________________________________________
wrong, and ethics, the systematic study of morals, I contend that ethical analysis in
some form is a necessary part of moral development. From this contention, I argue
that the use of stories is indeed valuable in the teaching of morals and in moral
development in that they stimulate such ethical analysis. To make this argument, I
will frame the function of stories in the passing on of morals in terms of the goals
of teaching ethics.
Callahan, writing about ethics in higher education, describes five main goals in
the teaching of ethics. 2 The five goals are: stimulating the moral imagination;
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recognising ethical issues; eliciting a sense of moral obligation; developing

analytical skills; and, tolerating and reducing disagreement and ambiguity. While
these goals were originally described in the context of the construction of ethics
courses in higher education, they will be discussed here in the context of
storytelling as a method of moral education that can be applied at many levels and
in many settings.
In his essay, Callahan specifically admonishes against the teaching of ethics in
higher education as a path to the teaching of specific morals. 3 I agree with his
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assertion - institutions of higher education should be educating, but not

indoctrinating. However, I argue that, to some degree, effective moral
enculturation, which involves the passing of morals from one generation to
another, and reframing of those morals to be applied to changing circumstances,
requires that at least some in a society are able to critically and systematically
examine the morals. I also argue that the process of storytelling plays an important
role in achieving these goals in many cultures. In other words, something akin to
what we call ethics education may be a predecessor to full moral enculturation,
even in an informal setting and storytelling can be analysed as an informal form of
ethics education. To do this, I will consider how storytelling contributes to each of
Callahan’s five outlined goals.
First, storytelling has the potential to fulfil the goal of stimulating the moral
imagination as stories have the power to evoke empathy in listeners. Stories
provide concrete examples of values in action that listeners can relate to more
meaningfully than they would to abstract communication of moral principles. 4 InD D
fact storytellers can manipulate stories to encourage empathy or animosity to one

character over another, depending on the context or the desired lesson. For
example, the story of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is a Latin American
folktale that is told in several forms, which carry different moral messages
depending on the teller, the listener and the situation.
‘La Llorona’ is a morality tale in which, in its most basic form, a woman and a
man are married, the marriage goes bad, and the woman kills herself and is forever
destined to wonder the night weeping and wailing. Mathews analysed sixty
accounts of this tale, collected from a community in Oaxaca, Mexico, and found
that men and women tended to tell the tale differently. 5 In setting the scene for La
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Llorona’s suicide, men telling the story typically depicted the marriage as good,
Elaine M. Bennett 15
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until the wife began to stray from her socially prescribed role. Her infractions in
different accounts included adultery, not caring for their children or being cold to
her husband. In these stories the husband suffers such pain and shame that he
terminates the marriage by expelling her from the household. The wife, in these
renditions, takes her own life, usually by walking into a body of water. This dooms
her to wander the night, wailing and weeping. The story is a cautionary tale that
communicates, to women, unacceptable behaviours and their dire consequences. 6 D
Women, in Mathews’ study, tell a different version of the tale. La Llorona is

generally a good woman who cares for her family and works hard for her husband,
until he begins to violate the socially prescribed role of husband. He may sleep
with another woman or worse yet, declare his love to another woman, or he may
drink away all of their money. In these renditions, the wife suffers great pain and
shame by the actions of her husband and is ultimately driven to take her own life,
and sometimes those of her children, to avoid future suffering. Consequently, she
wonders the night wailing and weeping. 7 D
As you can see, different storytellers choose to stimulate the moral

imaginations of their listeners in different ways and to different ends, illustrating
the power of storytelling in fulfilling this goal. While this is important to moral
development, alone, it is not sufficient. Callahan acknowledges that the emotions
must be evoked to facilitate moral analysis but cautions against stimulating
emotions without stimulating cognitive reasoning in regards to the emotions,
contending, ‘Imagination without analysis is blind; analysis without imagination is
sterile.’ 8
D
This raises the need for the second goal in teaching ethics, to help listeners
recognise ethical issues. Morality tales have ethical issues and moral statements
built into them. Fables, such as Aesop’s are classic examples of stories that provide
opportunities for listeners to recognise and articulate moral questions. Other types
of stories, such as parables, carry moral lessons that the listener can abstract, as in
the biblical Parable of the Ten Virgins. 9 In this story, which is usually presented as
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a gospel reading in Christian church services, ten young women were waiting to
greet the bridegroom at a wedding. Five wise maids brought extra oil for their
lamps while five foolish maids did not. When their lamps went out, the foolish
maids asked the wise to loan them some oil. The wise maids refused saying that
they would not have enough for their own lamps. While the foolish maids were
gone to buy more oil, the bridegroom arrived and the five wise maids entered the
party with him. When the foolish maids returned they were not given admittance.
In the parable, Jesus concludes with the admonition ‘Watch out, then, because you
do not know the day or the hour.’ After the telling, this story is usually discussed in
a sermon or homily, and often discussed further within the context of family
groups. This practice not only illuminates the specific moral issues the tale
contains, but also provides training to listeners and participants in the extraction of
moral issues from a story’s context. Listeners become participants in the story as
__________________________________________________________________
they identify the issues of benevolence, justice and responsibility contained in the
parable. This skill can then be applied to situations as they arise in the listeners’
life experiences.
Storytelling, especially when accompanied by commentary and discussion, also
serves to accomplish our third goal of developing analytical skills. Because stories
across cultures simultaneously draw from and communicate cultural themes and
schema, the very act of understanding the moral of a story is an analytical act in
which the listener interprets the events in light of his or her own existing body of
cultural knowledge. As with any analysis, this can be accomplished at different
degrees of depth. For example, among the Dogon of western Africa, Calame-
Griaule found that, ‘Every narrative is a pretext for a lesson in social ethics’ and
that the morals of stories are generally fleshed out by the storyteller. 10 He also
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notes that the storyteller moderates the degree to which he or she makes the lesson
explicit by the degree of curiosity and understanding the listener demonstrates.
Younger, less curious, or less capable individuals elicit and take part in more
shallow narrative acts, while curious, and insightful individuals who are coming of
age are initiated to the deeper meanings of tales. 11 Recognising that Callahan’s
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intention when speaking of analysis is a formal and clearly delineated logical

process, I draw a parallel to the types of analytical discussions that take place in an
ethics classroom, in which students who are more motivated and insightful derive
much more from and contribute much more to the lessons. Regardless of the
formality of the setting, analysis is analysis. A young woman asking questions and
testing ideas against her mother or grandmother’s stories is not so different, in
essence, from a university student doing the same with a text or a lecture.
Storytelling can also play a role in fulfilling the fourth goal of ethics teaching in
higher education, eliciting a sense of moral obligation in its participants. Most
morality tales present a situation in which one or more characters violate a social
norm which causes them and often others to suffer consequences, which, in light of
local cultural values, would be undesirable to most. To put it simply, somebody
does something bad and bad things happen to them and those close to them. In her
examination of the way in which morality tales, such as La Llorona, have directive
force, that is, how they can motivate people to moral ends, Mathews concludes that
they are most successful in doing this when they make sense and are believable to
their listeners. They make sense to listeners to the degree that they represent shared
ideas and experiences, while at the same time reinforcing those shared ideas. As
listeners consider stories that have believable themes and in which consequences of
moral decisions are emphasized, they can learn to consider possible consequences
as they make their own decisions. 12 As they reason about the consequences, they
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react emotionally (positively or negatively) to them. As Callahan asserts, ‘Once

one engages in ethical analysis and judgment...the dynamism of moral obligation
takes over.’ 13
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Storytelling also contributes to the realisation of the fifth goal, tolerating and
reducing disagreement and ambiguity in moral reasoning. Callahan identifies both
matters of ethical theory and concrete moral dilemmas as areas in which
disagreement and ambiguity must be reduced and ultimately tolerated. 14 Referring
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back to the story of La Llorona, even when she was a good-acting woman married
to a bad-acting man, as in the female-imparted versions of the story, the story can
be interpreted as a significant cautionary tale for both men and women. Husbands
must behave properly so as not to drive their wives to despair, while wives must
persevere and not let themselves know despair, lest they be doomed to roam the
night wailing and weeping. The moral of the tale is, to some degree, ambiguous
while the tale is told. It is through rumination and possibly discussion that the dual
message can be extracted. For example, we can raise the question, is the good-
acting wife a good woman if she ultimately took her own life, regardless of the
provocation? In this story, perhaps she is not, given her sentence of eternal
suffering.
In the proper telling of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, the wise maids are held
up as paragons of virtue, but few who have listened attentively to this tale and its
explanation have escaped without thinking that the wise maids could have been
nicer and more charitable to their foolish peers. The discussions of this parable in
the family context generally move toward tolerating the ambiguity of the story
despite the fact that the actions of the wise virgins contradict a core value of
Christianity, charity. This contradiction is tolerated because illustrating charity is
not the purpose of this particular parable; however, young minds need guidance to
realise this conclusion. Storytelling, rooted in culture and social interactions, enters
as a tool in the solution of such disagreement and the clarification of ambiguity as
one considers this statement, made by the ethicist Callahan, but that could have just
as easily been found in the work of an anthropologist: ‘…there is no such thing as a
wholly idiosyncratic moral judgment. We gain our ethical concepts from the
society in which we live.’ 15 Stories, as tools for enculturation to these concepts
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also hold the key to decoding them.

Thus far I have discussed how storytelling functions to transmit morals in a
fashion that parallels the teaching of ethics. Since ethics is the systematic study of
morals, it stands to reason that the mechanism through which storytelling teaches
morals and values is a logical process. The story is a medium that stimulates the
moral imagination, provides concrete details that allow for the recognition of moral
issues, cultivates analytical skills through the practice of problem-solving, elicits a
sense of moral obligation through empathy and emotion, and reduces moral
disagreement and ambiguity by normalising social values. To better understand the
way these functions take place, we must consider what it is that makes storytelling
effective in the transmission of morals.
To this end, I take as my starting point an essay that challenges the assumption
‘that children build moral literacy from reading or hearing moral stories.’ 16 In this
D D
__________________________________________________________________
essay in educational psychology, Narvaez claims that empirical research shows
that the ability to understand moral texts and arguments differs based on reading
skill, background knowledge, and moral schema development, that children with
different backgrounds (and moral schema) understand and distort moral texts
differently and that children do not reliably extract intended themes from moral
stories. One of the main empirical studies cited in support of these assertions was
Narvaez et al., in which students of varying ages performed poorly on moral theme
comprehension tasks after reading and listening to recordings of a set of stories
generated by the researchers. 17
D D
These findings are not surprising, and, I think, do little to strongly challenge the
assumption that stories are effective tools in moral enculturation for two main
reasons. First, as the authors cited acknowledged, moral development is a process
that occurs over time. What Narvaez and colleagues did not acknowledge was that
in a natural setting, in homes or communities, stories are usually told and retold
multiple times. Children hear the same stories throughout childhood and into
adulthood, when they make them their own. Stories that are only told once or twice
tend to be insignificant and easily forgotten. It is the stories that are told many
times that become integrated into the consciousness and acquire directive force.
Second, the examples cited diminish the value of storytelling in moral
enculturation because they ignore key features of the use of storytelling in a natural
setting. Traditional moral stories have formed naturally from the life experiences of
civilisations, communities and individual storytellers and are told in natural
settings in which relationships have formed between the teller and listeners. In
addition, the traditionally prescribed method for the passing on of morals through
stories is oral and, ideally, interactive, not textual and passive. While it may be true
that in a sterile environment and under controlled conditions, children may not
derive the moral meaning of a fabricated text, it does not necessarily indicate that
they would be unable to do so when presented with an oral communication of the
wisdom of ages.
In contrast, Pratt and colleagues looked specifically at adolescents’ reactions to
‘stories that are focused on value teaching across a life span sample of adults.’ 18 D D
They hypothesised that older adults who have matured and maintained the
developmental stage of generativity may be ‘more skilful at conveying important
values to younger people within the narrative mode.’ 19 Part of their study involved
D D
a group of adolescents scoring the narratives of older adults. The researchers found
that the narratives of adults who had scored well on previously tested measures of
generativity and socialisation investment were also those whose stories were rated
more highly by the adolescents. The findings suggest that the success of the story
in having an effect on the adolescents had something to do with the teller and the
integrity with which the teller shared the narrative. This sheds new light on the
work done by Narvaez and colleagues. 20 Consistent with the assertions made in
D D
this chapter as to the function of storytelling as a method for the transmission of

__________________________________________________________________
morals, it is the telling of the story and the shared narrative experience that
facilitates the teaching, and not merely the words of the story. The respective social
roles of the teller and the listener are critical to the effectiveness of morality tales
in moral enculturation.
If the value of the story is in the telling, then you can say that the value of the
story is dependent, not only on the content of the story, but also on the teller and
the listener. In other words, the efficacy of a story, especially in teaching social
norms or morals, will vary by context, by the parties involved and by the pre-
existing relationship between those parties. The story itself is not transmitting
mores of a society; but rather, is part of a lengthy process of moral enculturation
that involves a triadic interaction between the teller, the listener and the story, often
over a long period of time.
Storytelling has long been used as a way of transmitting morals from
generation to generation. It has been tested by time and scientific inquiry and has
been shown to fulfil a variety of functions toward that goal. When done well, and
in the right context, storytelling can entertain the ears and educate the soul. Perhaps
part of the success of storytelling as a means of moral enculturation lies in the
inherency of both storytelling and morals to human nature.
Notes
1
Daniel Callahan, ‘Goals in the Teaching of Ethics’, in Ethics Teaching in Higher
Education, eds. Daniel Callahan and Sissela Bok (New York: Plenum Press, 1980).
2
Ibid., 61-80.
3
Ibid., 62-63.
4
Paul C. Vitz, ‘The Use of Stories in Moral Development: New Psychological
Reasons for an Old Education Method’, American Psychologist 45, No. 6 (1990):
709-720.
5
Holly Mathews, ‘The Directive Force of Morality Tales in a Mexican
Community’, in Human Motives and Cultural Models, eds. Roy D’Andrade and
Claudia Strauss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 127-162.
6
Ibid., 140-151.
7
Ibid.
8
Callahan, ‘Goals in the Teaching of Ethics’, 65.
9
Matthew 25:1-13.
10
Geneviève Calame-Griaule, ‘Words and the Dogon World’, translated from
French by Deirdre LaPin (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues,
1986).
11
Ibid.
12
Mathews, ‘The Directive Force of Morality Tales in a Mexican Community’,
157-159.
__________________________________________________________________
13
Callahan, ‘Goals in the Teaching of Ethics’, 67.
14
Ibid., 68.
15
Ibid., 69.
16
Darcia Narvaez, ‘Does Reading Moral Stories Build Character?’, Educational
Psychology Review 14, No. 2 (2002): 155.
17
Darcia Narvaez, et. al, ‘Moral Theme Comprehension in Children’, Journal of
Educational Psychology 91, No. 3 (1999): 477-487.
18
Michael W. Pratt, ‘Generativity and Moral Development as Predictors of Value-
Socialization Narratives for Young Persons across the Adult Life Span: From
Lessons Learned to Stories Shared’, Psychology and Aging 14, No. 3 (1999): 415.
19
Ibid.
20
Narvaez, ‘Moral Theme Comprehension in Children’, 477-487.
Bibliography
Callahan, Daniel. ‘Goals in the Teaching of Ethics’. In Ethics Teaching in Higher
Education, edited by Daniel Callahan, and Sissela Bok, 61–80. New York: Plenum
Press, 1980.
Calame-Griaule, Geneviève. Words and the Dogon World. Translated from French
by Deirdre LaPin. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1986.
Mathews, Holly. ‘The Directive Force of Morality Tales in a Mexican

Community’. In Human Motives and Cultural Models, edited by Roy D’Andrade,
and Claudia Strauss, 127–162. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Narvaez, Darcia. ‘Does Reading Moral Stories Build Character?’ Educational

Psychology Review 14, No. 2 (2002): 155–171.
Narvaez, Darcia, Tracy Gleason, Christyan Mitchell, and Jennifer Bentley. ‘Moral
Theme Comprehension in Children’. Journal of Educational Psychology 91, No. 3
(1999): 477–487.
Pratt, Michael W., Mary Louise Arnold, Joan E. Norris, and Rebecca Filyer.
‘Generativity and Moral Development as Predictors of Value-Socialization
Narratives for Young Persons across the Adult Life Span: From Lessons Learned
to Stories Shared’. Psychology and Aging 14, No. 3 (1999): 414–426.
__________________________________________________________________
Vitz, Paul C. ‘The Use of Stories in Moral Development: New Psychological

Reasons for an Old Education Method’. American Psychologist 45, No. 6 (1990):
709–720.
Elaine Bennett is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Saint Vincent College

in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Most of her research involves applying mixed research
methods to better understand and address issues in areas such as health and
education. Her current research incorporates theories and methods from
anthropology and public health to understand and address childhood malnutrition
in indigenous communities in Guatemala.
Kōrero Whakapapa: Stories from Our Ancestors,
Treasured Legacies
Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan

Abstract
To Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, everything has a
whakapapa, 1 that is, a beginning or a place from which ‘to derive or descend
from.’ In the Maori worldview all things descend from Papatuanuku (the earth
mother), and Ranginui (the Sky Father). This worldview articulates spiritual
connections with the land, the sky and the waterways. Wonderful things happen
when the mind and soul are opened to embrace the depth and beauty of the ways of
our ancestors. Stories, traditions, practices and spirituality are tāonga (precious)
and give purpose for being. A fire is lit, burning a desire and passion to hear and
learn more of ancestral stories and ways of doing and being. These are passed on as
legacies, through kōrero whakapapa (stories from our ancestors) with each
generation providing its own way of transmitting knowledge, linking the old with
the new in an ever changing world.
Key Words: Kōrero whakapapa, indigenous, Māori, epistemological, (k)new,

connections, evidence, identity, transmission, legacies.
*****
He kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea, e kore rawa e ngaro - a seed

sown in Rangiātea 2 never to be lost. 3
1. Introduction
Maunga Tararua toro atu rā The mountain range is Tararua 4

Tangia te Huia, hui hui huia where the Huia 5 bird once sang its song
Rere atu rā te Oroua The Oroua river swifty flows
Tutaki ana te Manawatū to where it meets the Manawatū 6
Whakaruruhau te Rangimārie Umbrellered in tranquility
Rangiotu te papa, Rangiotu 7 who set foundations
Rangimārie te punga anchored within the Peace of God
Maungarongo kua wharikitia Laying out the heavenly mat
Te Manawaroa ōna uri, Stout hearted descendants
Whakaemihia te arohanui gather their love
Tukua atu rā ki sending forth to
ngā karangaranga hapū e... all peoples and nations... 8
24 Kōrero Whakapapa
__________________________________________________________________
Not all of our stories are written, we see them in the land around us, they are
oral, they are sung, they are told in images, and are seen in symbolism. The song
on the previous page tells a story pertaining to the author’s ancestry, being passed
on through the generations. Through stories from our ancestors, we hold on to our
identity, and ways of knowing and doing. Therefore it is our responsibility to
preserve and reinforce these stories. In doing so we make the presence of our
ancestors live, and ensure they are continued to be told.
Whakapapa knowledge is encapsulated through the Māori worldview, and
includes but is not limited to stories depicting cosmology, deeds of ancestors,
places of significance and occurrences. Included are genealogies, tracing the
beginnings of nature and mankind, and thereafter the development of culture and
human institutions. 9 These contribute to identity, knowing and wellbeing, all of
which are vital to indigenous society. Furthermore, when Māori people engage in
Māori ways of knowing and doing, they may be engaging in the powerful project
of ‘re-membering.’ This is seen as (k)new knowledge, that is, knowledge that may
have well been known by Māori ancestors, but in contemporary times are being
constructed as ‘new.’ 10
Included in whakapapa knowledge are indigenous ways of knowing, showing
spiritual connotations including seers, visionaries, symbolism and signs, which are
essential to the way Māori view the world. Their sense within the scientific logic of
the western world may be questioned. However, truths such as identity and
conservation justify indigenous knowledge as valid, and in contemporary education
settings it is equally important for this knowledge to be passed on.
Kōrero whakapapa (ancestral stories) allows for lived experiences to be
recorded as valid accounts of history. Every day events are humanised through the
stories people tell. Storytelling as an oral narrative gives deeper meaning to the
listener. 11 Stanfield 12 states there are some understandings that one cannot obtain
from written literature alone. There are many methods showing whakapapa
knowledge within the Māori learning environment. 13 They have and continue to be
told through traditional Māori ways of doing such as song, genealogies,
speechmaking, storytelling, proverbs, carvings and tikanga (cultural practices). 14
Each has their own categories, style, complex patterns and characteristics. 15 In
former times information and knowledge pertaining to Māori people resided in the
memories and minds and ‘oral knowledge was recited continuously until it was
carved into the house of the mind.’ 16 Oral transmission of certain types of
knowledge was the most suitable with other types of knowledge better learnt by
observation, imitation and practice; with the concepts of titiro, whakarongo, kōrero
‘to look, listen, and speak’ being maintained to the present day. 17
To follow are examples of whakapapa knowledge transmission, showing
indigenous ways of knowing, and the values and spiritual essence of being Māori.
The first gives a simple yet effective example of epistemological knowledge being
delivered in the classroom setting of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa (TWoA), one of New
Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan 25
__________________________________________________________________
Zealand’s indigenous tertiary providers. The second connects to mainstream
university, telling of indigenous tribal deeds and geographical location through
being applied in song. The third example returns to the classroom setting at TWoA,
illustrating the application of indigenous story through titiro, whakarongo, kōrero
‘to look, listen, and speak.’
2. Epistemological Knowledge
The following example illustrates a teaching tool used in the ‘Communication’
module of the Diploma in Adult Education level 6 programme delivered at Te
Wānanga o Aotearoa. It exemplifies the notion that ‘a picture says a thousand
words.’ An image of tangihanga (grieving) taken from a children’s story book used
in Kura Kaupapa Māori (Māori medium language primary school) is adapted to the
adult learning environment. Multiple examples of epistemological symbols
showing Māori values, Māori beliefs and Māori ways of knowing and doing are
captured within the image. These symbolic representations in turn help students to
understand cultural ways of indigenous people.
Image 1: Tangihanga - Epistemological symbols. © Robyn Kahukiwa. Permission

is given by the author for this image to be used in this article for inclusion in the 1st
Global Conference on Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative, held in
Prague, Czech Republic, from Sunday 13th May - Tuesday, 15th May, 2012
Conference proceedings booklet and\or eBook. This image may not be further
copied or reproduced without the author’s permission.
Symbolism included in the above is the wreath of leaves worn as a garland on

the head by the female elders emphasising grief; the pressing of noses - bringing
__________________________________________________________________
together two breaths in unity; and the fantail bird (which when seen inside a
building can be seen as an omen of death).
Māori people are diverse and belong to various tribal groupings, having their
own uniqueness. Therefore understandings of symbolism within the image differ
with each tribal affiliation. Subsequently the image creates interactive discussion
within the classroom, and reciprocity in the transmission of knowledge is extensive
as students draw from each other new ways of knowledge they already (k)new, re-
membering through sharing their own unique tribal distinctions.
Furthermore, this method of teaching embraces other ethnic cultures. That is,
evidenced in adult teaching is the use of this picture having an effect on other
cultures participating in the learning. It also contributes to extending discussion to
unique ways of knowing from other ethnicities that may be participating within the
learning, further extending the learning to a wider epistemological audience.
As already explained, our stories are not only written, they are told in many
ways, including imagery and discussion, symbolism, orally and song. The
following goes on to tell of ancient story been told through song.
3. Tribal Deeds and Geographical Location

Hau-nui-a-Nanaia (also known as Hau) was the eponymous ancestor and high
priest who named many of the rivers on the central and lower west coast of the
North Island of New Zealand while in search of his wife Wairaka. For generations
the story of Hau has been told and sung by descendants of Rangitāne 18 through the
medium of song composed by Ngāti Apa 19 ancestor Te Rangitakoru for Te
Wharaurangi, 20 and in contemporary times the chant E Hau, composed by
Professor Taiarahia Black to commemorate the opening of the new Māori Studies
building in 1996 at Massey University. According to Professor Black, ‘it is well
known throughout the performing arts arena that the rich source of oral history and
scholarly literature of each iwi is kept alive and active in these highly specialised
compositions.’ 21
A method of knowledge transmission and korero whakapapa through song, it
shows connections to people, the land, and the waterways. Furthermore, diverse
peoples are brought together through the singing of the same song. As a teacher
and lecturer it is important to look for ways to preserve indigenous stories and
knowledge, and to find ways to share and transmit that knowledge.
4. Titiro, Whakarongo, Kōrero: To Look, Listen and Speak

Learning at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa is underpinned in Māori ways of doing,
therefore an important component is the transmission of knowledge through oral
application of kōrero whakapapa. A method of storytelling is exampled, which is
also able to be adapted and changed to the stories of the teller, allowing another
method for the person to tell their own stories.
__________________________________________________________________
A simple note taking exercise is utilised, where the tutor tells a local
geographical story, that leads students on to composition and essay writing. This
method caters for all learning styles, and is also very effective in transmitting
knowledge to all ethnic cultures. In addition, stories that draw on Māori language,
concepts and narrative techniques, promotes writing in creative and innovative
ways. 22
The steps taken are:
Tutor tells a story pertaining to the area of the location of the campus the
students are studying;
Students take notes in flowchart form;
Tutor asks students individually, in small groups or one large group, to
consecutively repeat / role play back sections of the story to the class.
This method is also effective in teaching local history, and in this instance the
story told is the story of ‘Hau’ from the song ‘E Hau’ mentioned previously.
The names of principal rivers on the west coast of the North Island of New
Zealand are shown in the maps below. Arrows point to specific locations in the
map on the right and meanings of how the names were derived are depicted in the
song. The numbers shown in the map show locations of campuses pertaining to Te
Wānanga o Aotearoa, one of New Zealand’s three indigenous tertiary institutes.
Image 2 and Image 3: © Google, 2011. Maps showing the western side of the
North Island of New Zealand. © Google, 2011. Permission according to copyright
instructions on the Google website is given for this image to be used in this article
__________________________________________________________________
for inclusion in the 1st Global Conference on Storytelling: Global Reflections on
narrative, held in Prague, Czech Republic, from Sunday 13th May-Tuesday 15th
May, 2012 Conference proceedings booklet and\or eBook. © Eli Johnston & Te
Wānanga o Aotearoa. Permission is given by the authors for this image to be used
in this chapter for inclusion in the 1st Global Conference on Storytelling: Global
reflections on narrative, held in Prague, Czech Republic, from Sunday 13th May -
Tuesday 15th May, 2012 Conference proceedings booklet and\or eBook. This
image may not be further copied or reproduced without the author’s permission.
The transmission of historical knowledge through kōrero whakapapa has been

invaluable in providing awareness of political matters in New Zealand. This has
been used in providing evidence in court surroundings, which has led to the return
or compensation of land confiscated in the past by the New Zealand government.
Indigenous storytelling is seen as a form of evidence that extends on what counts
as research, and in doing so participates in decolonising western notions that
indigenous oral traditions are simple expressions of a primitive culture. 23
In recent years this has been evidenced where kōrero whakapapa has assisted
Māori people, having insisted their language is utilised appropriately, giving
correct meaning to their language. An example relates to ‘Whanganui,’ which is
depicted in the chant ‘E Hau’ and gives the meaning ‘extensive bay,’ Whanga
meaning bay, nui meaning extensive, large, or big. Whanganui is the name of a city
on the west coast of the north island, which for many decades has been wrongly
spelt as ‘Wanganui’ due to colonisation by western society. In 2009 this matter
became the subject of much controversy when Māori asked for the word to be spelt
correctly. 24
5. Summary
Stories, traditions, practices and spirituality are precious, and give purpose to
being as we make connections from the past to the present, and provide platforms
for the future. Each generation provides its own form of knowledge transmission,
and these taonga 25 (treasures) when passed on through kōrero whakapapa (stories
from our ancestors) link the old with the new in an ever changing world.
Values and the spiritual essence of being Māori, and ways of knowing and
doing have been shown through examples of whakapapa (genealogical) knowledge
transmission. The first provided a simple yet effective example of epistemological
knowledge being delivered in the classroom setting, while also explaining how
knowledge can be adapted to fit within any culture. The second gave examples of
ancient and contemporary song utilisation, where the content showing tribal deeds
and geographical location was used in the opening of a significant building at a
New Zealand University; and the third returned to the classroom, illustrating the
application of indigenous story through titiro, whakarongo, kōrero ‘to look, listen
and speak.’ All three show where, how and why storytelling can be adapted to the
__________________________________________________________________
context of academia. They are also able to be changed to include the stories of the
storyteller, allowing another method for the person to tell their own stories through
the methods outlined.
It is through these stories that fires are continuously fuelled, building desire to
provide and learn more of ancestral deeds, ways of doing and being, and from
where they derived. We look to the past to continue to move forward, following the
footprints of our ancestors, as we leave prints for our children and their children to
follow. Thus we continue to gift treasured legacies, through kōrero whakapapa -
stories from our ancestors, which continue to today’s stories, our stories, and the
future, to their stories.
‘Puritia ngā taonga a ō tātou tūpuna \ Hold fast to the treasures of

our ancestors.’ 26 Kia haere whakamua \ in order to move on and
into the future.
Acknowledgements
This chapter has been modified and written for the Interdisciplinary Storytelling
Conference held in Prague in 2012. Parts of this chapter are included within
‘Kōrero Whakapapa’ presented by the author at the World Indigenous People’s
Conference in Education in Peru in 2011.
The author continues to gratefully acknowledge her tribal elders who have passed
on, and also to those who remain, for their wisdom and encouragement, and their
knowledge of historical events given to her throughout the years:
Ki ōku kaumātua kua wheturangihia To my esteemed elders who have passed on

ka tukuna te aroha kia rere love is let go to flow
ka tukuna te roimata kia maringi tears are let go to pour
moe mai e ōku mātua sleep my esteemed parents
kia aio te takotoranga me ō tūpuna so in peace as you lie with your ancestors
i te pō
Kia tātou ngā waihotanga o rātou mā To those of us who are left
He mihi ki a koutou salutations to you also
I runga i te āhuatanga o te wā. at this time. 27
Notes
1
‘Whakapapa, a Maori word, is often abstracted to the English language as the
word genealogy. Whakapapa however has a more subtle and comprehensive
__________________________________________________________________
meaning in Maori. In that language it has complex connotations of genealogical

lines, yes, but also the history of the people involved and perhaps most
importantly, the inter-relationships between those people. Degrees of
consanguinity are all important when establishing relationships within Te Ao
Maori - the Maori world.’ Adrian J. T. P. K. Bennett, ‘Marae: A Whakapapa of the
Māori Marae’ (PhD diss., University of Canterbury, 2007), accessed March 9,
2012, http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/1027/1/thesis_fulltext.pdf, 5.
2
Rangiātea is the ancient homeland of the Māori people.
3
This proverb is a metaphor showing Māori people as the indigenous people of
Aotearoa, New Zealand. It tells us that the Māori people, their language and ways
will never become extinct.
4
Māori people associate all things to do with nature as taonga (precious treasures),
the mountains and rivers are included in these treasures. Tararua is the name of a
mountain in New Zealand where the author geographically comes from.
5
The now extinct Huia bird once lived in the Tararua mountain.
6
Both Manawatū and Oroua are the names of rivers which run below the Tararua
mountain. This is a reference to where both rivers meet, which is near where the
author’s tribal gathering place is situated.
7
Rangiotu was an ancestor who left behind the legacy of Christianity and peace for
his descendants to carry on.
8
© Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan; this song was composed by Brigitte Te Awe
Awe-Bevan in 1996 and tells a story of tribal history pertaining to her tribe of
Rangitāne. Permission is given by the author for this song to be published in this
article for inclusion in the 1st Global Conference on Storytelling: Global
Reflections on Narrative, held in Prague, Czech Republic, from Sunday, 13th May
- Tuesday, 15th May, 2012. Conference proceedings booklet and\or eBook. This
song may not be further copied or reproduced without the author’s permission.
9
Ranginui Walker, Ngā Pepa a Ranganui: The Walker Papers (Auckland, NZ:
Penguin Books, 1996).
10
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, as cited in Shane Edwards, ‘Whakapapa Knowledge
Methodology: (K)new Wisdoms for Transformative Indigenous Research’ (Paper
presented at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education, Cusco, Peru,
August 14 - 18, 2011), 2.
11
Shane Edwards, ‘Indigenous Knowledge, Epistemologies and Cultural
Identities’, International Indigenous Journal 1, No. 1 (2005): 5-16.
12
John H. Stanfield, ‘Ethnic Modelling in Qualitative Research’, in The Landscape
of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues, eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna
S. Lincoln (London: Sage, 1998), 333-358.
13
Edwards, ‘Indigenous Knowledge, Epistemologies and Cultural Identities’, 5-16.
14
Ibid., 15.
__________________________________________________________________
15
Jenny Boh Lee, ‘Māori Cultural Regeneration: Pūrākau as Pedagogy’ (Paper
presented at Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning International Conference,
Stirling, Scotland, June 26, 2005).
16
Charles Royal, Te Haurapa: An Introduction to Researching Tribal Histories
and Traditions (Wellington: Bridget Williams Book Ltd & Historical Branch,
Department of Internal Affairs, 1992).
17
Haupai Puke, ‘Traditional Maori Pedagogy’ (Paper presented at the Centro
Ramon Pineiro for humanities research in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 28
- 29, 2000).
18
Rangitāne is one of New Zealand’s indigenous tribes.
19
Ngāti Apa is one of New Zealand’s indigenous tribes.
20
Jock McEwen, Rangitāne, A Tribal History (Auckland, NZ: Hinemann Reed,
1992).
21
Taiarahia Black, ‘Te Putahi a Toi’, In Te Putahi a Toi (Palmerston North:
Massey University, 1996), 5.
22
Lee, ‘Māori Cultural Regeneration: Pūrākau as Pedagogy’, 8.
23
Lee, ‘Māori Cultural Regeneration: Pūrākau as Pedagogy’.
24
LINZ. ‘Whanganui’, accessed September 9, 2012,
http://www.linz.govt.nz/placenames/consultation-decisions/a-to-z/whanganui. New
Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa proposal to alter
‘Wanganui’ to ‘Whanganui’: summary of submissions and the
Board’s decision, accessed September 9, 2012,
http://www.linz.govt.nz/sites/default/files/docs/placenames/place-name-
decisions/nzgb-whanganui-decision-summary-20091012.pdf.
25
Taonga can be interpreted as precious or treasures.
26
Te Rau Tipu, ‘Tā Tātou Mahere Korowai: Guidelines to Setting Up Rangatahi
Advisory Groups for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Addiction or Whānau
Ora Services.’ Te Rau Matatini. Accessed November 1, 2011.
https://www.matatini.co.nz/cms_show_download.php?id=400, 39.
27
Carkeek, Te Waari, Personal Communication, 5 November 2010.
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__________________________________________________________________
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—––. ‘Whanganui’. Accessed September 9, 2012.

http://www.linz.govt.nz/placenames/consultation-decisions/a-to-z/whanganui.
McEwen, Jock. Rangitāne, A Tribal History. Auckland, NZ: Hinemann Reed,

1990.
Puke, Haupai. ‘Traditional Maori Pedagogy’. Paper presented at the Centro Ramon
Pineiro for humanities research in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 28-29,
2000.
Royal, Charles. Te Haurapa: An Introduction to Researching Tribal Histories and

Traditions. Wellington: Bridget Williams Book Ltd & Historical Branch,
Department of Internal Affairs, 1992.
Stanfield, John H. ‘Ethnic Modelling in Qualitative Research’. In The Landscape

of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues, 333–358. London: Sage, 1998.
__________________________________________________________________
Te Kunenga ki Purehuroa Massey University. Te Putahi a Toi School of Maori

Studies Compact Disc. Palmerston North: Massey University, 2011.
Te Rau Tipu. ‘Tā Tātou Mahere Korowai: Guidelines to Setting Up Rangatahi

Advisory Groups for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Addiction or Whānau
Ora Services.’ Te Rau Matatini. Accessed November 1, 2011.
https://www.matatini.co.nz/cms_show_download.php?id=400.
Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Ngā Pārarahi o Hau: A Celebration of Research within

Papaioea Rohe. Palmerston North: Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, 2012.
Walker, Ranginui. Ngā Pepa a Ranginui: The Walker Papers. Auckland, NZ:
Penguin Books, 1996.
Brigitte Te Awe Awe-Bevan is of Aotearoa, New Zealand Māori descent. She has
been teaching the adult teaching programmes for Te Wānanga o Aotearoa since
2004, in her home town of Palmerston North. Her present research involves New
Zealand indigenous leadership from ancient to contemporary times, with the role of
Māori elders in contemporary times being her main interest.
Staying with the Detail: The Use of Story as a Pedagogical Tool
within Teacher Education
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles

Abstract
What is story? How do we, two teacher educators, use ‘storytelling’ as a
pedagogical tool with prospective teachers? There are two versions of what ‘story’
means to us that we want to explore in this chapter. The first is from Bateson’s
book ‘Mind and Nature,’ ‘a story is a little knot or complex of that species of
connectedness which we call relevance… the notion of context, of pattern through
time’ 1 and the second, from Bruner’s ‘Acts of Meaning,’ focusing on ‘the role of
narrativised folk psychology’ in the ‘organisation of experience,’ particularly
‘framing,’ which provides ‘a means of ‘constructing’ a world, of characterising its
flow.’ 2 This chapter will firstly take the form of a ‘framing’ - a narrative weaved
from ‘segmenting events’ 3 throughout our professional collaboration, which began
in 1995. We have used story as a way of making meaning out of our experiences.
In the early days our academic papers were entitled ‘Story of Silence,’ 4 ‘Story of
Sarah’ 5 even though we were advised not to use ‘story’ because people might
think we were writing fiction. We said that, for us, ‘story’ was a technical word.
We will then illustrate what we ‘do’ with ‘story’ as a pedagogical tool whilst
working with people who are becoming teachers. For us, story is a way of creating
meaning through staying with the detail of experience. For our prospective
teachers they are coming to know what to do when they literally do not know how
to act - they do not have patterns over time in lived experience to fall back on.
Key Words: Story, narrative, teacher education, teacher development, cultural

psychology.
*****
“Stories are always true,” said Handsome. “It’s the facts that
mislead.” 6
True stories are the ones that lie open at the border, allowing a
crossing, a further frontier. The final frontier is just science
fiction - don’t believe it. Like the universe, there is no end. 7
1. Introduction
This chapter will explore how we use story as a pedagogical tool as we work
with secondary mathematics prospective teachers on a one-year postgraduate
course at the University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education, UK. We will
begin with two illustrations of use of stories from dissertations, the first from the
36 Staying with the Detail
__________________________________________________________________
early days of Laurinda’s time at the University in 1991 and the second taken from
Alf’s doctoral dissertation, 2011.
2. In Memoriam Tsepiso ‘Mampho Khalema

When Laurinda first went to work at the University she met Tsepiso who was
in her Diploma in Advanced Studies in Education (DASE) group. Tsepiso at that
time was an advisory mathematics teacher in Lesotho. She introduced Laurinda to
story as told in the evening around communal fires by elders, often wise women.
What follows is quite a lengthy extract from her dissertation, Chapter 5 on
‘Natural learning’ in the villages in which she grew up, with a comment from
Laurinda.
There were stories similar to parables which were used to tell a

certain message to children. Children were expected to interpret
this story and it was not always very easy. I will tell one of these
stories, which I remember quite clearly as it was told to me the
day I had failed to act wisely and I took it as showing me how
stupidly I had acted. I had gone to fetch water from the well,
which was about 20 minutes walk. Just when I was getting very
near home a cow approached and because I was afraid of cows I
let go the bucket, which was on my head, and ran away. After
the cow had passed I picked up the bucket and went home
without water. Later on when my mother came back from a
friend of hers she noticed that there was not enough water in the
house and asked me to explain why there was no water. I did
explain, but I was told to go back and fetch water again. It was
getting dark and I was afraid to go on my own, but I had no
choice! Here is the story, which loses some of its meaning
through translation and its atmosphere because it would be said
with actions and each character would be given a different voice:
Once a lion used to kill and eat other smaller animals so that
they were always running away and hiding. In the end the lion
had nothing to eat because all the animals were hiding. One day
the rabbit shouted at the lion from a tree, “Big lion, I have a trick
that we can use since you are hungry. Pretend to be dead and I
will go tell all animals so they can come and then when they are
all in a kraal I will close the door and then we can kill them and
have food for a long time.”
The lion, though not friends with the rabbit, agreed to the idea
and lay in the kraal pretending to be dead. The rabbit went
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles 37
__________________________________________________________________
around shouting, “Hey, everybody! The lion is dead, come and
witness for yourselves in the kraal where he lies dead.”
All animals wanted to witness the news and were quite happy as
they would then live peacefully without having to hide all the
time. Amongst these animals there was a monkey, who pricked
the lion at the back with a sharp needle and the lion moved. The
monkey went back immediately saying it was not sure that the
lion was dead. However, other animals kept on going until the
kraal was full. Suddenly the rabbit closed the kraal and all the
animals were killed.
After the killing of the animals the rabbit suggested that they put
some roofing on the kraal to protect their meat. After putting on
the grass the rabbit sewed from the inside and the lion from the
top. The rabbit would make the needle go through the lion’s tail
each time and when the lion jumped due to pain the rabbit would
say, “I was removing the louse which was on your tail.” This
happened for a number of times and each time the lion believed
the rabbit. After they had finished, the lion was completely sewn
to the top and could not move. The rabbit then took some meat,
sat outside where the lion could see him and ate the meat teasing
him. The lion kept on shouting but could not do anything. Then
came a big hail and the rabbit went inside. The hail was so much
that it killed the lion. After some time the lion got rotten and the
rabbit forgot totally about it. One day the lion’s skin just fell. It
frightened the rabbit, who thought maybe it was the lion and
shouted, “I left some meat for you, I did not eat all of it!” After
realizing that it was only the skin the rabbit thought of another
tactic. He took the skin and wore it. He would then move about
to frighten other animals. 8
Comment from Laurinda: After being told the story, the only message Tsepiso
thought was that the lion had been very stupid to believe that the rabbit was
removing the louse from his tail, thinking that she had also been stupid by not
going back immediately to fetch water after the incident. The story shows other
messages that others might pick up, such as, ‘you don’t have to be physically big
to be clever’ or ‘you should not always rely on another person’ or ‘you may be a
lone voice (the monkey) but you might be right.’
__________________________________________________________________
3. From Alf Coles’ Doctoral Dissertation
Alf Coles, the co-author of this chapter, negotiated his doctoral viva in 2011.
Laurinda was his supervisor and story has been important in our work together
since we met in 1995. We now work together on the University of Bristol initial
teacher education mathematics course. In this most recently examined thesis of
Laurinda’s it is not surprising that, on the final pages, there is another story:
It feels fitting, however, to conclude this thesis with a story. “In

the end, all we have are our stories.” 9 The one below is credited
to The Hodja. These tales were quoted in the mathematics
education publication I have probably used and thought about
more than any other. 10 The tales have been linked to the ‘crazy
wisdom’ of traditions such as Zen Buddhism among others and I
find them invariably salutary. I have been at pains throughout
this writing to avoid the impression that I am arriving at
somewhere definite, that I have a recipe. The relative
unimportance of recipes, and a reminder to focus on where the
action really takes place, are two pieces of wisdom I interpret in
the story below. 11
The recipe
The Hodja was walking home with a fine piece of liver when he
was met by a friend.
“How are you going to cook that liver?” asked the friend.
“The usual way,” said the Hodja.
“That way it has no taste,” said the other. “I have a very special
way of preparing a very tasty meal with liver. Listen and I’ll
explain.”
“I am bound to forget it, if you tell me,” said the Hodja. “Write it
down on a piece of paper.”
The friend wrote out the instructions, and gave them to the
Hodja, who continued on his way home. Before he arrived at his
door, however, a large crow swooped down, seized the liver in
its claws, and flew high up into the sky with it.
“It won’t do you any good, you rogue!” shouted the Hodja
triumphantly waving a piece of paper. “I’ve got the recipe
here!” 12
Comments on both stories: So, these two stories both lead to a multiplicity of
‘pieces of wisdom’ that inform future actions. How do we use this process in our
__________________________________________________________________
work over a year with prospective teachers? One strategy is to encourage them to
tell anecdotes of details of their practice in written or spoken form and to see what
arises in terms of what is the same or different about them. These descriptions do
not include judgments nor context. In the group, stories are told that seem to
resonate and then a discussion of what the stories seem to be about follows. There
is no sense that the stories need to lead to the same new label to organise future
action and, after a relatively short time, this process becomes one that the
prospective teachers can use on their own for their own professional development.
The piece of writing that follows was written by a prospective teacher and
illustrates the process of finding the personal ‘piece of wisdom,’ ‘being less
helpful’ in this case, that will inform future practice.
4. Being Less Helpful: Writing after Such a Discussion by Ross Harrison

I projected the first slide of three that I had made for the lesson, which stated
the title ‘Scatter Diagrams,’ and the learning objective: ‘To be able to draw scatter
diagrams accurately.’ I read this out clearly, and made them copy it into their
books. I switched the slide to show two line segments meeting at right angles in
the bottom-left corner of the screen. I said that I wanted to know everyone’s shoe
size, and everyone’s height; I asked how we might investigate the pattern between
these two data sets. Then I waited for hands up, but after 15 seconds, no-one had
volunteered. This is where the issue of being less helpful arose.
I decided to change tack, and asked if anyone knew what a scatter graph was.
A few hands went up and one said that it was a graph which had a pattern of points
on it. I then asked what the purpose of these points was. Another pupil said that the
points showed the relationship between the two numbers that each point was made
from. I then gave my own explanation, and had the class fill in the blank axes - by
having them stand at the board in front of their shoe size, and mark their height. In
reflecting on the lesson, I noticed that I had done something which I was becoming
fairly used to doing - I had waited for what had seemed long enough for an answer,
then given away a bit more of the solution, to help the class realise new
knowledge. The issue that I have with this is that it clashes with what I consider to
be a more realistic learning process. Meyer separates mathematical learning into
three acts: the central purpose of the task is introduced; the student overcomes
obstacles, looks for resources, and develops new tools; and the task is resolved and
extended. This gives a framework for mathematical learning that is ‘both
prescriptive enough to be useful and flexible enough to be usable,’ 13 and it places
the action for learning firmly within the learners’ control. In this way, the task is
not subdivided into unrealistic steps, but it allows and requires the learners to
develop their own tools for solving that problem. Meyer summarises this as being
less helpful. In my own teaching, I plan to experiment with this method, and assess
the appropriate forms of its use. I would like to see how little I need to give away,
and determine how to find this level with different pupils. When I introduce
__________________________________________________________________
another class to scatter diagrams, I would be interested to see what happens if the
only guidance I give is the question: ‘how can I investigate the pattern between
shoe size and height?’ 14
5. Background
Papers in the early days of our collaboration were entitled, for instance, ‘Story
of Silence’ 15 and ‘Story of Sarah.’ 16 We traced our ideas of story through the
works of Bateson and Bruner. When working with teachers who wish to develop
their practice there is a power in the use of story. In the sense offered by Bateson:
A story is a little knot or complex of that species of

connectedness which we call relevance. […] we face
connectedness at more than one level: first, connection between
A and B by virtue of their being components in the same story
and then connectedness between people in that all think in terms
of stories. Context and relevance must be characteristic not only
of all so-called behaviour (those stories which are projected out
into “action”), but also of all those internal stories ... I offer you
the notion of context of pattern through time. 17
The prospective teachers need to make the connections themselves between the
stories that are offered. It is their pattern that connects. 18 We cannot make their
connections for them, but we can, through the mechanism of telling stories within
the group, open up the space of possible connections and they can share what the
stories severally mean to them. Bruner talks of ‘framing’ when discussing the
‘organisation of experience’ and ‘the role of narrativised folk psychology:’
Framing provides a means of “constructing” a world, of

characterising its flow, [...] what does not get structured
narratively suffers loss in memory. […] framing is social,
designed for the sharing of memory within a culture. 19
Within the group of prospective teachers, novices, we would see ourselves and
them as developing a culture. The language emerging from the smaller group work
feeds into our discussions of teaching and learning for the year and this process of
narrativising resonating stories of incidents from their practice serves to give us a
language based in experience to develop a shared memory. We call this process
deliberate analysis. 20 A recent story or way we currently have of talking about how
this works in practice was published by us in ZDM:
Novices in any field are not able to make the distinctions of

experts; they cannot see in the same detail, and therefore do not
__________________________________________________________________
have the same nuanced repertoire of possible actions available.
Not only that, but novices typically do not have the same
resources available to aid their own development since their
possibilities for analysis are limited by their possibilities for
perception/action. To support deliberate analysis with novices,
they need some sort of motivation linked to action. Simply
wanting to get better does not seem to be focused enough. For a
teacher educator working with prospective teachers to support
their development, talking at the level of behaviour does not
work because the prospective teacher would try to apply any tip
blindly in their school culture, provoking comments like “it
didn’t work.” Nor do discussions at a philosophical level such as
“what is mathematics?” seem to support effective behaviour.
What does seem effective is making use of certain kinds of
questions asked by prospective teachers, when these questions
are provoked by interactions in the world of the classroom. We
label as “purposes” 21 questions such as “How will I know what
they know?”; “What will they have done before?’; ‘How can I
share their responses?”. What seems to be common to these
questions, and how we recognize them as purposes, is that they
are in some kind of middle position between the specific detail
of behaviour, and philosophical speculation. The questions,
though likely to be about a specific task or experience, are easily
generalized to other instances. 22
Notes
1
Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1979), 13-14.
2
Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard
University Press, 1998 (8th printing, [1990]), 56.
3
Bruner, Acts of Meaning, 56.
4
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles, ‘The Story of Silence’, in Proceedings of the
20th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education (PME), eds. Luis Puig and Angel Gutierrez (Valencia: University of
Valencia, 1996), 145-152.
5
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles, ‘The Story of Sarah’, in Proceedings of the 21st
Conference of PME, ed. Erkki Pehkonen (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 1997),
113-120.
6
Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods (Bury St Edmonds: Hamish Hamilton,
2007), 53.
__________________________________________________________________
7
Winterson, The Stone Gods, 87.
8
Tsepiso Khalema, ‘Alternative Ways of Teaching Mathematics in Lesotho
Secondary Schools’ (DASE diss.,University of Bristol, 1991).
9
Dick Tahta, Ararat Associations (Cambridge: Black Apollo Press, 2006), 239.
10
Colin Banwell, Ken Saunders and Dick Tahta, Starting Points (St. Alban’s, UK:
Tarquin Publishers, 1986).
11
Alf Coles, ‘Metacommunication and Listening: An Enactivist Study of Patterns
of Communication in Classrooms and Teacher Meetings in One Secondary
Mathematics Department in the UK’ (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2011).
12
Banwell, Saunders and Tahta, Starting Points, 4.
13
Dan Meyer, The Three Acts of Mathematical Story, 2011, accessed April 20,
2012, http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=10285.
14
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles, ‘Developing “Deliberate Analysis” for Learning
Mathematics and for Mathematics Teacher Education: How the Enactive
Approach to Cognition Frames Reflection’, Educational Studies in Mathematics
80 (2012): 228-229.
15
Brown and Coles, Story of Silence.
16
Brown and Coles, Story of Sarah.
17
Bateson, Mind and Nature, 13-14.
18
Ibid., 8.
19
Bruner, Acts of Meaning, 56.
20
Francisco Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1999), 27-32.
21
Laurinda Brown, ‘Purposes, Metacommenting and Basic-level Categories:
Parallels between Teaching Mathematics and Learning to Teach Mathematics’,
paper presented at the 15th ICMI Study Conference, 2005, accessed April 20,
2012, http://stwww.weizmann.ac.il/G-math/ICMI/log_in.html.
22
Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles, ‘Developing Expertise: How Enactivism Re-
Frames Mathematics Teacher Development’, ZDM Mathematics Education 43
(2011): 862.
Bibliography
Banwell, Colin, Ken Saunders, and Dick Tahta. Starting Points. St. Alban’s, UK:
Tarquin Publishers, 1986.
Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1979.
__________________________________________________________________
Brown, Laurinda. ‘Purposes, Metacommenting and Basic-Level Categories:

Parallels between Teaching Mathematics and Learning to Teach Mathematics’.
Paper presented at the 15th ICMI Study Conference. 2005. Accessed April 20,
2012. http://stwww.weizmann.ac.il/G-math/ICMI/log_in.html.
Brown, Laurinda, and Alf Coles. ‘The Story of Silence’. In Proceedings of the 20th
Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education (PME), edited by Luis Puig, and Angel Gutierrez, 145–152. Valencia:
University of Valencia, 1996.
—––. ‘The Story of Sarah’. In Proceedings of the 21st Conference of PME, edited
by Erkki Pehkonen, 113–120. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 1997.
—––. ‘Developing Expertise: How Enactivism Re-Frames Mathematics Teacher

Development’. ZDM Mathematics Education 43 (2011): 861–873.
—––. ‘Developing “Deliberate Analysis” for Learning Mathematics and for

Mathematics Teacher Education: How the Enactive Approach to Cognition Frames
Reflection’. Educational Studies in Mathematics 80 (2012): 217–231.
Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard

University Press, 1998 [8th printing, 1990].
Coles, Alf. ‘Metacommunication and Listening: An Enactivist Study of Patterns of

Communication in Classrooms and Teacher Meetings in One Secondary
Mathematics Department in the UK’. PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2011.
Khalema, Tsepiso. ‘Alternative Ways of Teaching Mathematics in Lesotho

Secondary Schools’. DASE diss., University of Bristol, 1991.
Meyer, Dan. The Three Acts of Mathematical Story. Accessed April 20, 2012.
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=10285.
Tahta, Dick. Ararat Associations. Cambridge: Black Apollo Press, 2006.
Varela, Francisco. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1999.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods. Bury St Edmonds: Hamish Hamilton, 2007.
__________________________________________________________________
Laurinda Brown works at the University of Bristol, Graduate School of

Education, UK, where her main focus is the one-year post-graduate mathematics
teacher education course. With Alf Coles, she has collaborated on research into
mathematics teaching and learning since 1995. The collaboratively written book
Hearing Silence (2008) tells the story of Alf’s development as a teacher and
researcher.
Alf Coles works at the University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education, UK,
also teaching on the post-graduate mathematics teacher education course, having
achieved his doctorate in 2011. He is currently involved in a research project into
creativity in primary mathematics.
YouTube to the Rescue: Visual Retellings of Short Story in the
Foreign Language Classroom
James Gustafson
Abstract
For many years film versions of novels and plays have been used as a pedagogical
tool in university literature classes. More recently, with the appearance of internet
sites such as YouTube, visual representations of short stories have also become
readily available. The quality of these productions varies enormously: some consist
of nothing more than a subject reading the short story; others are professional
productions listed on imdb.com. While some are not suitable for classroom use for
a variety of reasons (such as potentially offensive content, or poor quality lighting
and sound) many of these visual retellings of short stories prove to be effective in
the classroom, particularly for foreign language literature courses. Teaching short
stories in a foreign language classroom brings particular challenges due to the
linguistic and cultural barriers that students do not experience when reading
literature in their native language. To explore the relatively new phenomenon of
widely available and free visual retellings of short story, and its use in the foreign
language classroom, my study analyses various visual representations, both
animated and live action, of three Latin American short stories that are commonly
taught in introductory Hispanic literature classes: ‘Un Día de Estos,’ by Gabriel
García Márquez, ‘La Noche Boca Arriba’ by Julio Cortázar, and ‘La Noche de los
Feos’ by Mario Benedetti. Both practical and theoretical in nature, this chapter
demonstrates how such easily accessible visual retellings of short stories, even
those of amateur quality, can be effective teaching tools in the foreign language
literature classroom. At the same time, I explore some misuses of these visual
narratives (and how to avoid them) that can worsen the students’ learning
experience, and their understanding and appreciation of the short story.
Key Words: Literature, narrative, Latin America, foreign language, Spanish, short
story, pedagogy.
*****
Teaching literature in a foreign language classroom presents many challenges

for instructors, such as facilitating the understanding of difficult, unfamiliar, and
creative use of vocabulary and grammatical structures which can impede even
basic comprehension of the plot of a short story. For example, the Spanish word for
strawberry (fresa), which most students in literature classes have already learned,
has several alternate meanings. For example, in some cases it can be used to refer
to a dental tool. Unknown or confusing cultural references are another challenge
for students reading literature in a foreign language. Many Latin American literary
46 YouTube to the Rescue
__________________________________________________________________
works contain references and allusions to indigenous cultures. While commonly
known in Latin America, these references are often unfamiliar or unknown to
many North American students. Literary works that are studied in university
classes are usually innovative, and at times, experimental. For this reason, students
can become confused by the challenging structural elements of these stories, such
as flashbacks and multiple narrators.
Another challenge is that the goals of the instructor are sometimes at odds with
the goals of the students. In foreign-language literature classes at the university
level, primary goals of the instructor usually go beyond mere comprehension to
include: stimulate interest in the creative side of storytelling, identify, analyse, and
appreciate the author’s crafting of the fiction, that is, the innovative elements of the
fiction that makes it worthy of inclusion in a university-level literature class.
Secondary goals for the instructor generally include improving reading skills,
vocabulary, and cultural awareness. Naturally, the goals of students vary
considerably from student to student and from one university to another. However,
the students’ initial goals are often to simply understand the plot of the story,
increase their awareness of the culture, and to be able to extract a clear and obvious
moral. In other words, they want to understand the plot, learn something new about
the culture, and ‘learn a lesson’ from the story. Of course professors should respect
the goals of the students, but also challenge them to analyse deeper and discourage
simplistic generalisations of culture.
In an effort to improve students’ learning experience, we often look to
technology. YouTube has become an amazing phenomenon in the last ten years,
providing a creative outlet for millions of people. In 2006 Time magazine chose
‘You’ as its person the year, with a little plastic mirror on the cover of the
magazine. This choice was inspired in large part by YouTube, and the idea that
anyone (‘you’) can put their story, or in the case of this study, a version of
someone else’s story online for all the world to consume, enjoy, judge, interpret,
etc. Of course there are the so-called ‘viral videos’ on YouTube, but one can also
find ‘the story’ of virtually anything on YouTube from instructional stories: how to
tie a tie, how to cut an avocado, my summer vacation. There are many personal
stories on YouTube that are essentially nothing more than a montage of photos of a
vacation set to some catchy background music.
1. Literary Adaptations
A relatively new phenomenon that is proving useful in the foreign-language
classroom are visual productions of Latin American short stories, available for free
on YouTube virtually anywhere there is an internet connection. These artistic
creations can help achieve both the students’ goals and those of the instructor,
facilitating the understanding of linguistic and cultural challenges that literature in
a foreign language presents. Through a quick search on YouTube, one finds that
many canonical short stories typically read in Latin American literature classes at
James Gustafson 47
__________________________________________________________________
the university level, now have multiple visual versions readily available for
viewing. The quality varies considerable from one version to another. Some are
very innovative, entertaining, and true to the original story. Others are nothing
more than someone sitting in a chair reading the story word for word, sometimes
with decidedly poor Spanish pronunciation.
The presence of these visual stories on YouTube presents a new cultural and
artistic phenomenon that can be useful in the foreign language classroom. Longer
narratives, such as novels and plays, have had video versions available in one form
or another for years. Teachers have been using traditional visual representations of
stories - movies on VHS, DVD and other formats - for decades. Now thanks to
recent technological advances, a similar practice is emerging on YouTube with the
short story. These visual retellings can be an effective way to help students
overcome the challenges of reading literature in a foreign language, thus enabling
them to understand and appreciate the written story, and further, to stimulate
interest in literature in general.
2. Latin American Literature on YouTube

This study outlines the advantages and disadvantages of using this technology
from my experience teaching three Latin American short stories as examples of
this phenomenon of visual retellings and their use in the classroom. It will be
useful to briefly summarise each story. Naturally, viewing the versions will
provide an enhanced understanding and appreciation.
The first short story is ‘La Noche Boca Arriba’ (‘The Night Face Up’), by the
Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. 1 This story is about a man who is experiencing
two realities at once: in the first one he is in a hospital bed, recovering, after having
been in an accident. In the second, he is living in pre-Hispanic America and is
being chased by Aztecs who want to sacrifice him. The narration of the short story
alternates continually between these two realities producing at times, confusion for
students in the foreign language classroom. This reflects the point about
innovative, experimental fiction. Visual versions of this story (several have been
made and are available) are particularly helpful in this respect.
The second story is ‘La Noche de los Feos’ (‘The Night of the Ugly Ones’) by
the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti. 2 Easier to understand than the first, it is about two
young people who have deformities on their faces. They meet in line at the movies,
each one having arrived alone. They identify with each other’s deformities, go on a
short date, and then have an intimate encounter. While this story is not particularly
difficult to understand, it is included in this study because there are multiple high-
quality visual versions available, including one that subverts the original story by
giving the narrative voice to the woman. (In the original written version, the
narration is from the man’s point of view.)
A third story that lends itself to the use of this technology is “Un Día de Estos’
(‘One of These Days’) by the Colombian novelist and short story writer Gabriel
__________________________________________________________________
García Márquez. 3 The story deals with a corrupt official in a small town who goes
to the dentist because of severe tooth pain. When the official arrives the dentist
first refuses service to him. However, when the official refuses to leave, the dentist
reconsiders and realises that he has momentary power over this official who has
been terrorising and abusing the citizenry. He uses this opportunity to take some
revenge while the patient is in his chair.
While a detailed analysis of these three short stories and the multiple visual
versions that have been created from them is beyond the scope of this chapter, they
are particularly useful to illustrate the strengths of YouTube in the foreign
language classroom. For one thing, they are from internationally known authors
and the stories are anthologised frequently. These three stories and their visual
versions contrast well. The three stories are quite different, but all lend themselves
in different ways to the use of this technology in the classroom. The short story ‘La
Noche Boca Arriba’ is philosophical in nature in that it questions reality, and how
we know what our reality is. The second story, ‘La Noche de los Feos’ is much
more conventional in terms of plot and language. Its main themes are the
questioning of ideas of beauty and superficiality, which is highly relatable to a
mass audience. Also, at the core it is a love story, which has universal appeal. The
third story, ‘Un Día de Estos’ is overtly political, criticises corruption and
dictatorship, and is probably the most representational of the three stories for Latin
American literature in the 20th century, due to the common themes, and the fact
that the author is a Nobel prize winner.
3. Advantages
There are of course many advantages to using visual versions of short story in
the foreign language classroom. First, students enjoy them almost universally: the
good students, the bad students, the indifferent ones, and everywhere in between.
They enjoy not only watching these productions, but also discussing them
afterwards. The enthusiasm is evident at the mere mention of watching a visual
version of the story, and it continues during the viewing and post discussion.
Second, they are short, typically between five and ten minutes, and thus are very
easy to include in any lesson plan. Third, through YouTube and YouTube-like
websites, they are free and available virtually anywhere there is an internet
connection. Finally, the visual element helps students understand the complex
elements often found in short stories from other cultures. For example, the dual
reality the protagonist lives in ‘La Noche Boca Arriba,’ the unusual physical
deformities of the characters’ faces in ‘The Night of the Ugly Ones,’ and the
technical terminology used to describe the Colombian dental clinic in ‘One of these
Days’ are usefully illuminated for students through the video versions.
In addition to those benefits, I have found that these visual versions can give
Latin American literature a bit more ‘legitimacy’ in the eyes of some students. In
other words, for some students of Latin American literature, the literary works
James Gustafson 49
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might initially be undervalued because students may consider the authors living in
far away, underdeveloped, and ‘insignificant third-world, countries.’ Upon viewing
visual retellings of the stories, they understand that the author does indeed have a
widespread and far-flung readership. Finally, this medium is useful to the visual
learner, or those who consider themselves visual learners.
As with any teaching methodology, there are also potential disadvantages and
pitfalls that the instructor must be conscious of. First, when instructors use the
visual version of the story, some students may not read as carefully, or they might
skip the reading altogether, believing they will have the same appreciation of the
story through the visual versions. The ‘I’ll skip the book and just see the movie’
approach is even easier when one only needs to watch a five minute video
available anywhere, anytime. Second, some students may interpret these visual
retellings as some sort of ‘official version’ of the story, when in fact they are just
the creative interpretation of individuals who likely have no direct connection to
the author. In fact one student remarked after viewing a visual retelling of a short
story, ‘Is this the official version of this short story?’ The origin of his comment is
not clear, however, it is clear that the student did not have an understanding of the
visual version’s place in relation to the original literary work. Such perceptions can
occur, and therefore, the instructor must be vigilant and clarify when necessary.
Third, despite the fact that these versions tend to be faithful to the original literary
work, it may at times actually cause misunderstanding of the author’s original
piece, in terms of the plot, or a deeper interpretation, depending on what the
director decided to do. Fourth, watching a video in a literature class could be
criticised as a so-called dumbing down approach to the material. Finally, a visual
version of a short story might take student attention away from the primary matter
at hand, which is exploring the written work of the author, and its artistry.
Despite these potential disadvantages, it is my contention that these versions
prove useful in the majority of Latin American literature classes. With this in mind,
I will now offer some practical ways to use these videos during the class period.
After a class discussion and analysis of the story, as well as any general lecture
about the author and work, the instructor shows one of the visual versions. Then,
the instructor can easily reignite a discussion of the story itself by way of the visual
version. Typical questions that can be posed to the class include: Where does the
visual retelling differ from the original version and why do you think that is? Do
you agree with the choices the director made, and why or why not, based on the
original story. Would you recommend this visual version to someone who is
interested in this author or this story? Essentially, any version of these kinds of
questions will work, provided that the instructor always stresses that the visual is
just an interpretation of the written story, not a substitute or official version of the
author’s original work. The idea is to ask questions that are designed to draw their
attention back to the literary work being studied.
__________________________________________________________________
Outside of class meetings, these visual versions can also be used for a class
project or term paper. For example, students critique a visual version of the story
on YouTube not seen in class (all the stories mentioned here have multiple
versions online), explaining in detail how it was or was not faithful to the author’s
work. This in effect puts the students’ attention back on the original text and makes
them responsible for an appreciation of the literary work. Students generally enjoy
this kind of assignment perhaps because it is something that is more feasible in
their mind, versus a traditional paper which has an original thesis statement about
the work that is then developed with evidence and research. An alternate option,
although for the much more ambitious, is to create, produce, and post their version
of the story to YouTube. Some instructors create a YouTube channel for the
purpose, and a collection of visual stories is posted for anyone to see.
4. Potential Pitfalls
As with any new approach to teaching, there are pitfalls to avoid when using
this type of technology. First, it is not recommended to show the video version at
the beginning of the class period, or before the students have done the initial
reading. This generally infects the discussion that follows; comments continually
creep back to the video version, which is fresh in their minds. For some students, it
is in fact the only thing in their mind, if they have not read the literary work that
day. In addition, starting with the visual version places too much importance on it
in the literature classroom. Second, it is not advisable to have students compare
two of the video versions of the short story, whether in class or on their own.
Typically what happens in this scenario is that little or no attention is placed on the
actual literary work of the author. Also, the assignment is too broad to be effective.
The phenomenon of visual retellings of short stories is very likely to continue
to grow as more and more people gain access to the web, and as it becomes easier
to produce and post video content online. Therefore, to conclude this chapter, I will
now discuss where future research in this area can go. Studies with much more
detail and analyses of the visual stories can be explored and developed. However, a
study of this nature would be better for readers that are familiar with the stories
being analysed. Second, one could analyse the videos alone, a filmic analysis
essentially, without taking into account the original written version. This could be
done from a communications point of view or a more traditional literary/filmic
analysis, similar to what is done in film and literary studies. Third, a pedagogical
study could be carried out. One could teach the story to classes using the visual
narrative. Meanwhile, in another group, one could teach the story without the
visual and then compare results. Another approach along the same lines is to teach
the story showing the visual at the beginning of the lesson versus at the end.
Another area that lends itself to this study is cognitive literary theory. For example,
the questions of how does seeing a visual version of a literary work affect the long
term interpretation can be explored. In conclusion, YouTube versions of Latin
James Gustafson 51
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American short story are an effective tool to use in the literature classroom when
applied and facilitated in the correct way. However, more research needs to be
done to further understand and exploit this new and unique way of storytelling.
Notes
1
Julio Cortázar, Cuentos Completos (Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2006), 386.
2
Mario Benedetti, Cuentos Completos (Mexico City: Alfaguara, 1994), 114.
3
Gabriel García Márquez, Los Funerales de la Mamá Grande (Buenos Aires:
Editoriales Sudamericana, 2001), 9.
Bibliography
Benedetti, Mario. Cuentos Completos. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 1994.
Cortázar, Julio. Cuentos Completos. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2006.
García Márquez, Gabriel. Los Funerales de la Mamá Grande. Buenos Aires:

Editoriales Sudamericana, 2001.
James Gustafson is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Southern Utah University.

He specialises in Spanish American literature, film, and culture.
Part 2
Researching Violence, Trauma and Conflict through Story

From a Narrative Understanding of Conflict to a Narrative
Resolution of Conflict: The Challenges of Storytelling in
Conflict Transformation
Melanie Rohse
Abstract
This chapter investigates the role that stories can play in the process of conflict
transformation. I make the case for a narrative understanding of conflict and
explore the range of narrative approaches to conflict resolution and transformation,
their potential and challenges. In a first part, I will look at the very characteristics
and functions of narratives and see how they provide us with analytical categories
to better understand conflict. Conventionally, conflict resolution and
transformation have been anchored in a positivist tradition and conflicts have been
strictly understood in terms of scarcity of resources and unmet basic human needs.
However, I argue that conflict can also be understood as a discursive process.
Indeed, narratives are at the heart of the human condition through their role in
preserving history and heritage, in organising human experience and making sense
of our complicated world, and in enabling human beings to share their experiences
and to come together on an emotional level. But they also have a downside as they
can hide power relations and stereotypes and they can be manipulated by the
dominating groups to maintain the status quo and keep them in power. They can
‘reveal and conceal, enable and constrain.’ 1 Narratives are not neutral. Rather, they
are intrinsically subjective and communicate the positionality of the individual or
the group who creates and disseminates them. Thus, in a second part, I will
investigate the challenges that this raises for the use of stories and storytelling in
conflict transformation. Several conflict transformation techniques use narratives
as a tool of reconciliation (e.g. truth and reconciliation commission; storytelling
residentials at grassroots level; narrative mediation) and I explore how they deal
with the ambivalence of narratives and use this contested space to help more
protracted social conflict towards transformation.
Key Words: Narrative, storytelling, conflict resolution, transformation, challenges,

ambivalence, social conflict.
*****
1. Introduction
Conflicts can be understood as a narrative process. Certain functions of
narratives enable us to see how narratives provide us with analytical categories to
better understand conflict. Conventionally, conflict resolution has been anchored in
a positivist tradition. 2 For a long time, conflicts have been understood in terms of
scarcity of resources and unmet basic human needs, 3 a materialist approach
56 From a Narrative Understanding of Conflict to a Narrative Resolution
__________________________________________________________________
focused on ‘the distribution of material power.’ 4 However, conflict can also be
understood as a discursive process and therefore conflict analysis should be
concerned with ‘how social realities such as ‘enemies’ are created in discourse and
language.’ 5 In the words of Sara Cobb, ‘neither scarce resources or unmet needs
attends to the way in which the story is coming from, its life history, how it affects
them [people in a conflict], and how it affects other people.’ 6
In the beginning the social functions of narrative in the particular context of
conflict are explored here for positing an argument for a narrative understanding of
conflict. A narrative answer to conflict found in the practice of storytelling is then
investigated to present discussion about the theoretical and practical challenges that
arise from using this concept and technique.
2. The Narrative Dynamics of Contemporary Conflicts

A. Negative Meaning Making
A first function of narrative is the cognitive function of making sense of the
world and creating meaning. The body of work found in narrative psychology is
helpful to understand how narratives help human beings to do so. Sarbin argues
that narrative allows for the inclusion of the actors’ reasons for their acts, as well as
causes of happenings. 7 In other words, narrative helps human beings to impose a
structure on the flow of experience that they are confronted with on a daily basis.
Hence the idea of narratives as an organising principle emerges. Narrative permits
human beings to make sense of the complicated world they live in. However, this
is not necessarily a positive process. Jackson notices the ambivalence of narratives
when he writes, ‘stories may just as trenchantly exaggerate differences, foment
discord, and do violence to lived experience.’ 8 Bar-On illustrates this point by
taking the example of conflict situation in which not all stories are ‘good enough’
to build bridges between the opposed sides. Some stories are ‘bad enough’ so that
they ‘continue to support the conflict and the schism between the groups.’ 9 Stories
may be destructive, reproducing the stereotypes that fuel conflict and
disseminating them in the population. People, communities, public actors, all
‘engage in competitive and conflictual narrative struggles, trying to circulate
stories that “purify” themselves and their allies, and “pollute” their enemies.’ 10
With stereotyping come two other phenomena: simplification and exclusion,
which are revealed in processes such as opposing ‘us’ to ‘them’ and the abstraction
of the ‘other’ in the group’s narratives. In a conflict situation, narratives become
oversimplified and start reducing the relationship with other groups to an ‘us’ and
‘them’ situation rather than representing a diversity of points of view as it would
normally do in a more peaceful situation. In the process of rhetoric escalation (to
which the oversimplification contributes) typical to conflicts, the ‘other’ is no
longer a real individual and loses its humanity. As much as individual violence is
intimate, group violence is abstract. The other’s face is literally erased to
Melanie Rohse 57
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‘ethically’ permit violence against him or her and their group and a process of
dehumanisation of the ‘other’ is underway. 11
B. Narratives and Identity Polarisation

Another useful function of narrative to understand conflict is that of identity
production. We become who we are through telling stories about our lives and
living the stories we tell. It is not enough to make sense of the world. We also try
and make sense of ourselves and of our place in the world, to establish our
identity. 12 This is an ongoing process as the stories we tell are always rewritten and
evolve with time. Stories are a means through which we constitute and reconstitute
our selves, our ‘storied self.’ 13 The storied self encapsulates our self identity. But it
is also embedded in social networks. 14 Then, narratives serve as an organising
principle to situate our selves within our community and within a collective
identity.
Importantly, identity has become to be seen as a common way of framing
protracted social conflicts. 15 Often, the conflict lasts so long that it becomes part of
the group identity and will be present in common stories passed on from generation
to generation, such as folk stories. To illustrate this point, Senehi gives the example
of Nazi Germany in which folk stories became an instrument of the racist state
ideology. 16 Moreover, casual storytelling within family or friend circles, for
example, will also communicate a particular understanding of the conflict. This
will play a part in the socialisation of children, who may grow up with stories
glorifying and justifying violence against the other group. 17 In a conflict, such
stories become a ‘rallying point, mobilizing a group’s hidden energy and
reinforcing its sense of unity,’ 18 which also makes it more difficult for the conflict
to deescalate.
Vivienne Jabri explores the relationship between the construction of identity
and the emergence of violent conflict. She conceptualises conflict as a constructed
discourse, which ‘places conflict within the wider discursive and institutional
continuities within which the conflict is embedded.’ 19 This means that ‘violent
conflict is constituted around the construction of a discourse of exclusion,’ 20 based
on strong dichotomies between the self and the other. As a result, exclusionist
discourses categorise people as legitimate insiders or as outsiders, which is then
used to justify any direct or institutionalised violence against those seen as
outsiders.
C. Narratives and Power Relationships

Through communicating and replicating culture, narratives perform a
socialising function. As ‘stories are […] a vehicle for assessing and interpreting
events, experiences, and concepts,’ 21 they participate in moulding our morality and
are therefore central to our socialisation within a particular community. Stories
which are part of our available grammar of stories are explanation of what is, but
__________________________________________________________________
they are also about what ought to be. 22 They are cultural narratives providing us
with a sense of the ‘proper order of things,’ 23 which we use to create and evaluate
our own narratives.
However, narrative research uncovers how power relationships are at play in
narratives as narratives reflect power relationships. 24 According to Jabri, ‘a central
component of violent conflict is the emergence of dominant discourses which seek
to subsume multiple subjectivities into singular modes of identity requiring
conformity and allegiance.’ 25 This means that people in power have the
opportunity to dictate certain ideas through discourses, notably using the state
system. As a consequence, ‘discursive structures therefore act to express,
legitimate and maintain particular power relations.’ 26 The result is that only
particular ‘ways of knowing’ 27 are disseminated, promoting a version of ‘truth’
which serves the power holders and, in situation of conflict, most often fuel the
conflict and increase social inequalities.
Again, this has consequences on how we understand conflict. Firstly, as power
is at play, mostly the powerful have access to the production of knowledge.
Therefore, ‘authoritative discourses may serve the interests of power rather than
truth.’ 28 The content of cultural knowledge can be manipulated so that, for
instance, whole groups of people are excluded. Similarly, memory may be
controlled. Indeed, ‘memories of past conflict are passed from generation to
generation by means of stories.’ 29 These cause a community to experience in the
present, injustice and violence committed in the past as they call upon conflictual
events that happened centuries ago, a ‘time collapse’ that exacerbates the
conflict. 30
With the issue of power comes the issue of ‘truth’ and of the potential of
manipulating narratives. Dowdall explains that the demonisation of the ‘enemy’
and the discourse of defence against threat and destruction is the rationale for the
perpetrators to commit their crimes, a rationale that they present as ‘truth’ although
it may be a ‘tissue of lies.’ 31 The truth is deeply subjective as each group’s
experience depends on their cultural reality and historical narrative. As Rothman
puts it, ‘one side’s freedom fighter is very often another side’s terrorist.’ 32 He then
concludes, ‘seeking the ‘objective’ truth about such a conflict […] is futile; it leads
only to deaf dialogue.’ 33
3. The Challenges of Using Storytelling in Conflict Transformation

A. A Wide Range of Storytelling Initiatives
Storytelling in conflict transformation can be concerned with two different
types of stories. First, some organisations ‘use folktales to present metaphorical
models of social justice and injustice to encourage reflection, discussion and
eventual change.’ 34 However, here I look at personal memorate or personal stories.
As a fundamental characteristic of narratives is that they enable people to forge
Melanie Rohse 59
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their individual and collective identity, it is worth investigating whether the telling
of narratives can create ‘bonds between disparate groups and individuals.’ 35
Often, there is a lack of definition or agreement on what constitutes a
storytelling process in conflict transformation and the term encompasses a variety
of experiences, from educational storytelling in school tackling social justice for
example, to the performing arts and peace workshops. However, I have found that
the academic literature focuses mainly on the institutionalised uses of storytelling.
This institutionalisation can be done by organisations at a local or transnational
level. For example, Bar-on has written extensively on the project To Reflect and
Trust, which is an example of storytelling for conflict transformation
institutionalised at the international level. 36 Indeed, the project brings descendants
from victims of the Holocaust together with descendants of perpetrators of the
Holocaust in storytelling workshops, giving it a strong international dimension.
Storytelling can also be found at a local level in the form of storytelling peace
workshops ran by local grassroots organisations. In this case, peacebuilding
organisations tend to select a certain amount of participants from both sides to a
conflict and bring them together for a residential where they are invited to share
their personal story. There is a strong belief that this process will allow people to
realise the humanity of their enemies and to go as far as empathising with them.
This is this particular type of storytelling that I investigate in the remainder of the
chapter.
Storytelling can also be institutionalised at a national level, like in the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Here, the State organises a
systematic process of collecting victims’ and perpetrators’ stories in the form of
testimonies in an effort of restorative justice. More than twenty countries set up
their own truth commission. 37
B. Assumptions of the Contact Hypothesis

A challenge of using storytelling in conflict transformation emerges from the
lack of systematic unpacking of the underlying assumptions of the contact
hypothesis that the practice is based on. The hypothesis was first put forth by
Allport who assumed that ‘people typically have a favourable view of their
intergroup while maintaining more negative ... stereotypes and prejudices toward
outgroups.’ 38 Allport suggests that ‘interaction between members of opposing
groups can lead to a reduction of prejudice and hostility.’ 39 This is what
institutionalised storytelling is based on but it does not take into account that in
Allport’s theory, there is a list of preconditions that need to be met before
resolution can actually happen. Therefore, the reduction of prejudice through
contact is by no means guaranteed and there is a lack of evidence to support the
hypothesis.
In particular, one precondition, the principle of equal status between the
concerned parties, is an issue in the practice of storytelling in conflict
__________________________________________________________________
transformation. In the academic literature, both Senehi and Malhotra and Liyanage
put forward the idea that contact may increase empathy towards the other group,
which may lead to a decrease in violence. 40 However, Malhotra and Liyanage state
that it is not an easy exercise due to the asymmetry of powers that exist between
the groups. Similarly, Salomon denounces the assumption of reciprocity in peace
education and advocates an asymmetry of legitimisation favourable to the weaker
side for the efforts towards reconciliation to be productive. 41 Bar-on and Kassem
likewise describe the asymmetries of power in protracted conflicts. However, they
argue that it can be used in a positive way in peace encounters. 42 For them, the
difference between victim and victimiser is very blur in current conflicts.
Storytelling workshops, because they create trust and involve emotions, may allow
these complex internal dilemmas to surface so that people acknowledge that they
may hold both roles and then understand better where the others come from. Still,
the debate has no straightforward answer as Senehi also advances that storytelling
may be associated with coercive powers and therefore can become a destructive
experience. 43
Moreover, the asymmetries of power do not only exist in the storytelling
workshop. They are also happening in the wider society in which the workshops
are situated. Only Bar-on and Kassem and Salomon touch upon this matter and
explain that peace workshops will not achieve reconciliation on their own without
further work at the macro-level of society. 44 This crucially raises the issue of the
evaluation of the long-term impact of peace workshops.
C. The Challenges with Evaluation

Firstly, despite their pioneering work on storytelling in reconciliation, Bar-on
and Kassem and Senehi elude the question of long-term work and evaluation of the
impact of peace workshops. This confirms Malhotra and Liyanage’s view that
there is a lack of research on the long-term impact of peace workshops and their
efficacy in the quest for reconciliation. 45 They hold that so far, there has been too
much emphasis on short term programmes and on measuring their effects.
Similarly, Salomon posed the question of whether reconciliation needs a ‘shot in
the arm’ or an ongoing socialisation. He observes that reconciliation and
coexistence would actually benefit more from long-term encounters rather than
from short-term ones and like Malhotra and Liyanage, he criticises the ‘paucity of
long-term evaluation studies.’ 46
In addition, I believe there is an issue of ‘artificiality’ in peace workshops.
They are usually very intensive and if they are facilitated skilfully, can lead
participants to have a feel good experience. However, how long does this last?
When people fill in feedback forms at the end of a workshop they may feel very
positive about it but what is the long-term impact that this will have on their lives
and furthermore on their communities? This highlights the importance of long-term
Melanie Rohse 61
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programmes that will work on people’s socialisation in depth rather than just on
the surface.
Linked to this is the question of how to reach out not only with already
sympathetic audiences, but also with mainstream society or political extremists.
But this issue is not widely tackled despite institutionalised storytelling facing the
challenge of engaging the wider community. The issue of ripeness of a community
to engage in conflict resolution processes means that as it stands, in most cases,
participants in storytelling workshops are selected and have to go through an
interview process before they go on the residential. This raises questions about the
wider impact of storytelling and its actual use for conflict transformation. Indeed, if
it is organised only for people who are sympathetic to the idea of reconciliation,
one can doubt how it will further reconciliation in the wider community.
4. Conclusion: Open Questions

We have seen above that there are many challenges facing the use of
storytelling as a tool of conflict transformation, not least a lack of clarity about the
various storytelling initiatives and their varied aims that makes comparison and
learning more difficult. It is worth mentioning that there are many other
storytelling initiatives, but also that casual storytelling may be worth investigating,
like the everyday stories that people tell each other and that play a part in our
ongoing socialisation.
Some core open questions remain: How do we address the ambivalence of
storytelling? How do we reach out to people in the wider community? Who is the
audience of the storytelling experience? How do we have a long-term impact? How
do we evaluate our practice?
It is worth noting that so far, the literature on storytelling has tended to ignore
the human capacity for self-deception, which means that contradictory accounts
live side by side in human beings. Despite acknowledging that transformation takes
time, it does not emphasise the difficulty that this creates in encouraging people to
change their story. Therefore, there is a real challenge to investigate storytelling by
asking under what conditions people are able to revise their stories and whether
everyone is able to achieve transformation.
Notes
1
Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher, eds.,
The Uses of Narrative: Explorations in Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural
Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 9.
2
Rick Wallace, ‘Grassroots Community-Based Peacebuilding. Critical Narratives
on Peacebuilding and Collaboration from the Locality of Indigenous and Non-
Indigenous Activists in Canada’ (PhD diss., University of Bradford, 2010).
__________________________________________________________________
3
Sara Cobb, ‘Interview by Julian Portilla’, last modified 2003, accessed March 3,
2011, http://www.beyondintractability.org/audiodisplay/cobb-s.
4
Robert H. Jackson, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and
Approaches, 3rd Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 162.
5
Susanne Buckley-Zistel, ‘In-Between War and Peace: Identities, Boundaries and
Change After Violent Conflict’, Millenium - Journal of International Studies 35,
No. 1 (2006): 4.
6
Cobb, ‘Interview by Julian Portilla’.
7
Theodore R. Sarbin, ed., Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human
Conduct (New York: Praeger, 1986), 9-11.
8
Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and
Intersubjectivity (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 11.
9
Dan Bar-On, Tell Your Life Story: Creating Dialogue between Jews and
Germans, Israelis and Palestinians (Budapest and New York: Central European
Press, 2006), 25.
10
Ronald N. Jacobs, ‘Narrative, Civil Society and Public Culture’, in The Uses of
Narrative: Explorations in Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies, eds.
Molly Andrews et al. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 24.
11
Robert Toscano, ‘The Face of the Other: Ethics and Intergroup Conflict’, in The
Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, ed. Eugene Wiener (New York: Continuum
Publishing, 1998), 67-68.
12
Frederick W. Mayer, ‘Narrative and Collective Action: The Power of Public
Stories’, paper prepared for presentation at the American Political Science
Association Annual Meeting Philadelphia, 2006, accessed February 15, 2011,
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/5/0/5/7/p150578
_index.html.
13
Andrews et al., The Uses of Narratives, 7.
14
Clive Seale, ‘Resurrective Practice and Narrative’, in The Uses of Narrative:
Explorations in Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies, eds. Molly Andrews
et al. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 41.
15
Terrell A. Northrup, ‘The Dynamics of Identity in Personal and Social Conflict’,
in Intractable Conflicts and Their Transformation, eds. Louis Kriesberg, Terrell A.
Northrup and Stuart J. Thorson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989), 68-
76.
16
Jessica Senehi, ‘Constructive Storytelling: A Peace Process’, Peace and Conflict
Studies 9, No. 2 (2002): 49.
17
Ibid., 50.
18
Gavriel Salomon, ‘A Narrative-Based View of Coexistence Education’, Journal
of Social Issues 60, No. 2 (2004): 276.
Melanie Rohse 63
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19
Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence : Conflict Analysis Reconsidered
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 128.
20
Ibid., 130, emphasis in the text.
21
Kevin Whelan, ‘Rights of Memory’, in Report: Storytelling as the Vehicle?
Conference, ed. Grainne Kelly (Belfast: Healing Through Remembering, 2005), 6.
22
Mayer, ‘Narrative and Collective Action’.
23
Ibid.
24
Barbara Czarniawska, Narratives in Social Science Research (London: SAGE,
2004), 9.
25
Jabri, Discourses on Violence, 183.
26
Shelley Day Sclater, ‘Introduction’, in The Uses of Narrative: Explorations in
Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies, eds. Molly Andrews et al. (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 131.
27
Jabri, Discourses on Violence, 140.
28
Senehi, ‘Constructive Storytelling’, 47.
29
Ibid., 54.
30
Ibid.
31
Terry Dowdall, ‘Psychological Aspects of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission’, in To Remember and to Heal: Theological and Psychological
Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation, eds., H. Russel Botman and Robin M.
Petersen (Cape Town: Human and Rosseau, 1996), 32.
32
Jay Rothman, ‘Dialogue in Conflict: Past and Future’, in The Handbook of
Interethnic Coexistence, ed. Eugene Wiener (New York: Continuum Publishing,
1998), 231.
33
Ibid.
34
Caren Schnur Neile, ‘Storytelling and Social Change: Introduction to the Special
Issue’, Storytelling, Self, Society 5, No. 2 (2009): 71.
35
Ibid., 71.
36
Dan Bar-On, Bridging the Gap (Hamburg: Korber-Stiftung, 2000) and Bar-On,
Telling Your Life Story.
37
Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict
Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts,
Second Edition (Oxford: Polity, 2005).
38
Gordon W. Allport as cited in Nurit Tal-Or, David Boninger and Faith Gleicher,
‘Understanding the Conditions and Processes Necessary for Intergroup Contact to
Reduce Prejudice’, in Peace Education: The Concept, Principles, and Practices
around the World, eds. Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2002), 90.
39
Ibid.
__________________________________________________________________
40
Senehi, ‘Constructive Storytelling’, 48 and Deepak Malhotra and Sumanasiri
Liyanage, ‘Long-Term Effects of Peace Workshops in Protracted Conflicts’, The
Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, No. 6 (2005): 918-919.
41
Salomon, ‘A Narrative-Based View of Coexistence Education’, 281.
42
Dan Bar-on and Fatma Kassem, ‘Storytelling as a Way to Work through
Intractable Conflicts: The German-Jewish Experience and Its Relevance to the
Palestinian-Israeli Context’, Journal of social issues 60, No. 2 (2004): 292.
43
Senehi, ‘Constructive Storytelling’, 45.
44
Bar-on and Kassem, ‘Storytelling as a Way to Work through Intractable
Conflicts’, 304 and Salomon, ‘A Narrative-Based View of Coexistence Education’,
281.
45
Malhotra and Liyanage, ‘Long-Term Effects of Peace Workshops in Protracted
Conflicts’, 909.
46
Salomon, ‘A Narrative-Based View of Coexistence Education’, 284.
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The Uses of Narrative: Explorations in Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural
Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004.
Bar-On, Dan, and Fatma Kassem. ‘Storytelling as a Way to Work through

Intractable Conflicts: The German-Jewish Experience and Its Relevance to the
Palestinian-Israeli Context’. Journal of Social Issues 60, No. 2 (2004): 289–306.
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—––. Tell Your Life Story: Creating Dialogue between Jews and Germans, Israelis
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Melanie Rohse 65
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the understanding of conflict.
Narrative of Resilience from the Grassroots of the
Southern Philippines
Gail Tan Ilagan

Abstract
This study used narrative psychology and interpretative phenomenological
techniques to privilege the subjective meaning locals make in the stories they tell
of the natural hazard-induced and human-initiated disasters that visited their
communities in the last decade. Nine community stories, a brief description of the
dreaded Abu Sayyaf Group in Jolo and Basilan, and three narrative features were
constructed from workshop sessions with selected residents from nine villages and
on-site interviews in six of these villages. Results yielded the articulation of social
imaginaries, experience of community trauma events, anticipatory processes,
coping, protection and functional adjustments, and adaptive learning which were
then examined for the impact of disaster in terms of re-organisation of thought,
social relationships, and community processes. Findings indicate the need to
highlight the importance of reflective and dialogic processes to promote social
cohesion and external support to disaster-affected areas. Stakeholders to peace in
southern Philippines are encouraged to dignify and support local actions for self-
organisation and empowerment in the aftermath of community disasters.
Key Words: Community trauma, oral narratives, resilient communities, post-

disaster recovery, Southern Philippines.
*****
1. Introduction
Resilience studies are seemingly synonymous with trauma studies. Resilience
has long been recognised to mitigate the impact of trauma; trauma, in some cases,
can transform into resilience. Thus, there often is no way to investigate one without
turning up the other.
Transforming trauma into resilience necessitates for the trauma story to be
consciously incorporated in the psychohistory of those who experienced it. In
trauma recovery work today, narrative forms pioneered by White and Epston find
increasing application, 1 particularly in grassroots communities where oral tradition
remains to be the norm.
The shift in the last decade towards resilience studies has generated an array of
conceptual models and action strategies to help communities prepare for, ward
against, cope with, withstand, and recover from disasters. However, Almedom
noted that resilience realities are contested, with questions on how they are framed
and by whom. 2 While there is pressure from the international humanitarian
imperative to protect public health and human security even across continents,
70 Narrative of Resilience from the Grassroots of the Southern Philippines
__________________________________________________________________
there is also the pressure of the rights-based imperatives of autonomy and self-
determination that assert for the consideration of local context when grassroots
communities organise to mitigate the impact of adverse events.
When disasters do happen, they impact at the local level, although communities
do not experience the same event in the same way. Thus Longstaff et al. argued
that community resilience assessment ought to be at the local level where
emergency planning and response activities should be guided by an assessment of
five interrelated community subsystems - ecology, economy, physical
infrastructure, civil society, and governance. 3 The proposed assessment framework
incorporates both preventive/protective processes and response/recovery processes,
departing from earlier conceptions of resilience that mainly emphasised risk
reduction and anticipation.
Community subsystems may be assessed for resource robustness and adaptive
capacity - or active learning, flexibility, and openness to novel solutions in times of
crisis. 4 Adaptive learning requires that people transform how they imagine their
community, the people they share it with, and how they believe they are supposed
to interact with each other.
A community is where people meet their needs in interaction with others. Yet,
interactions therein are influenced by the social imaginaries people hold of
themselves. 5 Social imaginaries are internalised social cognitions that influence
who are allowed to interact with whom. They are carried in the narratives people
tell about how they relate with each other in their community. In times of crisis
when the supply routes could be disrupted, social imaginaries offer a key to
examine the social processes for the distribution and allocation of whatever meagre
resources there are among community members.
In times of community crisis, people must be willing to find new ways to work
together with what they have and to innovate as new realities unfold. Milstein and
Henry underlined the importance the readiness of people to initiate connection and
positive relations, transcend differences, and allow diversity of opinion from where
practical solutions could be surfaced to consider in shaping collective responses. 6
In examining social change towards stability, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers
emphasised looking out for new interactions that emerge at the boundary points
between social groups, arguing that these points are where the system is most
vulnerable to positive change. 7 New relationships form new connections; new
connections make possible the emergence of novel, more adaptive behaviours.
The foregoing suggest for future resilience assessment to focus at the local level
and also tell where to look, what to examine, and how to do it. There is a need
however, to be cautioned against blindly accepting normative value judgments as
resilience studies may overly emphasise the ability of communities to withstand
adversity or, worse, be used to justify prescriptions that shift responsibility for
addressing the crisis towards the survivors and away from the duty bearers.
Gail Tan Ilagan 71
__________________________________________________________________
While there indeed are studies that unabashedly highlighted the ability of war
refugees, for example, to actively engage efforts for their own healing and
rebuilding, this does not negate the need for more resilient studies to be done in
communities that are yet to be free of disturbance-driven challenges. The more
their particular context is understood, the more able would stakeholders be to craft
support mechanisms to enhance the capacities of these communities to overcome
adversity.
2. Community Trauma in the Southern Philippines

Many places in the grassroots of southern Philippines still experience sporadic
outbreaks of deadly encounters between combatants of various persuasions and
contending interests. There are three major security threat groups that are active
here: the Muslim secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); the local
terrorist band of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG); and the communist revolutionary
New Peoples Army (NPA). Lawlessness and local clan disputes further contribute
to the volatile peace and order situation in the region. Security forces also report
the presence of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Indonesian terrorist group that is
purportedly working to establish a Muslim caliphate from the south of Thailand
down to Australia. 8
Loose firearms abound in areas where police presence is weak and warlordism
has remained to be the de facto political authority. Some political patrons back
their power with a formidable arsenal; in other areas, civilians arm themselves -
sometimes with the assistance of the state - to deter or defend against armed
threat. 9
In recent years, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) due to armed
conflict peaked three times: in 2000 during the all-out war against the MILF; in
2003 during the Buliok war, and; during the 2008-2009 pursuit operations against
three MILF commanders who had staged violent attacks on civilian targets. The
600,000 people displaced due to the 2008-2009 hostilities was the ‘biggest new
displacement in the world,’ accounting for close to 15 percent of newly displaced
people all over the world that year. 10
In 2011, the worsening impact of global climate change had floods replacing
armed conflict as the main cause of forced displacement in the region, affecting
more than a million residents in the first five months. The January rains alone
caused floods and landslides in 777 villages in all six regions of Mindanao. 11
Often, reports from Mindanao highlight psychic trauma and distress happening
in this region. Scant attention has been paid, however, to the grassroots efforts at
recovery and human agency - both at the level of the individual and the community
- in areas affected by conflict and calamity.
Much has been learned about resilience realities on the global front, and yet
such may not adequately capture the peculiar nuances of resilient realities in
Mindanao enough to inform the crafting of more appropriate risk reduction policies
__________________________________________________________________
and post-disaster recovery plans. The burden of this chapter then is to contextualise
the resilience realities of at-risk communities in Mindanao to hopefully inform the
development of policy changes and initiatives to strengthen and complement such
home-grown endeavours.
This study explored the experiences of nine war-vulnerable villages in
Mindanao for insights into their understanding of the particular constellation of
challenges they respectively confronted and the unique responses they evolved to
address these. Specifically, this chapter sought to examine the re-organisation in
thought and the restructuring of social relations among the villagers themselves
and as they related with external agencies to hasten the resumption of normal
community life and enhance their preparedness for future such events. Owing to
space constraints here, this article shall only discuss the experience of two villages.
3. Methodology
Following a qualitative research design, small group discussions and interviews
with five representatives of two villages were employed to draw narratives of their
experiences of armed conflict episodes in their community. The five participants
varied in age, gender, ethnicity, educational attainment, profession, family
circumstance, and extent of community involvement.
The two contiguous villages subject of this paper sit at opposite sides of the
border that separates the towns of Aleosan and Pikit in Cotabato. The village of
Pagangan in Aleosan covers 1,067 hectares of rolling hills and plains. It is home to
about 600 farming households of diverse ethnic mix that earn an average of
PhP3,066 per month. Land disputes between Muslim and settler groups here
escalated into bitter armed conflict in the early 1970s, but soon after gave way to
uneasy peace. However, portions of the village remain an active transit area for
armed Muslim secessionist groups. In 2008, military offensives were mounted to
flush MILF commander Amiril Umra Kato out of the Tubac complex in the
marshy portion of the village. 12
The village of Nalapaan in Pikit, on the other hand, has about 270 farming
families, also of diverse ethnic descent. Nalapaan also hosted fierce fighting
between vigilante groups in the 1970s. Today, families here earn less than
PhP4,000 per month from farming rice, corn, coconut, and mango. Nalapaan holds
the distinction of being the first village to be declared a Space for Peace on the
strength of a peace covenant drawn up by the residents with the government and
the MILF.
Structured small group discussions and individual interviews with the local
residents drew oral narratives of their community experiences of armed conflict
episodes. Validation of results was done through site visits, archival review and
interviews of local government officials, community volunteers and partners,
journalists, historians, and military ground commanders.
Gail Tan Ilagan 73
__________________________________________________________________
The audio recording of the community narratives were transcribed from the
original Philippine languages and translated to English, with particular attention to
preserving the thought structure and normal conversational cadence of the original
transcript. The narratives were coded for excerpts referring to details of interest.
4. Contextualising Community Trauma

The narratives that emerged from the discussions vary in depth and degree of
detail. The Pagangan story was narrated by a woman leader while the Nalapaan
story was told by the village chief.
Priming the narrations was the articulation of the social imaginaries that
villagers held, detailing how they described their people and the nature of the
interactions among them. Results yielded that while ethnic diversity was marked as
matter of fact, the narratives also brought out the conditions under which the social
rift could widen and interethnic harmony could break down. Overall, it was
indicated that among themselves, neighbours could negotiate cooperation for new
behaviours that could hasten the return of stability to their village. In 2008, for
example, the call of the Nalapaan village chief for the displaced to stay together
was heeded, whereas in the earlier armed conflict episodes, the residents evacuated
en masse to the main district of Pikit.
Despite sitting right next to each other and having access to basically the same
network of external support, there were marked differences in the way the three
armed conflict episodes affected each village. An examination of aspects of the
ecology, economy, physical infrastructure, civil society, and governance of these
communities yielded that they varied in terms of resource robustness, and thus
varied also in their resilience capacities. While residents in both places relied on
farming, the presence of water source in one made for richer agricultural resources
there. However, subsistence-level income in both communities suggested that their
residents could not afford extended interruption to their daily farm activities, like
in the case of protracted episodes of armed conflict.
While both had designated evacuation centres during the violent outbreaks,
these proved inadequate. In Pagangan, it was just a hastily erected tent in the solar
dryer; in Nalapaan, it was the school building. The decision to utilise these
community infrastructures for temporary shelter demonstrated flexibility and the
will to make do with what there was. However, it also meant a disruption of the
services for which these were intended.
Almost upon their influx into these evacuation centres, the IDPs became
heavily dependent on external support. Even as village officials scrambled to meet
the needs of the displaced, the reality was that emergency relief from the local
government units was sorely limited. Community volunteers pulled in to help
distribute care packages provided by civil society organisations, humanitarian
groups, and donor agencies. Distribution relays appeared to be more functional in
Pagangan, with specific committees tasked to cover certain areas. In Nalapaan,
__________________________________________________________________
volunteers consisted mostly of younger residents, with distribution centralised at
the schoolyard.
Active learning mitigated the adverse impact of war experiences from one
armed conflict episode to the next. To a certain extent, there was an openness to
entertain and attempt novel solutions in response to the disturbance-driven
challenges. As an illustration, Pagangan villagers learned after the 2000 all-out war
that by reworking their social imaginaries - from seeing themselves as mere
recipients of to more active volunteers in relief distribution, they could establish a
more orderly relay system, thereby significantly improving their ability to care for
those affected by the subsequent war episodes.
Nalapaan, for its part, learned that negotiating with the combatants could
prevent the scale of devastation that the community experienced in 2000. The
audacity to negotiate with combatants could only have been the result of a re-
organisation in thought that allowed village leaders to conceive that a peace pact
could even be a possibility and that combatants would be willing to talk peace. It
implicated a transformation in the way they viewed themselves - from helpless
bystanders to self-determined stakeholders who had the right to demand that
outsiders take their war somewhere else.
This new behaviour emerged from interactions initiated by the Pikit parish
priest Roberto Layson with the village leaders in the evacuation centres. At a time
of crisis, new interactions occurring at boundary points between social groups - in
this case, between the Catholic peace advocates led by Layson and the
predominantly Muslim village chiefs - could result in novel solutions that would
improve community conditions. Evidently, the idea surfaced and gained persuasion
because people were ready to transcend religious differences and consider new
ways to shape their collective response.
5. Implications and Recommendations

Fundamental to trauma recovery is the need for the trauma story to be
consciously incorporated in the psychohistory of those who experienced it.
Narrative forms are increasingly recognised as a tool in contextualising community
trauma, and storytelling is prescribed for use particularly in grassroots
communities. Thus, the drawing of these narratives on the war experiences of these
villages borrowed from techniques in trauma work that sought to structure the
stories from beginning to end for coherence, contextualising the telling in the
identity of the narrators and their personal accounting of the events.
The narratives showed that both villages suffered almost total devastation in
2000, but had more marked differences in their respective experience of the 2003-
2004 and 2008 war episodes. The difference appeared to be influenced by the
execution of a community-initiated peace accord in one and the return of a military
target in the other.
Gail Tan Ilagan 75
__________________________________________________________________
Armed conflict brought equal suffering among the residents and yet in one
village, the fragile interethnic social bonds held, keeping the displaced within an
identified safe zone where emergency relief could get to them. In the other, it
awakened dormant suspicions and prejudices each group held of the other, making
it hard for Muslims and settler families to stay together in the designated
evacuation centre. With the evacuees splitting across ethnic divides, duty bearers
and emergency responders found it difficult to reach them with timely aid.
Communication relays, especially in the later years when text messaging
became commonplace, served as early warning of impending threat to Pagangan.
Today, leaders follow news reports on the progress of the peace talks between the
government and the MILF, in the belief that armed clashes in the area would come
in the wake of the talks breaking down. Having brokered a peace covenant,
Nalapaan does not see the need to anticipate armed threat and is therefore yet to
develop early warning mechanisms.
Both villages were characterised by scarce emergency resources and
infrastructure. Coping in times of armed conflict was aided by the patchwork
efforts of a multitude of sources that over the protracted period of displacement
were evidently inadequate to alleviate human suffering and deprivation. Local
infrastructures intended for other purposes were commandeered to shelter the
displaced, although adjustments were attempted to minimise disruption of normal
services.
Displacement overwhelmed local governance resources and capacities even as
village officials liaised for external support from various humanitarian agencies.
Political will was shown by the Nalapaan leaders in their seeking representation
with the combatants for the successful negotiation of a peace covenant. Today,
planning for disaster risk and recovery management has been tabled in both
villages with the hope of smoothly articulating these local plans with the
procedures established by higher government units.
Given the above, there remains the need to support home-grown efforts for the
enhancement of resilience in these villages. The employment of dialogic processes
to further break down social divides is recommended especially for Pagangan
which could yet significantly improve social cohesion among its multicultural
members. For Nalapaan, there is a need for leadership to seriously consider
establishing early warning mechanisms that would allow people more time to
secure their belongings before they have to leave their homes. Apparently, there is
also a need for the network of early responders to coordinate support initiatives and
avoid duplication of materials. Duty bearers should find ways to overcome inertia
in response to community crisis by hastening the inventory of affected residents
and the delivery of emergency relief, especially in the first few days. Response
plans should take note of the functional community-based relay system and use this
for more orderly and timely support to families in crisis.
__________________________________________________________________
On a methodological note, it appears that there is validity to the criticism that
resilience studies have to dignify normative value judgments. Storytelling lends to
the narrator the position of the protagonist and, depending on how strongly he feels
about presenting himself and his community in a good light, the story he tells could
indeed gloss over their experience of hardships and overemphasise their ability to
withstand adversity. The details provided in community stories, therefore, ought to
be validated from more objective sources, with particular sensitivity to gender and
cultural difficulties that community crisis may bring.
The relative merit of community narratives lies in their articulation of the
elements to collective experience that people have invested with meaning. For a
more sustainable engagement, therefore, these are the elements that stakeholders
and supporters should consider and build on when planning to aid the villages for
emergency planning and disaster preparation.
Notes
1
Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (New
York: Norton, 1990), 213-237.
2
Astier M. Almedom, ‘Profiling Resilience: Capturing Complex Realities in One
Word’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Journal 35 (2011): 145-154.
3
Patricia H. Longstaff, et al., ‘Building Resilient Communities: A Preliminary
Framework for Assessment’, in Homeland Security Affairs VI, No. 3 (2010),
accessed July 23, 2011, http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=6.3.6.
4
Douglas Paton and David Johnston, Disaster Resilience: An Integrated Approach
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 2006), 8.
5
Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press,
2004), 12.
6
Mike M. Milstein and Doris Annie Henry, Leadership for Resilient Schools and
Communities, 2nd Edition (Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2008), 62-65.
7
Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers, ‘The Paradox and Promise of
Community’, in The Community of the Future, eds. Frances Hesselbein, Marshall
Goldsmith and Richard Beckhard Schubert (San Francisco: Josey Bass, 1998), 14.
8
Andrew T. H. Tan, ed., A Handbook of Terrorism and Insurgency in Southeast
Asia (United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, Inc., 2007), 58.
9
‘Philippines: More to Worry about 13,000 Shotguns for Civilians in Mindanao’,
accessed August 14, 2011, http://www.humanrights.asia/news/forwarded-
news/AHRC-FST-055-2008.
10
‘Special Edition on Mindanao Disasters’, Our Mindanao, June 2011, 5-6.
11
Ibid., 7.
12
Norman Bordadora, ‘MILF Renegade Worries Palace’, Philippine Daily
Inquirer, 20 August 2011, A2.
Gail Tan Ilagan 77
__________________________________________________________________
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York: Norton, 1990.
__________________________________________________________________
Gail Tan Ilagan is the director of the Center of Psychological Extension and
Research Services (COPERS) of the Ateneo de Davao University.
Sewn Narratives
Nina Sabnani
Abstract
When the earthquake of 2001 shook the region of Kutch in India, it brought to fore
lost memories of partition for a community of traditional embroiderers and a new
form of narrative. At a visitor’s suggestion, the reluctant women worked through
their trauma of the earthquake by embroidering their experiences as narratives in
stitches. They had not attempted storytelling of this kind before; but once they did,
they found a voice. A voice that not only described the plight of people in difficult
times of the earthquake but also the one that recalled other difficult forgotten times.
The women went on to narrate personal stories of migration, stories of childhood
and stories of how they came to work together as a collective, through a medium
they knew best. The embroidery and appliqué was no longer limited to making
decorative household pieces; it spoke about their aspirations, fears and joys
through narratives. The embroidered cloth became a way of piecing together an
identity. The women wanted to claim their artist identity as against the imposed
artisan identity and looked for ways to celebrate their work. Thus began my
engagement with them, a year long journey in which we collaborated to make an
animated documentary, where their stories are told in their own voices through
their medium of embroidery and appliqué. The cloth comes alive with stories
recounted by multiple voices. The viewer is invited to construct their own
narrative. In this chapter we discuss how a narrative becomes a bearer of memory
and is collectively constructed through collaboration between the artists of Kutch,
their narratives, their art, the language of animation and my engagement as the film
maker.
Key Words: Trauma, migration, memories, embroidery, narratives, animation,

collaboration, storytelling.
*****
1. Story and Memory

Stories are ubiquitous and pervade our lives. Narrating of an event or action,
results in generation of meaning. Our way of understanding the world is partly in
the form of remembering events and actions and ordering them in time and space.
By recounting a set of events that are memorable, story validates memory and
gives it form. Story and memory have a strong interdependent relationship. Just as
a narrative or story cannot exist without memory, so is story itself a bearer of
memory. Story imparts life to experiences and makes remembered events
memorable.
80 Sewn Narratives
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Story is also a way of knowing because it has the apparatus to store and retrieve
knowledge. Stories have been used to: ‘remember, argue, justify, persuade, engage,
entertain and even mislead audiences.’ 1 The events in memory may be pleasant or
traumatic; they find credence when they are expressed and recalled as a narrative.
Memories can be lodged in objects as Marcel Proust has eloquently pointed out
in Swann’s Way (Remembrance of Things Past):
The Past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the

reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation in
which the material object will give us) which we do not suspect. 2
Sometimes memories are shaped into objects as has been seen in the case of the
artisans in the region of Kutch in India, who experienced the earthquake in 2001.
The traumatic events were remembered by embodying their experience as narrative
images in the language of embroidery and appliqué. The embroideries became the
bearer of memory and once the past was integrated into the present, the story was
told again. This time it was retold in the form of an animated film that was made in
collaboration with the film maker.
Does the telling and retelling of the same tale serve any function? Is it a way of
looking at past experience from a present location and is that location flexible? Can
the medium of film serve as a carrier of memory as well as elicit memory?
2. Displacement and Trauma

The earthquake of 2001 shattered the very foundation of people’s faith in life. It
not only took away lives, destroyed homes and work places but created a sense of
utter dislocation for the survivors. The repeated tremors of lower intensity that
rocked the region for almost a month after the first earthquake only reinforced a
sense of disillusionment and despair. In any difficult situation, the non-expression
of trauma continues to affect the survivor’s life and does not really allow them to
‘move on.’ The image-memory of the devastation haunts them for a long time.
Everyday life is ruptured and the security of routine is lost.
For a group of artisans at Kala Raksha, 3 fate intervened in the form of a visitor
who asked them to share their experience of the earthquake through narrative using
their art of embroidery and appliqué. The suggestion came with an understanding
that art therapy has the means to help those who cannot speak for some reason and
have difficulty expressing their thoughts. There was no precedence to this form of
expression and the women were reluctant to begin with, but they agreed to
experiment. Remembering the past collectively gave them the strength to proceed
and soon they found they had a lot to share. Each person recollected their
memories of that day and stitched the event. Some depicted the impact of the
earthquake on their houses, others showed the plight of their animals and some
represented the very moment where the sky was covered with flying debris with no
Nina Sabnani 81
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recognisable figures or objects. Sharing the work with each other validated their
memories.
Marian MacCurdy suggests that humans have the ability to adapt and adjust
and turn difficult experiences into normal situations. If that is not possible they
push them into those recesses of the mind where they lie dormant unless and until
they are recalled by an external stimuli. 4 This re-living of the memory of the
earthquake brought to fore other memories of displacement that some of the artists
had experienced post the Indo-Pak was in 1971.
After 1947 when the subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan,
Hindus of various castes lived along the southern regions of Sindh as minorities.
When the 1971 Indo-Pak war broke, many Hindus migrated across the border. The
community of Maru Meghvals 5 were amongst those that migrated to India in 1972.
They had to live the life of refugees without a citizenship for eight years in a
desolate deserted place. The trauma of this displacement was never articulated till
the women made their narrative pieces about the earthquake. Possibly the memory
of relocation due to war had had a deeper impact on the artists which only came to
the surface when they were sharing their experience of the earthquake. One reason
for this silence could be that such displacement had raised the question of identity
that was never articulated and was only recalled by another memory of trauma.
Some members recalled memories of another earthquake they had experienced as
children but had forgotten over time. This sharing strengthened community bonds
as it gave them a collective memory of displacement and the remaking of their
lives in the face of adversity.
3. Voices in Stitches
Significantly, the new focus on the art of craft generated strong feelings of
engagement in their work, and the artists knew that this approach to work was
viewed differently and was appreciated. By narrating their experiences through
embroidered images the artists gained confidence in their narrative expression.
They realised their potential as storytellers. This imagery they produced was not a
matter of aesthetics or form; it was representing thoughts shared by a community
experiencing an event together. The cultural heritage of embroidery also came to
be understood as a medium for personal expression.
The sense of personal expression and ownership grew and with it a sense of an
individual identity. They wanted to voice their thoughts on what they saw around
them. The narrative pieces on earthquake made way for migration stories, and then
their own surroundings. This quest for their ‘own’ space also brought responses to
their contemporary spaces and immediate issues. Some women made images of a
power plant that had invaded their space while others made images of festivals,
weddings, maps of their village and even their reflections on women’s work. Each
artist developed her individual design vocabulary, syntax and grammar, innovating
new ways of telling; each firmly based in the traditional roots of appliqué and
82 Sewn Narratives
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embroidery, yet visually distinct from each other. Two such artists Meghiben
Maria and Raniben Bhanani, decided to tell the story of their organization Kala
Raksha. Their narrative pieces defined the place, people, activities and their own
location within the place. Their work began to receive global acclaim and the
organisation made its presence felt on the web and media.
In 2005, Kala Raksha ventured to institute Kala RakshaVidhyalaya, the first
institution of design education for artisans. Its year long program encouraged
artisans to view their work objectively, to innovate consciously for distant markets,
and to find their own individual styles of expression. The program generated an
unprecedented sense of pride and need to share.
Now the artists felt their identity was fused with that of a craftsperson and
needed to assert the artist identity and celebrate their work. Their work was not
limited to making decorative household objects. They were speaking through their
work and sharing their perspectives on life and the world. Acknowledging the
power of media they commissioned documentary films in which they appeared and
spoke about their work and life. They realised that cinema had the potential to
bring the past and present together. And, when they came in contact with
animation they began to see its potential to bring their imagination to life. Thus
began our collaboration to bring together their memories and art.
4. Collaboration between Memory and Art

This collaboration was between creative people both steeped in their own
traditions of image-making, and both given to work with imagination. We began
our collaboration by active listening and learning about the art itself. The objective
was not to make any truth claims to represent ‘reality’ but rather offer versions of
reality as experienced, because all interpretation it would seem is ‘an expression of
our own consciousness.’ 6 Our role was to be the ‘second person’ and become a
‘confirming witness’ in these ‘acts of memories.’ 7 Two kinds of memories
emerged in this act of telling. One was that of making the piece, a memory of the
process of arriving at the image. And the other was that of the event itself. And in
between there were moments of reflection that were stimulated by their own
images and our questions. The act would begin with defining the location and
characters in the narrative. This would be followed by a description of the event
that took place and their own role in that activity. Occasionally they would stop to
describe what they were thinking and feeling. To cite an example, Raniben said,
‘This part here that I have made, is when India and Pakistan fought. Why they
were fighting I don’t know but India won the land we were on. So we decided to
come to India.’ 8 In this case the narration is imitative of cinema, where in the
Deleuzian sense the time image is ‘a co-existence of distinct durations, or of levels
of duration; a single event can belong to several levels: the sheets of past coexist in
a non-chronological order.’ 9
Nina Sabnani 83
__________________________________________________________________
In the process of bringing together the various perspectives, we too interpreted
the narratives and the visuals in our own way. We worked with memory and
multiple narratives of several artists who shared their life stories. Our challenge lay
in how we would represent and preserve the plurality of voices without losing the
thread of the narrative. This inspired us to script the film as a conversation piece
between four voices. Two voices represented the artist, the third voice was that of a
child survivor and the fourth was a scholar who has been a founding member of the
organisation. This structure allowed us to freely navigate across different spaces
and time and to hear the individual voices.
The visual and tactile attributes of the embroidery gave themselves easily to film
animation. The images created by the artists and the way they navigated through
their work in the act of describing their art work was cinematic. Their voices
animated the figures they had created and the movement was provided by the way
they turned the cloth in all directions. They treated the cloth like a map, a territory
that we traversed together in the act of telling. The invocation of touch made the
virtual experience more immediate. In the film we mimicked this gesture by
turning the frame around and with the movement of the camera.
We did not interfere with the orientation of the images in the cloth and
animated them in the way they were depicted. Some figures were at right angles to
the frame, some walked upside down and some were mirrored sideways, as in the
case of the bullock carts. We interpreted the visual orientation of the figures as
multiple perspectives and points of views that needed to be presented as they were
visualised.
In the narrative the individual identity emerges gradually as the individual
slowly asserts herself. This is reflected in the manner in which the characters are
revealed. In the beginning of the film the figures look similar and non-
recognisable, and emerge as recognizable individuals towards the end; mirroring
the life journeys of these artists.
5. Telling and Retelling

When the artists saw the film they were surprised to see how film time differed
from real time. All the stories they had shared with us over a period of time had
been told and represented in the film in compressed time. One artist felt their lives
had been made immortal. The film invoked self-reflection and added value and
credence to their stories. What was lost in terms of time and place was gained by
space and imagination. The film became another way of recalling the past and
generated new memories, and unearthed others forgotten in time.
There is value in a tale being told over and over again. The past is seen from a
present location and each present moment modifies the past memory. By telling
and retelling the past is forever brought into the present which makes way and
shapes the future. It also allows for reinterpretation of the past to ‘make sense’ of
events and our responses to those events. New meanings may be constructed and
84 Sewn Narratives
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memory is wrested from time. To quote Marcel Proust, ‘The work of art can
recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction.’ 10 Time may erase memory but
story and art can triumph over it and preserve it for the future. In this case film
became a way of preserving the memory and also generated new ones.
Notes
1
Catherine Kohler Riessman, Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences (New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008), 8.
2
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (Digireads.com, 2009) 31.
3
Kala Raksha, Preservation of Traditional Arts, a social enterprise was established
in 1993, as an alternative to existing commercial enterprises. Kala Raksha focused
on the artisan as designer-creator. Through the organisation, women artisans
tentatively ventured outside, created innovations for the contemporary market, and
began to earn wages that they themselves determined. Being a part of Kala
Rakshahas changed artisans’ attitudes and sense of identity. They have developed
pride in being an artisan, and take pride in their tradition and cultural identity. For
more information see http://www.kala-raksha.org.
4
Marian M. MacCurdy, The Mind’s Eye: Image and Memory in Writing about
Trauma (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 10-38.
5
The Maru Meghvals are low caste community, whose profession was weaving
and leatherwork. Legend has it that the high caste Rajputs forbade them to wear the
metallic brocade worn by the upper caste. This very proscription motivated Maru
Meghval women to invent suf embroidery to embellish their otherwise simple
fabrics.
6
Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007), 24.
7
Meike Bal, Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1999), x.
8
In a personal communication with Raniben Bhanani in Sumrasar Sheikh, Bhuj,
December 2008 that was subsequently used in the film Tanko Bole Chhe (The
Stitches Speak) directed by Nina Sabnani.
9
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 (London: Athlone Press, 1989), xii and 98.
10
‘In Search of Lost Time’, Wikipedia, 2012.
Bibliography
Bal, Meike. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Edited by Meike Bal,
Jonathan V. Crewe, and Leo Spitzer. Hanover: University Press of New England,
1999.
Nina Sabnani 85
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Bruner, Jerome. ‘The Narrative Construction of Reality’, edited by W. J. T.

Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Critical Inquiry 18, No. 1 (1991):
1–21.
Deleuze, G. Cinema 2. London: Continuum, 2005.
MacCurdy, Marian M. The Mind’s Eye: Image and Memory in Writing about
Trauma. Amherst: University of Massachussets Press, 2007.
Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

2004.
Marks, Laura U. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the
Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000.
Pink, Sarah. Doing Visual Ethnography. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001.
Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way (Rememberance of Things Past, Volume 1).

Translated by C. K. Moncrieff. Vol. 1. Digireads.com, 2009.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008.
Rubin, Judith Aron. Art Therapy: An Introduction. Philadelphia: Taylor and

Francis, 1999.
Schank, Roger C., and Robert P. Abelson. Knowledge and Memory: The Real
Story. Edited by Robert S. Wyer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1995.
Untawale, Mukund G. ‘The Kutch-Sind Dispute: A Case Study in International

Arbitratin’. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 23, No. 4 (October
1974): 818–839.
Wikipedia. ‘In Search of Lost Time’. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. February
22, 2012. Accessed 27, 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=In_Search_of_Lost_Time&oldid=47833
4597.
86 Sewn Narratives
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Woodward, Kathryn. Identity and Difference. Edited by Kathryn Woodward.

London, California and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997.
Nina Sabnani is an artist, animation director and illustrator, passionate about

storytelling and collaborative work. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the
Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay, India where she coordinates the PhD
programme.
Telling Lives: Narrative Experiments in Research on Children’s
Experiences of Domestic Violence
Jennifer Jean Infanti

Abstract
This chapter discusses the variety of ways I used stories and story-telling in my
doctoral research (between 2004-2008) on children’s experiences of domestic
violence in the Manawatu region of New Zealand. I argue that narrative methods
are an effective way to engage children in the research process, particularly in
discussions on the sensitive topics of their lives (for example, experiences of
multiple losses, separations, violence and abuse). I consider the benefits my
research participants gained from the process of telling their life stories, including
finding coherence and meaning in sometimes shocking or devastating experiences,
and beginning to construct images of possible future selves. I also describe the
benefits to researchers of experimenting with narrative voice in our texts; namely,
to assist us in creating vivid portraits of real people; capture the actual discourse of
our participants; and show the particularities and uniqueness of life experience, not
to mention life’s emotional dimensions. Finally, I discuss how the use of narrative
interviewing in research can create the contexts for connecting with participants in
ways that go beyond the superficial - environments in which the researcher (also
the listener) (and the witness) can truly grasp the experience of another, and
whereby both researcher and participant can learn to find joy in the process of
making sense of stories and experiences which might otherwise break the heart.
Key Words: Story-telling, children, domestic violence, narrative interviewing,

research methods, life experience.
*****
1. Staking the Field in New Zealand

I began a doctoral programme in social anthropology in 2004, in the town of
Palmerston North, New Zealand. Following an initial year struggling to get the
project off the ground, I eventually found a research home in the community
organisation, the Palmerston North Women’s Refuge Trust Incorporated (PNWR).
The PNWR is an affiliated member of the National Collective of Independent
Women’s Refuges in New Zealand (NCIWR), a network of 51 community
organisations providing emergency accommodation, a 24-hour crisis telephone
service, and support and advocacy to women and children leaving violent
relationships. I was initially attracted to the organisation’s advertisement for
volunteer staff because of its mandate to assist both women and children. I had
arrived in New Zealand with a very broad goal in mind for my research: to
demonstrate the ways children wrestle meaning and sense of the difficult
88 Telling Lives
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circumstances of their lives. In turn, I hoped to contribute to the limited
anthropological literature on children’s cultures and establish the value and
importance of incorporating children’s views into public policies directly affecting
them. I was curious, thus, to learn about the effects of family violence on
children’s lives, as well as the services offered to child witnesses to abuse in New
Zealand.
Upon completing the volunteer training programme, I realised there was an
opportunity with the PNWR to take voluntary work a step further; namely, to
engage in the research practice Linda Tuhiwai-Smith has described as
‘intervening:’ the process of becoming a ‘proactive...[and] interested worker for
change.’ 1 I offered to dedicate my volunteer hours to designing a domestic
violence education and support programme that I would co-facilitate with the
organisation’s children’s advocate in exchange for the opportunity to invite the
programme participants to take part in my research. The Refuge’s collective
membership accepted my offer enthusiastically and I went on to co-facilitate six
groups of a total of 22 children (ages 5-12 years) in 2005 and 2006 in an
afterschool programme I called the Dragonflies Tamariki Programme. Ten of these
children also participated in life story interviews for my eventual dissertation.
2. Narrative Ethnography
Over the course of my research, I was increasingly drawn to narrative
ethnography with its goal ‘to tell a story,’ 2 one which is always ‘subject to
reconstruction and reinterpretation.’ 3 Ultimately, my thesis told several stories of
boys and girls living with domestic violence in New Zealand.
Narrative accounts of human action and intention have long preoccupied the
anthropologist’s attention, especially researchers concerned with ‘the social
significance of myths, legends and tribal stories.’ 4 As far back as 1975, Geertz
suggested that culture is constituted through ‘the ensemble of stories we tell about
ourselves.’ 5 However, stories only moved centre stage significantly in social
thought in the past two decades as accounts of human experience were increasingly
seen as the outcomes of the ‘particular textual/cultural history in which people
learn to tell stories of their lives to themselves and others.’ 6 Today, Plummer
argues that stories are seen in anthropology as
The pathways to understanding culture. In psychology, they are

the bases of identity. In history, they provide the tropes for
making sense of the past. In psychoanalysis, they provide
“narrative truths” for analysis. 7
The particular appeal of narrative ethnography for me was its promise to

overcome the problems of generalising accounts of social life and human
experience. According to Abu-Lughod, generalisation was ‘the characteristic mode
Jennifer Jean Infanti 89
__________________________________________________________________
of operation and style of writing of the social sciences for much of the
20thcentury;’ 8 and it has certainly been the predominant style of domestic violence
research. Generalisations have been critiqued, however, for feigning to be ‘neutral
description’ 9 and for ‘facilitating abstraction and reification.’ 10 In addition
Generalizations, by producing effects of timelessness and

coherence to support the essentialized notions of “cultures”
different from ours and peoples separate from us, [can] make us
forget...[that] events take different courses. That is the nature of
“life as lived,” 11 everywhere. 12
Abu-Lughod argues strongly for ‘refusing to generalize in our writing,’ therefore,

in order to show
The actual circumstances and detailed histories of individuals
and their relationships...suggest[ing] that such particulars, which
are always present (as we know from our own personal
experiences), are also always crucial to the constitution of
experience. 13
Indeed, I focused on capturing the depth and nuanced complexities of

children’s experiences of domestic violence in New Zealand in my work, rather
than making general conclusions about the impacts, effects, or outcomes of
witnessing abuse.
Practically, narrative ethnography offered a number of advantages for my
research topic. Domestic violence is not available for first-hand study or
observation; it literally occurs behind closed doors. As such, it was necessary to
analyse stories of violence. In addition, my research participants - all children
between 5 and 12 years old - were either natural storytellers or at least familiar
with stories and story-telling. Adopting a narrative approach in my research and
writing, therefore, was an effective way to engage the children comfortably in
collaborative research activities and conversations and, later, represent their
discourse. Including their extended narratives in my work also made it easier to
avoid a common problem with research on children’s lives whereby adult
interpretations are taken as children’s truths. The children in my research spoke
largely for themselves.
Finally, narratives are‘humanising;’ 14 in the context of my doctoral work, they
held potential for making human the experience of family violence. This approach
offered an alternative to the many positivist and statistical analyses that existed in
the literature, helping create instead ‘rich textured portraits of three-dimensional
peoples’ rather than dichotomising depictions of either ‘passive victims’ or ‘active
survivors.’ 15
90 Telling Lives
__________________________________________________________________
3. Capturing Experience Alive
In the end, what I contributed primarily with my thesis were representations of
my participant’s accounts of their lives and my ‘impressions, observations,
thoughts, reflections, surmises [and] speculations’ 16 of these stories. As with
Robert Coles, the ‘heart of my work [was] listening,’ then selecting and describing
‘the most revealing excerpts’ 17 I heard about children’s experiences of domestic
violence. This approach reflected my belief that the real learning to be gained from
the research was inherent in the ideas of the children - my participants - themselves
and helped me to better capture experience alive.
I used a number of creative writing strategies in my thesis: dramatic
representation, dialogue, monologue, multiple voicing, poetry, ethnographic
fiction, and textual collage. I cannot share examples of each of these forms in this
chapter, but move next to describing one experiment with narrative form: a
presentational text, or play. In the process, I aim to demonstrate how and why
narrative methods are effective for engaging children in the research process,
particularly in discussions about the sensitive topics of their lives (for example,
experiences of loss, separation, violence, abuse). In addition, I hope to show the
benefits to researchers of experimenting with narrative voice in our texts; namely,
to assist us in creating vivid portraits of real people; capture the actual discourse of
our participants; and show the particularities and uniqueness of life experience, not
to mention life’s emotional dimensions.
I begin by picking up where I left off above, with the establishment of my field
site at the Palmerston North Women’s Refuge and the start of the Dragonflies
Tamariki Programme.
4. Recording the Field

To illuminate the many dimensions of my fieldwork process, the longest
chapter of my thesis (117 pages) featured a four-act play titled, A Record of
Fieldwork. The chapter covered a lot of terrain: each act of the play represented a
different context and phase of fieldwork, the different relationships I shared with
research participants, and the different roles I played along the way. The play
illustrated the methods I incorporated into the research and writing of the thesis,
their strengths and limitations, and how they addressed the gaps in research on
children’s lives that initially spurred my interest in this topic. I also used the
chapter to discuss some of the ethical and practical challenges I confronted over
the course of my research, as well as the host of surprises, joys, frustrations,
delights, awkward and uncomfortable moments, and exchange of learning and
ideas that took place in the Dragonflies group programme. Finally, I reflected on
themes and directions emerging from the children’s narratives in this chapter,
weaving together process, interpretation, and voice using different literary
strategies.
__________________________________________________________________
Structurally, the four acts of A Record of Fieldwork were interspersed with
short audience briefings (preparatory information) and summary reflections that
served to draw out themes from the acts for discussion. Thus, I continually shifted
between dramatic presentation and analysis. There is also an interval between the
second and third acts of the play, which marked the transition from the group
programme to the final research conversations I had with my participants (life story
interviews), as well as a noticeable shift in my role from community worker to
academic researcher. Images 1-3 below are excerpts from the play.
Image 1: Opening scene, A Record of Fieldwork.
Image 2: Excerpt based on Dragonflies initial assessment interview.

92 Telling Lives
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Image 3: Excerpt from Week 5 workbook activity, Dragonflies Programme.
5. Writing Performance
Writing the traditional methodology chapter of my thesis as a play seemed the
most appropriate way to represent experiences that felt performative to me, rather
than natural or embodied, especially at the beginning. For example, during the first
few interviews and group sessions of the Dragonflies Tamariki Programme, I was
highly conscious of the way I spoke, the words I chose, the environment I created
and, of course, the mistakes I made.
Writing a presentational text (a play) also felt like the most potent way to show
children’s unique language and dialogue, ‘it’s rhythm, syntax, and semantics.’ 18
Paradoxically, perhaps, the format was equally effective for representing the
significant amount of non-verbal communication that took place in the Dragonflies
groups because of the addition of stage directions indicating silent actions.
Following Conquergood, I attempted to represent children’s voices and agency in
A Record of Fieldwork in a way that did more than ‘turn the “other” into the object
of a voyeuristic, fetishistic, custodial, or paternalistic gaze.’ 19 I wrote about real
people and real lives, not research subjects.
6. From Dragonflies to Life Story Interviews

The Dragonflies group sessions were excellent opportunities to glimpse the
varied ways children’s knowledge and ideas about family violence developed and
changed in their relationships with each other. However, there was never enough
__________________________________________________________________
time in the programme to allow the children’s conversations to continue for
lengthy periods, especially where one participant was particularly adept at talking
about his or her experiences. Also, over the course of the first programme, I gained
a new appreciation for the phenomenological argument that humans, at best,
approximate shared realities. 20 The more children I met, and with each experience
they shared in their groups, I realised how unique or singular their understandings
of family violence truly were. As the first programme came to its end, I knew I
wanted to tap deeper into the minutiae of the children’s individual experiences,
especially the more intimate details of their lives. Towards this end, I began to
schedule follow-up interviews with the participants following the completion of
their groups.
Many of my participants had experienced at least one interview in their lives
prior to our research conversation, usually with a social worker, lawyer,
psychologist or other court-appointed person, about custody or access issues and/or
their relationships with their parents. They described these experiences as highly
structured and uncomfortable, so it was important to me to ease any potential
anxieties the children might have about our conversations. As such, when I
explained the interview process to the children - first with their caregiver(s) present
at a post-programme meeting, and then before our recorded conversations began on
the day - I emphasised that they should play the role of storyteller of their own
lives in our discussion, telling me stories about their pasts, presents, and imagined
futures. I usually continued further in this direction by inviting my participants to
think about their lives as stories with different chapters, plots, settings, and
characters. I asked them to name each chapter and describe its important contents.
For the older children, this helped frame their narratives and assisted them in
recalling the key events of their pasts. The younger children, usually six to eight
year olds, required more straightforward examples about the particular kinds of
memories I was interested in hearing; for example, rather than asking for an open-
ended response to questions about the best moment in their life story, I chose more
specific questions such as: ‘Can you tell me the time in your life when you were
the happiest? Why were you so happy? What was happening? Who was there?
What were you thinking? What were you feeling?’
After gaining a general outline of each participant’s story, we moved into
conversations about particular life events, including highest and lowest points,
turning points, earliest and most important memories. I asked the children to
describe these events with as much detail possible - for example, who was with
them, what happened, how they reacted, what they were thinking and feeling, why
the event was important to their life story, or what it said about the person they are
today. Next, I would ask participants to reflect on the greatest challenges they had
faced in their lives, how they coped (or did not cope) with these events, if other
people assisted them, and how the challenges impacted their overall life stories.
Finally, we discussed alternative futures for our life stories. This involved thinking
94 Telling Lives
__________________________________________________________________
about the kinds of goals and dreams we might like to accomplish in our futures and
trying to imagine what the future chapters of our life stories might look like. I
attempted to gain a sense of the children’s realistic fears and worries about their
futures too, asking if they could spend a moment describing an ending for their life
story that they really hoped would not come true.
In general, the children’s memories, experiences, and understandings of family
violence emerged naturally from the stories they told me of their lives, especially
about their lowest points, turning points, and life challenges. Sometimes, however,
especially with the younger participants, it was necessary for me to ask specific
questions about the violence they had witnessed in their families in order to better
understand the meanings they assigned to these experiences. In these instances, I
invited participants to tell me a story that would help me understand the day-to-day
life of a child in a family that fights. I also occasionally asked them to talk to me
about the kinds of things they wanted, needed, and expected from their parents;
how they felt when they watched a fight in their families; and what they learned,
both positive and negative, or anything at all, from the fighting.
It is difficult to describe the interviews without them sounding more structured
and sterile than they were in reality. It was important to me to create a comfortable
atmosphere for the conversations, so I would ask each participant if he or she
preferred to find a quiet space at their homes for our talk, or to join me at the
Women’s Centre in Palmerston North, or our Dragonflies playroom. My desire
was, as Kiesinger’s, to create a ‘story-telling atmosphere - a warm, conversational
space in which participants would feel safe accounting for their lives in vivid and
detailed ways.’ 21 Overall, I believe I was successful in this goal as nearly every
interview evolved into a free-flowing discussion. I reacted intuitively to the stories
the children shared with me and asked the questions that arose naturally for me to
stimulate further conversation.
7. Final Reflections
I worked exclusively and directly with child research participants, seeking to
better understand how children conceive and understand family violence rather
than how adults think children feel. There are still few forums for children to
express their feelings and opinions on the difficult topics of their lives, such as
domestic violence, and - for a few of my participants - the opportunity to
participate in this research was also an ‘opportunity for self-expression.’ 22 While I
do not have the scope to explore the literature on this topic here, my research
suggested that storytelling, particularly the telling of one’s life story, can play an
important role in the construction of possible selves - ‘individuals’ ideas of what
they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of
becoming.’ 23 My work confirmed, too, Jerome Bruner’s conclusion that
__________________________________________________________________
A child can be helped to take a story and retell it in a way that
allows [him or her] to present difficulties and to do so in a way
that makes change conceivable and attainable. 24
Methodologically, I propose that critical, intimate, narrative research is one

way to answer Laurel Richardson’s call for qualitative texts ‘that are
vital…attended to, [and] that make a difference.’ 25 Narrative researchers write
about the stories that matter to their participants (indeed this is why these particular
accounts have been shared). It is very often the case that ‘private’ troubles are
public issues; 26 domestic violence being a key example. Narratives have an
inherent potential to make an impact because they are generally accessible and
engaging in contrast to much traditional scientific research-writing. Where they are
presented in moving or evocative ways, as stories that ‘feel the sting of memory,’27
narratives can also be compelling, prompting reflection that may even stimulate
public discourse. 28
On a personal note, as Weingarten writes, ‘we are all always witnesses. People
speak, we hear, whether we choose to or not. Events explode in front of us,
whether we want to see or not.’ 29 The difference between unintentional and
intentional witnessing is that, in the first instance, we are shocked by the stories we
hear (for example, stories of violence told by young children). This can be
depressing, harmful, even toxic. 30 The flip-side of the witnessing coin, though,
comes when we ‘grasp the experience of another’ and we feel we ‘know what to
do.’ 31 I do not mean to suggest that we know exactly what to say in all instances,
the right words or the right way to behave. More fundamental than this to me
though, knowing what to do means recognising that merely listening can assist a
speaker to render his or her experiences - what he or she has seen - more
understandable. 32 As such, although a simple act, listening is indeed doing
something.
Over the course of my research, I was privy to testimonies of violence and
abuse that could ‘break the heart.’ 33 Yet, at the end of the study, my heart was not
broken. I do not believe this was due to a lack of empathy, becoming desensitised
or disillusioned, or learning to ‘hold misery at arm’s length.’ 34 Instead, I contend
that the narrative nature of my research provided a context for connecting with
some of my participants in ways that went beyond the superficial. Through these
relationships, I learned to find joy in the process of making sense of stories and
experiences of violence together. I learned to listen to children with compassion
and empathy and show appreciation for their life experiences no matter how
unfamiliar, far-removed, or devastating they seemed to me. Essentially, I learned to
become an engaged and intentional witness.
96 Telling Lives
__________________________________________________________________
Notes
1
Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999), 147.
2
Laura McClusky, Here, Our Culture Is Hard: Stories of Domestic Violence from
a Mayan Community in Belize (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 14.
3
Margareta Hyden, ‘Women Battering as a Marital Act: Interviewing and Analysis
in Context’, in Qualitative Studies in Social Work Research, ed. Catherine Kohler
Riessman (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994), 109.
4
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1968); Katharine Galloway Young, Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The
Phenomenology of Narrative (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987) cited in Mary M.
Gergen, ‘Narrative Structures in Social Explanation’, in Analysing Everyday
Explanation: A Casebook of Methods, ed. Charles Antaki (London: Sage, 1988),
96.
5
Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1988) cited in Heather Fraser, ‘Doing Narrative
Research: Analysing Personal Stories Line by Line’, Qualitative Social Work 3
(2004): 180.
6
Mary M. Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen, ‘Qualitative Inquiry: Tensions and
Transformations’, in Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman K. Denzin
and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000), 1027.
7
Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds
(London: Routledge, 1995), 18.
8
Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing against Culture’, in Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox (Santa Fe: School of American
Research Press, 1991), 149.
9
Michel Foucault, ‘Politics and the Study of Discourse’, Ideology and
Consciousness 3 (1978); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books,
1978); Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist
Sociology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).
10
Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing against Culture’, 149.
11
Paul Reisman, Freedom in Fulani Social Life: An Introspective Ethnography
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
12
Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing against Culture’, 156.
13
Ibid., 152-153.
14
John O. Stewart, Drinkers, Drummers and Decent Folks: Ethnographic
Narratives of Village Trinidad (New York: State University of New York Press,
1988).
15
Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of
Collective Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Judith K.
__________________________________________________________________
Brown, ‘Introduction: Definitions, Assumptions, Themes and Issues’, in Sanctions

and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives, eds. Dorothy Ayers
Counts, Judith K. Brown and Jacquelyn C. Campbell (Boulder: Westview, 1992);
E. Valentine Daniel, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in the Anthropology of Violence
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Robert Knox Dentan, ‘Bad Day at
Bukit Pekan’, American Anthropologist 97, No. 2 (1995); Robert Knox Dentan, ‘It
Didn’t Matter Any More What the Wailing Sounded Like’, Active Voices: The
Online Journal of Cultural Survival 1 (1997); Robert Knox Dentan,
‘Untransfiguring Death: A Case Study of Rape, Drunkenness, Development and
Homicide in an Apprehensive Void’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs
33, No. 1 (1999); cited in McClusky, Here, Our Culture Is Hard, 19.
16
Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1986),
90.
17
Coles, Moral Life of Children, 17.
18
Norman K. Denzin, ‘The Practices and Politics of Interpretation’, in Collecting
and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, eds. Robert Knox Dentan and Yvonna S.
Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003), 484.
19
Dwight Conquergood, ‘Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the
Ethnography of Performance’, Literature in Performance 5, No. 2 (1985) cited in
Denzin, ‘Practices and Politics’, 469.
20
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970); Alfred Schütz
and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life World (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1973).
21
Christine Elizabeth Kiesinger, ‘Anorexic and Bulimic Lives: Making Sense of
Food and Eating’ (PhD diss., University of South Florida, 1995), 54.
22
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant
Anthropology’, Current Anthropology 36, No. 3 (1995): 418.
23
Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, ‘Possible Selves’, American Psychologist 41
(1986): 954.
24
Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996),
113.
25
Laurel Richardson, ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry’, in Collecting and
Interpreting Qualitative Materials, eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln
(Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003), 501.
26
Arthur Charity, Doing Public Journalism (New York: Guilford Press, 1995).
27
Denzin, ‘Practices and Politics’, 471.
28
Charity, Doing Public Journalism; Denzin, ‘Practices and Politics’.
29
Kaethe Weingarten, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day - How We
Are Harmed, How We Can Heal (New York: Dutton, 2003), 392-393.
98 Telling Lives
__________________________________________________________________
30
Weingarten, Common Shock.
31
Kaethe Weingarten, ‘Witnessing, Wonder, and Hope’, Family Process 39, No. 4
(2000); Weingarten, Common Shock.
32
Weingarten, ‘Witnessing, Wonder, and Hope’.
33
Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
34
Scheper-Hughes, ‘The Primacy of the Ethical’, 416.
Bibliography
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Working in the Present, edited by Richard G. Fox, 137–162. Santa Fe, New
Mexico: School of American Research Press, 1991.
Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart.
Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1996.
Brass, Paul R. Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of

Collective Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Brown, Judith K. ‘Introduction: Definitions, Assumptions, Themes and Issues’. In

Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives, edited by
Dorothy Ayers Counts, Judith K. Brown, and Jacquelyn C. Campbell, 1–18.
Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1992.
Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1996.
Charity, Arthur. Doing Public Journalism. New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1995.
Coles, Robert. The Moral Life of Children. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1986.
Conquergood, Dwight. ‘Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the

Ethnography of Performance’. Literature in Performance 5, No. 2 (1985): 1–13.
Daniel, E. Valentine. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in the Anthropology of

Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
__________________________________________________________________
Dentan, Robert Knox. ‘Bad Day at Bukit Pekan’. American Anthropologist 97, No.
2 (1995): 225–250.
—––. ‘It Didn’t Matter Any More What the Wailing Sounded Like’. Active Voices:
The Online Journal of Cultural Survival 1 (1997): 1–4.
—––. ‘Untransfiguring Death: A Case Study of Rape, Drunkenness, Development

and Homicide in an Apprehensive Void’. Review of Indonesian and Malaysian
Affairs 33, No. 1 (1999): 17–65.
Denzin, Norman K. ‘The Practices and Politics of Interpretation’. In Collecting and

Interpreting Qualitative Materials, edited by Robert Knox Dentan, and Yvonna S.
Lincoln, 458–498. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.
Foucault, Michel. ‘Politics and the Study of Discourse’. Ideology and

Consciousness 3 (1978): 7–26.
Fraser, Heather. ‘Doing Narrative Research: Analysing Personal Stories Line by

Line’. Qualitative Social Work 3 (2004): 179–201.
Geertz, Clifford. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1988.
Gergen, Mary M. ‘Narrative Structures in Social Explanation’. In Analysing

Everyday Explanation: A Casebook of Methods, edited by Charles Antaki, 94–112.
London: Sage, 1988.
Gergen, Mary M., and Kenneth J. Gergen. ‘Qualitative Inquiry: Tensions and
Transformations’. In Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K.
Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 1025–1046. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental

Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Hyden, Margareta. ‘Women Battering as a Marital Act: Interviewing and Analysis

in Context’. In Qualitative Studies in Social Work Research, edited by Catherine
Kohler Riessman, 95–112. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1994.
Kiesinger, Christine Elizabeth. ‘Anorexic and Bulimic Lives: Making Sense of

Food and Eating’. PhD diss., University of South Florida, 1995.
100 Telling Lives
__________________________________________________________________
Markus, Hazel, and Paula Nurius. ‘Possible Selves’. American Psychologist 41

(1986): 954–969.
McClusky, Laura. Here, Our Culture is Hard: Stories of Domestic Violence from a
Mayan Community in Belize. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Plummer, Ken. Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. London:
Routledge, 1995.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, Texas: University of Texas

Press, 1968.
Reisman, Paul. Freedom in Fulani Social Life: An Introspective Ethnography.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Richardson, Laurel. ‘Writing the Other, Re-Writing the Self: The Consequences of
Poetic Representation’. In Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived
Experience, edited by Carolyn Ellis, and Michael G. Flaherty, 125–140. Newbury
Park, CA: Sage, 1992.
—––. ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry’. In Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative

Materials, edited by Norman K. Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 499–541.
Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1978.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant

Anthropology’. Current Anthropology 36, No. 3 (1995): 409–440.
Schütz, Alfred, and Thomas Luckmann. The Structures of the Life World.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.

Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
Stewart, John O. Drinkers, Drummers and Decent Folks: Ethnographic Narratives

of Village Trinidad. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Tuhiwai-Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous

Peoples. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1999.
__________________________________________________________________
Weingarten, Kaethe. Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day - How We

Are Harmed, How We Can Heal. New York, NY: Dutton, 2003.
—––. ‘Witnessing, Wonder, and Hope’. Family Process 39, No. 4 (2000): 389–
402.
Young, Katharine Galloway. Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The Phenomenology of

Narrative. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.
Jennifer Jean Infanti is an anthropologist interested in the vast array of social and
cultural factors influencing health and well-being. She is currently employed as a
post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Medicine at the National University
of Ireland in Galway. Jen spends a significant amount of her non-working hours
foraging in hedgerows and forests for all kinds of wild edibles, or touring around
on one of her four bicycles.
Part 3
Narrative and Identity

Story and the Making of Identity: The Stork and the Elephant
Lariane Fonseca and Gregoria Manzin

Abstract
The narratives, through which artists, authors and readers form meaning and
understanding of a cohesive sense of self, come from the series of fragmented and
disjointed events we call life. There exists within each of us a desire to create unity
and form so each individual will sequence and add linearity to the events
remembered. ‘We are our stories,’ and whatever form these records take, they all
entail the creative spirit of humankind: they use the creative ability of individuals
to enable those who come after them to view and interpret life in another time. In
this chapter two authors, draw on their doctoral research to examine the role and
power of story in relation to articulating a sense of identity.
Key Words: Story, storytelling, memory, identity, dislocation, life story, narrative
inquiry.
*****
We live our lives deeply connected to and surrounded by stories. Our stories
are mediated by narrative discourse. For Porter Abbott ‘we are always called upon
to be active participants in narrative, because receiving the story depends on how
we construct it from the discourse.’ 1 As humans, our instinctive nature for
storytelling can be a powerful antidote in times of stress and personal emotional
turbulence. It is an embryonic language of the heart and it has been used by
teachers and healers from ancient spiritual traditions.
The narratives through which artists, authors and readers form meaning and
understanding of a cohesive sense of self come from the series of fragmented and
disjointed events we call life. There exists within each of us a desire to create unity
and form, so each individual will sequence and add linearity to the events
remembered. The quest for identity can be viewed as the quest for one’s own story;
that is, a story voicing the desire to answer the question ‘who am I?’ In this chapter
we will outline how the desire to answer this fundamental question can be satisfied
through a narrative discourse returning (our) story to centre stage. The chapter is
divided into two parts: firstly, ‘the stork’ provides the theoretical framework and
sets the foundation by which we can understand the process of excavation of the
landscape of self to arrive at a sense of identity. This is revealed in the second part
called ‘the elephant.’
1. The Stork: Story as the Unified Design of Identity

Hannah Arendt warned us that the question ‘who am I?’ defies answer: ‘The
moment we want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into
106 Story and the Making of Identity
__________________________________________________________________
saying what he is.’ 2 If we hope to find answers to this question with the help of
philosophy, we are equally stalled. Philosophy is concerned with universal
questions rather than with the exploration of individual life threads. Arendt comes
to the conclusion that ‘who somebody is, or was we can only know by knowing the
story of which he is himself the hero - his biography, in other words.’ 3
The Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero reformulates Arendt’s
recognition of biography as the space to articulate the essence of a specific who
through the identification of two ontological spheres: that of a zoe, which answers
to what we are and explains our mode of existing, and that of a bios, pertaining to
who we are and therefore to our active living. 4 In essence, rather than looking at
the story of one’s life as the means to simply understand who one is, Cavarero
recasts this paradigm into a dynamic framework.
If we accept that identity is not static and we shape our sense of self throughout
our life, then we need to understand how we make sense of this process of
becoming. The narration of a life story (be it a biography or a self narration) is
therefore understood as a performative action, which in Cavarero’s view also takes
on a political valence. It is political in its Arendtian meaning: the narration of one’s
life story coincides with the revelation of which one is and marks the entry into the
public forum by virtue of an act of exposure. Logically, for it to be possible,
exposure assumes the presence of an other. The latter is a corollary rephrased by
Cavarero as follows: ‘The expositive and relational character of identity are thus
indistinguishable. One always appears to someone. One cannot appear if there is
no-one else.’ 5 The performative value attributed to narration finds its supportive
evidence in the fact that ‘the story reveals the meaning of what would otherwise
remain an intolerable sequence of events.’ 6
Cavarero explains this concept with the assistance of a story featuring in Karen
Blixen’s Out of Africa. In the story a man who lives near a pond is awakened in the
middle of the night by a great noise and gets up to find out what is causing it.
Darkness does not allow him to see where he is going therefore he resolves to
simply follow the noise, stumbling and falling several times. Finally he finds a leak
in the dyke and starts repairing it. After completing his repair job, he returns to
bed. Waking up in the morning, the man looks out of his window towards the dyke.
He notices with surprise that, if observed from above, the footprints he left on the
ground the night before forms the picture of a stork. 7
Here the stork represents ‘the figural unity of the design […]. The pattern that
every human being leaves behind is nothing but their life-story.’ 8 From this angle,
the unified design resulting from a life story implies that the journey is observed
from a detached perspective; that is, either the story is narrated by someone else or,
if a self-narration, the self deems the journey complete. For this reason Cavarero
highlights how the attempt to answer the question ‘who am I?’ finds its expression
in the form of a desire.
Lariane Fonseca and Gregoria Manzin 107
__________________________________________________________________
The narration of a life story as an active response to this desire requires a
process of ordering and organising of life events so as to reveal the unified picture
they entail. This task brings memory to the foreground. If the answer to ‘who am
I?’ leads us to our life story, memory can be viewed as the agency for the
reconstruction of the life journey. Here memory is to be understood in its
individualised form: as strings of recollections which require to be realigned to
promote remembrance as the force enabling a making sense of the past. The
narration of such a story demands that life events be examined and turning points
disclosed. In this process, we are unavoidably led into questioning the reliability of
our recollections, thus suspecting their fallacy.
John Kotre’s view on the nomadic essence of memory reverses this
precariousness. 9 As Vivian summarises it: ‘Memories […] lack a proper home - a
stable ground or origin. Instead of unity, they connote radical multiplicity.’ 10
Nevertheless, the point made by Kotre is that the often observed and questioned
discontinuity of memory is in fact one of memory’s ontological features, hence
part of its constitutive make-up. In his survey of Kotre’s arguments, Vivian alerts
us to the fact that, despite memory’s fragmented nature,
[…] Individuals […] derive their sense of identity by attempting

to remember with continuity, to symbolically or discursively
fashion a meaningful relation between the past and present,
precisely by virtue of this mnemonic discontinuity and alterity
that forms what Kotre calls “the immense ecosystem” of
memory. 11
Hence, rather than defying the validity of memory in the construction of our
past, this very ontological discontinuity of the ecosystem of memory helps us
understand the human drive toward recollection. It is because of memory’s elusive
nature that as human beings we are prone to recollect and use our recollections to
reorganise our past in a meaningful order. Here the possessive serves to highlight
that one’s own lived experience and one’s unique perception of events is at stake;
those very factors which contributed to forge our present sense of self.
Memory can therefore help us understand the critical factors at work in the act
of remembering, thus shedding light on the process that elicits the past to exercise
its power onto the shaping of the self. Edward S. Casey’s view is that ‘memory is
naturally place-oriented or at least place-supported.’ 12 For Casey place provides a
reference grid for our recollections. Thus we can argue that places function as sites
of memory prompting and supporting the narrative of one’s life story:
Place is a mise en scène for remembered events precisely to the

extent that it guards and keeps these events within its self-
__________________________________________________________________
delimiting perimeters. […] Place holds in by giving to memories
an authentically local habitation: by being their place-holder. 13
If places of memory act as signposts allowing us to identify the cardinal points

in the geography of our life story, the memory of places act as the agency that
elicits the disclosure of the unified design traced by our life story.
2. The Elephant: The Self as an Archaeological Site

The idea of memory and its reciprocal association to place is written about in
both fictional and theoretical literature. People’s sense of place and belonging
coexist and are most often located within cultural and physical landscapes. The
landscapes themselves are created out of an understanding and engagement with
the world around them. 14 For Bender there are many kinds of peopled definitions
of landscape:
Historical landscapes, landscapes of representation, landscapes

of settlement, landscapes of migration and exile, and most
recently phenomenological landscapes, where the time duration
is measured in terms of human embodied experience of place and
movement, of memory and expectation. 15
A Journey Around Myself 16 examines important issues about how an

archaeological exploration of the landscape of self reveals fragments of memory
for investigation. Memory of place is deeply inscribed within the self and can shift
in time without conscious understanding. As such it has the capacity to elicit
powerful emotions about the self in association with specific places.
Adriana Cavarero tells us that ‘the narratable self finds its home, not simply in
a conscious exercise of remembering, but in the spontaneous narrating structure of
memory itself.’ 17 Gregoria Manzin observes that ‘rather than aiming at the
identification of fragments, which compose the self, narration pursues the
recognition of unity’ and, like Cavarero, she proposes that ‘unity can only be
reached when the self is detached from the desire’ and ‘the “who” can be disclosed
only by the story.’ 18 Building on this premise, A Journey around Myself reveals a
mechanism by which personal identity and a sense of place can be articulated
through narrative discourse.
The process of telling stories requires us to access memory in order to re-
construct the experiences of the past and retranslate this experience in the present.
This is a continuous process. 19 However, time, particularly in relation to memory,
cannot be seen as a linear process; it flows backwards and forwards; sometimes
familiar, sometimes distant, elusive or real, creating a framework and forming a
backdrop for recollection; a recollection that at all times is mediated by the concept
of what we know now. 20
__________________________________________________________________
For Marcel Proust ‘memory is not a constantly accessible copy of the different
facts of our life, but an oblivion from which, at random moments present
resemblances enable us to resuscitate dead recollections.’ 21 A Journey around
Myself explores memories in the form of these ‘random moments:’ fragments
located in records and contained within family photo archives. Adele Flood notes
that ‘the place memory holds in the reconstruction of the life journey is crucial to
the manner in which an individual records and em plot their personal narrative.’ 22
By linking memory to the re-construction of a life journey and by recording
personal narrative, we discover that often what we remember are events that took
place in what Nicola King refers to as a ‘time of innocence.’ 23 This paradoxical
knowing and not knowing is the position of any autobiographical narrator. This
means that, in the present moment of a person’s narration, this position exposes
how we possess knowledge that we did not have at the moment of our experience.
In A Journey around Myself, memory plays a vital role in the recovery of the
past. Each fragment excavated was subjected to a continual process of change as it
was constructed and re-constructed and interpreted in the present moment with the
awareness of what was not known then. This process brings to light the fragility
and fallible nature of memory. A single memory can have several manifestations;
the memory exists, but at various points in time, the same memories can
materialise differently. The process of excavation and examination of clues to
memory construct identity by exposing shards that in turn provide a visual and
textual narrative of fragments. These fragments can support the development of a
sense of self in the present. The self is deemed an archaeological site for
exploration. Traversing through the layers of lost time, the excavation reveals
fragments and clues by which the story is created.
In her book Lighthousekeeping, Jeanette Winterson’s protagonist Silver is taken
in by Mr. Pew the lighthouse keeper who tells her ancient tales of homelessness
and longing. The characters engage in an exchange of stories but the essence of the
overriding narrative draws heavily on the nature and process of the stories we tell
ourselves.
Tell me a story, Pew. What story, child? One that begins again.
That’s the story of life. But is it the story of my life? Only if you
tell it. […]
Tell me a story, Silver. What story? The story of what happens
next. That depends. On what? On how I tell it. 24
In a similar fashion, I used the device of storytelling in Satatantra: The

Elephant and the Mirror, a fable which became an integral part of my PhD.
Satatantra is a ficto memoir underpinned by my life story. The central character,
the elephant Bhudevi, leaves her homeland of India for Australia. Her experience
of dislocation and her subsequent search for identity and a place to belong reflects
__________________________________________________________________
the journey around myself. Bhudevi lives in a faraway land. On the occasion of her
first birthday her mother gives her a mirror with magical powers to reflect her
identity. Not heeding her mother’s warnings to take care, Bhudevi travels the world
trustingly handing the mirror to many along the way. Some are trusted friends and
significant others, others betray and hurt her. From the reflections received she
explores and constructs her sense of self and identity.
The narrative for Satatantra evolved out of journal conversation with a muse
who simply posed the question ‘if an elephant lived a hundred years what
memories would she have?’ This self-reflexive narrative gave form to both the
fable structure and the narrative itself. In the course of this process I excavated and
unraveled memory fragments, listened to and told stories, explored photo archives,
reflected on experiences, people I have known and places I have been. Critical to
the process were several return trips to my homeland of India. I spent an inordinate
number of hours dreaming, imagining, sketching and journaling my thoughts and
ideas in research journals.
In Satatantra, the essence of the narrative discourse is concerned with the
journey of self discovery and the relationship between narrative and selfhood
rather than the degree of ‘truth’ embedded in the narrative itself. This excerpt from
the story exemplifies the narrative:
It seemed that Bhudevi still walked with the ghosts of her past.
The gathering by the pool in her watan, and her experience of her
reflection in the watery mirror, which uttered the name
“Lariane”, were now accentuated by her mother’s death. Did she
really know who she was? As they had strolled together to meet
us I had overheard one of their deep conversations.
“Do I find my way to a new self through the examination of the

old self?” Bhudevi asked her friend Weringerong. “We are the
sum of our experience” said Weringerong wisely, “so it may be
said that the old self is always contained within the new - it is
impossible to separate them - What is possible and what you may
have experienced is that there are events or critical incidents that
may at any time cause the fracturing of parts of, or the essence
of, the old self and identity.” Bhudevi was deeply engaged in her
friend’s advice, Weringerong in turn had a question for her.
“Bhudevi, or should I call you Lariane, tell me - can an identity

be lost and found or can it become renewed and resumed through
new experiences and memories?” She asked.
Bhudevi smiled at being called Lariane, then hurried to answer
the question. 25
__________________________________________________________________
The fable-narrative practice, particularly in Indian tradition provokes a
reflective form of self-inquiry and analysis. On my journey it provided a
challenging yet creative device to excavate memory and develop my story. Such an
investigative approach has important contemporary relevance in research on
matters of self, identity and story. In his book Illuminations Walter Benjamin
contemplates the activity of the storyteller:
Artistic observation [...] can attain an almost mystical depth [...]

the soul, the eye and the hand of someone who was born to
perceive them and evoke them in his own inner self [...]. With
these words, soul, eye, and hand are brought into connection. 26
In the process of crafting the fable Satatantra my soul, eye, and hand were
brought into connection. Ultimately, it was the remembering of self and the writing
of the story that brought me home to my self. It is neither the facts nor the minutiae
of everyday existence that can lead to a defining moment when the self may be
revealed. Rather, it is the piecing together of memoric fragments and, more
importantly, the understanding and acceptance of content, context and the
fragmentary nature of memory that gives us the power of personal agency to
fashion the margins of our own story. Through the crafting of Satatantra and the
character of Bhudevi I wrote myself into existence: I came home to my self.
3. Conclusion
The two parts of this chapter, the stork and the elephant, briefly explored the
role and power of story in relation to articulating a sense of identity. In response to
the work of Adriana Cavarero, the authors have examined the idea that there exists
within each of us a desire to create unity and form to events remembered in an
effort to answer the question ‘who am I?’ Using the fable Satatantra as an
example, the chapter reveals how individuals bring a sense of linearity to the
fragments of their existence by authoring a unifying narrative. In turn, this
narrative (life story) embodies a sense of identity that is actualised through
narrative discourse.
The stork and the elephant represent two (PhD) journeys which, once embraced
and cast together, reveal the enticing design of storytelling; a design which,
through its unexpected and unplanned continuity, reveals the power of story in its
core essence.
Notes
1
Porter H. Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 19.
__________________________________________________________________
2
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1958), 181.
3
Arendt, Human Condition, 186.
4
Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. Paul A.
Kottman (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).
5
Ibid., 20.
6
Ibid., Relating Narratives, 2.
7
Karen Blixen, ‘The Roads of Life’, Out of Africa (London: Penguin, 2011), 213-
215.
8
Cavarero, Relating Narratives, 1-2.
9
John Kotre, White Gloves: How We Create Ourselves through Memory (New
York: Free Press, 1995).
10
Bradford Vivian, ‘“A Timeless Now’: Memory and Repetition’, in Framing
Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of
Alabama Press, 2004), 202.
11
Ibid., 203.
12
Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 186.
13
Ibid., 189.
14
Barbara Bender, ‘Time and Landscape’, Current Anthropology 43 (Special
Supplement 2002): S102-S113.
15
Ibid., 103.
16
Lariane Fonseca, ‘A Journey around Myself’ (PhD diss., Swinburne University
of Technology, 2010).
17
Cavarero, Relating Narratives, 41.
18
Gregoria Manzin, ‘Torn Identities: Istro-Dalmatian Contemporary Women’s
Writing’ (PhD diss., The University of Melbourne, 2007), 203.
19
See Jill K. Conway, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and Nicola A. King, Memory, Narrative and
Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press, 2000).
20
See Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900, trans. Howard Eiland
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); Paul
Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990); and Virginia Woolf, Moments of
Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings (London: Chatto and Windus for
Sussex University Press, 1976).
21
Marcel Proust quoted in Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the
Memory Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1993), 3.
22
Adele Flood, ‘(Re)presentations of a Life’s Events’, in Slices of Life: Qualitative
Research Snapshots, ed. Pam Green (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2002), 96.
__________________________________________________________________
23
King, Memory, Narrative and Identity, 175.
24
Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping (London: Fourth Estate, 2004), 109 and
129 respectively.
25
Lariane Fonseca, ‘Satatantra: The Elephant and the Mirror’, in ‘A Journey
around Myself’, 134.
26
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London:
Fontana Press, 1992), 106.
Bibliography
Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press,
1958.
Bender, Barbara. ‘Time and Landscape’. Current Anthropology 43 (Special

Supplement 2002): S102–S113.
Benjamin, Walter. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Translated by Howard Eiland.

Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
—––. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. London:

Fontana Press, 1992.
Casey, Edward S. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press, 1987.
Cavarero, Adriana. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Translated by

Paul A. Kottman. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2000.
Conway, Jill K. When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography. New York,

NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Flood, Adele. ‘(Re)presentations of a Life’s Events’. In Slices of Life: Qualitative

Research Snapshots, edited by Pam Green, 96–109. Melbourne: RMIT Publishing,
2002.
Fonseca, Lariane. ‘A Journey around Myself’. PhD diss., Swinburne University of

Technology, 2010.
__________________________________________________________________
—––. ‘Satatantra: The Elephant and the Mirror’. In ‘A Journey around Myself’.
PhD diss., Swinburne University of Technology, 2010.
King, Nicola A. Memory, Narrative and Identity: Remembering the Self.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press, 2000.
Kotre, John. White Gloves: How We Create Ourselves through Memory. New
York, NY: Free Press, 1995.
Manzin, Gregoria. ‘Torn Identities: Istro-Dalmatian Contemporary Women’s

Writing’. PhD diss., The University of Melbourne, 2007.
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, and

Terence Kilmartin. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, and

David Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Vivian, Bradford. ‘“A Timeless Now’: Memory and Repetition’. In Framing

Public Memory, edited by Kendall R. Phillips, 187–211. Tuscaloosa, AL: The
University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Winterson, Jeanette. Lighthousekeeping. London: Fourth Estate, 2004.
Woolf, Virginia. Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings.

London: Chatto and Windus for Sussex University Press, 1976.
Lariane Fonseca is a Lecturer in Higher Education at Swinburne University of

Technology, Melbourne. She has worked in Education and across many disciplines
including: the Social Sciences, Health and Information Technology. Lariane is also
a photographer and digital storyteller and completed her PhD, A Journey around
Myself: An Archaeological Exploration of Identity, in 2009. In her PhD she used
narrative inquiry and innovative means of recording data through digital
storytelling and photography, to investigate ideas of dislocation and the impact that
leaving one’s own culture has on the development of one’s self identity.
Gregoria Manzin is a Lecturer in Italian Studies at Swinburne University of

Technology. She graduated at the Università degli Studi di Torino and completed
her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2008. Gregoria has published in the area
of border literature, narrative and identity, and translation. Her first research
__________________________________________________________________
monograph, Torn Identities: Life Stories at the Border of Italian Literature, will
soon appear in the Italian Studies Series published by Troubador.
Disability, Inclusion and First-Person Narrative
Kiel Moses
Abstract
The connection between narrative and disability has always been closely tied to
issues related to storytelling. This chapter explores the connection between first-
person narratives, disability, and inclusion in schools. I focus on first-person
narratives written by adults with Down Syndrome to demonstrate how the authors
have articulated their personal experiences. For far too long, people with
disabilities have not had the opportunity to express their stories in their own words.
Now, people with disabilities are finding various creative ways to express
themselves. Three disability models are explored in this chapter: the medical
model, the socio-cultural model, and the narrative model. Each of these lenses
helps to glean different interpretations regarding the power and influence
storytelling can have on the lives of people with disabilities as well as others
around them. The first-person narratives I use focus on excerpts from the
publications Count Us In (1994), Down Syndrome: Living and Learning in the
Community (1995), and a collection entitled Through Their Eyes: Stories of
Success of People with Disabilities (2010). All of the narratives illuminate the
thoughts that people with Down Syndrome have about their likes and dislikes,
educational experiences, and the role that their families played in their lives in
helping them become as fully integrated in every aspect of ‘mainstream’ society as
possible.
Key Words: Down Syndrome, first-person narrative, storytelling, inclusion.
*****
1. First Person Narratives and Mini-Narratives

I have used a variety of extended and ‘mini’ narratives in this chapter, each of
young adults that have Down Syndrome. The main narrative used was co-written
by Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz in Count Us In: Growing Up with Down
Syndrome (1994). This book is a first-person account of how Jason and Mitchell
have experienced their lives from the social, familial, and educational vantage
points. Jason’s mother, Emily, helped with the construction of the book, but the
words are all from Jason and Mitchell themselves. Given the length of this book
(200 pages), I refer to it as a first-person narrative. Three other mini-narratives
were used in this chapter, those of Ann Forts, Chris Burke, and Lee Jones, young
adults with Down Syndrome who each describe the social, educational, and
political experiences related to their lives. All of the narratives, extended or short,
help to illuminate the competencies that these young adults with Down Syndrome
have related to various aspects of their lives.
118 Disability, Inclusion and First-Person Narrative
__________________________________________________________________
2. Three Lenses
I use three different lenses to describe the narratives and mini-narratives
introduced above. The first lens is the medical model of disability, which is rooted
in science and views disability as the overarching distinguishing characteristic of
an individual. 1 In addition, the medical model examines disability from a deficits-
based standpoint 2 whereby the person with a disability is discussed from a
pathological perspective through the use of deterministic labels to describe the
disability. The emphasis of the medical model is for the person with the disability
to change his or her body through various medical procedures to adhere to a certain
rigid understanding of what the body should be able to do. 3
The second lens that will be used to unearth various significant elements in the
narratives discussed comes from the socio-cultural model of disability. This model
is rooted in social and cultural values related to understanding disability. 4 In short,
the socio-cultural model looks to understand the relationship between the person
with a disability and the environment that surrounds him/her, which includes
cultural judgments about identity and prejudices held by many nondisabled people
in society. 5
The third lens is the narrative model of disability. This model in particular
allows me to look at various parts of the narratives and mini-narratives in a more
precise way, focusing on particular words, capitalisation, and syntax choices used
in the texts and my interpretations of what these various choices mean. All three of
these lenses will help unlock or unearth how first-person narratives of young adults
with Down Syndrome help readers to understand and explore their lives in
empowering and often complicated ways.
3. Lens Analysis
There is ample evidence of the medical model being used in the various first-
person written narratives that I have consulted for this chapter. In Count Us In,
Jason’s mom, Emily, reported that the doctor told her after Jason was born:
Your child will be mentally retarded. He’ll never sit or stand,

walk or talk. He’ll never be able to distinguish you from any
other adults. He’ll never read or write or have a single
meaningful thought or idea. The common practice for these
children is to place them in an institution immediately. 6
This quote clearly indicates that Jason’s doctor viewed him and his disability
through the medical model by equating Jason solely to having Down Syndrome. In
other words, the doctor did not view Jason as a multi-faceted human being; instead,
Jason was reduced to a medical syndrome that negated all of his other potential
human capacities. The doctor then told Emily: ‘Go home and tell your friends and
family that he died in childbirth.’ 7
Kiel Moses 119
__________________________________________________________________
These remarks illustrate a few different characteristics that can be directly
related to the medical model of disability. First, the doctor appears to have simply
equated having Down Syndrome to death. Second, the doctor places a definite
medical pathology on Jason being born with Down Syndrome. For the doctor to
automatically conclude that Jason will do absolutely nothing meaningful in his life
is to view Jason in a simple, deterministic and fatalistic way. Furthermore, to
prognosticate such dire news in this manner to new parents shows a lack of
compassion and bedside manners on the part of the doctor. Emily states that ‘other
professionals we consulted reinforced this philosophy,’ 8 this quote pointing to the
dominance of the medical model amongst professional schools of thought
regarding people with cognitive disabilities. Instead of finding ways to help Jason’s
parents keep Jason at home, the medical establishment offered the advice that
Jason would not amount to much in his life. The only concrete suggestion offered
by the doctor to Jason’s parents was to institutionalise him. In many circumstances,
when medical professionals believe they cannot ‘fix’ a person’s mind or body, they
suggest to parents that their children be institutionalised. Instead of problem-
solving and collecting various resources that can help parents feel empowered,
medical professionals often consider institutionalisation the best and only option,
leaving parents feeling demoralised and powerless. The dehumanisation of people
with Down Syndrome is in fact repeatedly emphasised as it is the dominant
cultural belief regarding people with Down Syndrome.
The socio-cultural model is also illustrated in various examples in Count Us In.
Both Mitchell and Jason started out in separate special education classrooms, but
attended inclusive schools for many years prior to the time when the book was
written. The following quote is from July 1990. At that time, Jason wrote:
I have lots of pressure in school. Very hard. I feel I work harder

than other kids. Other kids are getting work so fast. My eyes are
getting watery. I put the pencil down and with my two fists try to
punch someone in my imagination because the pressure when I
am doing my work. 9
This quotation indicates to the reader that Jason is trying to fit in with the fast
pace of the classroom. It also suggests that Jason places a considerable amount of
pressure on himself to succeed, mainly because he knows that he works slower
than others in his classroom. Thirdly, the quote suggests that Jason is aware of the
social expectations that he feels he must aspire toward. From the socio-cultural
lens, Jason is highly aware of his surroundings and feels that school at times can be
filled with pressure because he is part of an inclusive classroom with nondisabled
students whom he often cannot keep up with. Jason is clearly aware of the social,
personal, and education realities of being in a ‘regular’ classroom. So, even though
Jason eventually succeeds at completing his schoolwork, there are a number of
__________________________________________________________________
tradeoffs that must be acknowledged regarding this success in terms of his
personal, academic, and psychological wellbeing. Jason clearly works hard to
create a sense of normality in his classroom environment which at times can lead to
frustration and anger.
Another example of viewing disability through the socio-cultural model comes
from the first-person mini-narratives referred to earlier in this chapter. Many of the
authors of these mini-narratives refer to Down Syndrome as ‘Up syndrome.’ 10 In
the mini-narrative by Chris Burke, he states:
Many people recognize me from my role as Corky Thatcher on

Life Goes On, an ABC-TV series for many years. Corky has
Down syndrome as do I. Only I call it Up syndrome, because
having Down syndrome has never made me feel down. 11
This quote says a great deal about Chris Burke and how he thinks about his
disability. Changing this one word, ‘Down’ to ‘Up,’ for him changes how he thinks
about his disability. Ann Forts describes her disability in a similar way: ‘Since I
was 7 or 8 years old, I have always referred to my disABILITY as “UP” Syndrome
rather than Down Syndrome.’ 12 By choosing to focus on the directionality (Up
versus Down) regarding the name of the Syndrome, both Forts and Burke are able
to deflect some of the negative social and cultural stigma that is often associated
with Down Syndrome. Even though the ‘Down’ in ‘Down Syndrome’ actually
refers to the doctor who discovered the Syndrome, focusing on the difference
between using the word ‘Down’ versus ‘Up’ helped Forts and Burke to internalise
their disability in a way that made them feel good about themselves and helped
them become more socially accepted by others.
The language used in the various narratives examined in this chapter has an
impact on how the stories are potentially understood or interpreted by the reader.
Indeed the language used in the different first-person narratives changed the
overall impact of the narratives for me personally. The book Count Us In used a
‘person-first language’ (i.e., person with a disability) style which gave the
impression to the reader that Jason and Mitchell saw themselves as people first
who happen to also have a disability. The mini-narrative written by Chris Burke
about his life also used ‘person-first language.’ By contrast, the mini-narrative by
Lee Jones seemed to avoid talking about his disability almost altogether. Instead,
Jones emphasised the accomplishments and successes he had achieved and did not
focus on having Down Syndrome at all. 13
The Ann Forts mini-narrative was the only text that used a different type of
language in referring to her experience. Forts referred to her disability by writing it
as ‘disABILITY’ in her narrative. 14 This is not simply a play on words. This is an
example of Forts deliberately using the difference between the lower case and
capital letters to call attention to the different parts of the word ‘disability.’ By
Kiel Moses 121
__________________________________________________________________
placing the ‘dis’ in lower case letters and ‘ability’ in capital letters, Forts
emphasises the way she thinks about her experiences. Forts accentuates her
‘ABILITIES’ as compared to focusing on the negativity that is associated with the
‘dis.’ This is an excellent example of how language can influence the overall
understanding of how a narrative is interpreted. This emphasis on different ways of
writing the word ‘disability’ has come about through the emergence of the
‘Disability Studies Movement’ that looks at the use of language to empower
instead of diminish people with disabilities. That Forts used this different linguistic
representation in her narrative gave the impression that she was confident in herself
and her ‘ABILITIES.’
4. Supporting Research
Various national and international studies look at the links between narrative,
disability, and education. 15 All of these studies shed light on issues related to
personal, parental, and social understandings related to including people with
Down Syndrome in a school with other ‘normal’ students. This body of research
underscores the various social, cultural, and familial considerations linked to
education and people with different disabilities. These studies also highlight the
importance of schools, teachers, parents, and society including all people with
various disabilities in order to benefit everyone. This overarching goal of inclusion
is difficult to accomplish given the various personal, systemic, and societal forces
that have different vested interests in the inclusion debate regarding people with
disabilities.
5. Synthesis
This chapter has illuminated how various perspectives and/or lenses can dictate
how a first-person disabled narrative can be interpreted. In many ways, the three
lenses that I used in this chapter can speak to each other. All of the individuals who
had Down Syndrome and were featured in the first-person and mini-narratives
were initially labeled through the medical model. In many cases, the deficits of the
medical model catalysed these individuals and their families to find alternative
perspectives to understand disability. To be able to look at issues related to
disability differently takes a great deal of effort, patience, and educational and
social resources on the part of the disabled individual and/or his or her family.
Simply not having these specific resources can limit the likelihood that being
exposed to alternative ways of thinking about disability will occur. As the medical
model dominates the societal landscape, other cultural and/or social factors
regarding disability are often ignored.
In the narratives discussed in this chapter, these particular families were lucky
enough to have these various social and educational resources to work with to be
successful in finding alternative perspectives for interpreting disability. However, I
really wonder how many families have this unique blend of resources that could be
__________________________________________________________________
used to help them as it did for the young adults with Down Syndrome who were
featured in this chapter. For instance there were no first-person narratives that I
could find of people with cognitive disabilities from minority groups. This made
me think that minority voices are still being muzzled by society. In my mind,
adding inclusive techniques can potentially help alleviate some of these social
inequalities that exist in many schools and in society-at-large.
As the narratives and mini-narratives indicate, if inclusion is done in a sloppy
manner, it only hurts the people with disabilities in the end by forcing them to
adhere to standards that are unrealistic or too demanding on them. Simply having
students like Jason or Mitchell struggle to succeed I feel can be potentially
damaging to people with Down Syndrome even if they are ultimately successful in
school. If teachers are introduced to Universal Design techniques such as using
multiple formats for conveying material in the teacher’s classrooms, this only
increases the likelihood that every student will have a chance to succeed
academically. Having teachers be able to differentiate between their various
students can help dictate the success or failure of inclusive practices in a
classroom. Another important part of understanding inclusion is having the voice
of people with various disabilities become acknowledged and valued by their
teachers. By having the voice of people with intellectual disabilities describe in
their own words what is and isn’t working for them academically can be a very
helpful component in understanding the effectiveness of certain inclusive practices.
Knowing the various strengths and weaknesses of students like Jason, Mitchell,
Chris, Lee, and Ann can go a long way in challenging commonly held stereotypes
of people with Down Syndrome by having them be an active participant in their
educational experiences.
There were other insights that I gleaned by researching first-person narratives
of people with Down Syndrome. Certain families have more social and financial
clout than other families do to help their children with disabilities succeed. For
example, Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz had unique social status because
Emily Kingsley worked for Sesame Street. By having access to this television
show allowed both Jason and Mitchell a unique vantage point to bring their
intellectual disabilities to the forefront of the consciousness of many nondisabled
people. Many people with various disabilities do not have the opportunity to use a
show like Sesame Street as a platform to raise issues related to disability and
society. It is through these types of shows that deeply-seeded assumptions about
disability can be challenged regarding people with disabilities.
This chapter helped to link together the connection between narrative,
disability, and inclusive education from the perspective of the people with
disabilities themselves. I found that writing this chapter helped to illuminate for
myself the complex nature that inclusive education has become for various families
with various disabilities. This research chapter will help continue to inform my
own understanding of presuming competence for all people with disabilities as
Kiel Moses 123
__________________________________________________________________
well as the potential power that first-person narrative can have to understanding the
lived experiences of people with various disabilities.
Notes
1
Wendy S. Harbour, ‘Disability Models & Types of Disability and Inclusion’,
Class notes, Disability Studies Program, School of Education, Syracuse University,
23 September 2010.
2
Harbour, ‘Disability Models & Types’.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz, Count Us In: Growing Up with Down
Syndrome (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1994), 3.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 46.
10
Chris Burke, Forward to Down Syndrome: Living and Learning in the
Community, eds. Lynn Nadel and Donna Rosenthal (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1995),
ix.
11
Ibid.
12
Ann Forts, ‘Ann’s Story’, in Through Their Eyes: Stories of Success for People
with Disabilities, 2nd edition, eds. Dominico Cavaiuolo and Daniel Steere
(Stroudsburg: East Stroudsburg University Press, 2010), 20.
13
Lee Jones, ‘Lee Jones’, in Through Their Eyes: Stories of Success for People
with Disabilities, 2nd edition, eds. Dominico Cavaiuolo and Daniel Steere
(Stroudsburg: East Stroudsburg University Press, 2010), 82.
14
Forts, ‘Ann’s Story’.
15
David Sirlopú, et al., ‘Promoting Positive Attitudes toward People with Down
Syndrome: The Benefit of School Inclusion Programs’, Journal of Applied Social
Psychology 38 (2008): 2710-2736; Connie Kasari, et al., ‘Parental Perspectives on
Inclusion: Effects of Autism and Down Syndrome’, Journal of Autism and
Developmental Disorders 29 (1999): 297-305; Karen E. Diamond and Katherine R.
Kensinger, ‘Vignettes from “Sesame Street”: Preschooler’s Ideas about Children
with Down Syndrome and Physical Disability’, Early Education and Development
13 (2002): 409-422; Douglas Biklen, ‘Constructing Inclusion: Lessons from
Critical, Disability Narratives’, International Journal of Inclusive Education 4
(2000): 337-353.
__________________________________________________________________
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17–24. Stroudsburg: East Stroudsburg University Press, 2010.
Harbour, Wendy S. ‘Disability Models & Types of Disability and Inclusion’. Class
notes, Disability Studies Program, School of Education, Syracuse University, 23
September 2010.
Jones, Lee. ‘Lee Jones’. In Through Their Eyes: Stories of Success for People with
Disabilities, 2nd edition, edited by Dominico Cavaiuolo, and Daniel Steere, 81–88.
Stroudsburg: East Stroudsburg University Press, 2010.
Kasari, Connie, Stephanny F. N. Freeman, Nirit Bauminger, and Marvin C. Alkin.

‘Parental Perspectives on Inclusion: Effects of Autism and Down Syndrome’.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 29 (1999): 297–305.
Kingsley, Jason, and Mitchell Levitz. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down
Syndrome. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1994.
Sirlopú, David, Roberto González, Gerd Bohner, Frank Siebler, Gabriela

Ordóñnez, Andres Millar, David Torres, and Pablo De Tezanos-Pinto. ‘Promoting
Positive Attitudes toward People with Down Syndrome: The Benefit of School
Inclusion Programs’. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 38 (2008): 2710–2736.
Kiel Moses is beginning his third year of a doctoral programme where he is

focusing on education and disability studies. He is pursuing his degree at Syracuse
University in central New York state. Kiel is very interested in researching how the
creative arts can impact the identities of people with various disabilities. He is
Kiel Moses 125
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mainly interested in how theatre can impact the identities of people with
disabilities and is looking to write his dissertation on this topic.
Once upon a Time: The Lonely Cruiser, and All the Other Men
of the Park
Stefano Ramello
Abstract
This chapter is the result of an ethnographic study conducted in a park in a small
town in northern Italy. The story begins with lonely, scared men. Indeed, many
men fear not having well-defined sexual identities. In this case, these men decide
to have casual sex with other men in a public park: an obvious, convenient and less
stressful choice than entering a gay club. I call these men ‘lonely cruisers.’ Despite
the term ‘lonely’ however, some of these men are able to eventually create
personal and close relationships in the park. Sometimes a man walking along the
paths in the park can meet men with whom he has had sex with in the past, or men
he knows from sight, and then he may decide to stop and talk to them. Sometimes
these men share stories about experiences at the park or discuss private details of
their lives outside the park, such as family, work, and feelings. Some of these men
become friends. Furthermore, the interactions between cruisers in the park can be
seen as participation in a community and a forum for the construction of
homosexual identity. For many men, the park represents an important step in the
process of defining their homosexual identity. Indeed, a deeper analysis of the
interviews conducted with respondents who defined themselves as ‘homosexual
men’ lead to a very different story than that of the ‘lonely cruiser.’ These men
made no references to fear or loneliness, but rather expressed a very strong need to
belong to a community and meet other homosexual men in order to share common
experiences and similar stories. In particular, the men explained that when they felt
the urge to experiment with same-sex acts for the first time and, further, the
necessity to deal with their developing homosexual identity in a secure
environment, the park represented one of the most important access routes to the
homosexual community. In fact, all the interviewed homosexual men declared that
at least once they found a long-time companion relationship at the park. In this
way, generation after generation, new experiences are shared. This leads to the
precise point: we started with the story of a lonely cruiser but found within this
narrative many different, exciting, and sometimes unexpected stories.
Key Words: Storytelling, cruising, gay, queer, non-heterosexual, identity.
*****
1. Introduction
This chapter focuses on the particular and specific identities of non-
heterosexual men cruising for same-sex acts (cruisers) in a park located in a city in
northern Italy. I use the term non-heterosexual purposefully to include diverse
128 Once upon a Time
__________________________________________________________________
identities that are not heterosexual yet not necessarily conforming to gay or even
queer. It is challenging to locate information about the status and social perception
of same-sex acts in Italy, as well as about related male identities. In particular,
cruising activities in public places (such as parks) and related male identities in
Italy are poorly documented topics in the scientific literature. Some information
can be found in two large studies: a national survey conducted by the Istituto
Cattaneo of Bologna 1 and a study of the gay population in Turin conducted by the
Department of Social Sciences, University of Turin. 2 Unfortunately though, in
these works, the authors did not consider the possible existence of multiple non-
heterosexual identities but instead presumed a fixed binary distinction between
‘normal/heterosexual’ and ‘different/homosexual:’ that is, one is either
heterosexual or one is gay. In this view, men (straight or not) develop from one
identity, or understanding of their lives and relationships within society, to another.
The path is taken to be definite, the outcome unquestioned, and that outcome
unquestionably either achieved or not.
I found similar suggestions on the development of non-heterosexual male
identities in the (outdated) international literature. Researchers tend to investigate
how sexual identities develop, proposing theories which imply that almost
everyone in a given population (or sub-population) progresses along specific paths
toward more ‘complete’ identities or fulfilment of one’s potential. 3 The primacy of
the experience of admitting to self and others one’s non-heterosexual orientation
(‘coming out’) reflects a very specific understanding of non-hetero-sexual identity,
particularly in relation to heterosexual identity. If all ‘goes well’ with the ‘coming
out’ experience, those men undergoing the process become progressively more
committed to and public about their ‘gay’ identity.
However, numerous researchers have identified flaws within the historical
models of sexual identity development that focus on ‘coming out,’ critiquing the
lack of evidence for these models and their failure to represent the experiences of
individuals of sexual minorities. 4 Dillon, Worthington and Moradi proposed a
model of sexual identity that offered a more global perspective, incorporating what
has been learned from years of theory and research concerning sexuality; LGBT
and heterosexual identity; attitudes toward individuals of sexual minorities; and the
meaning of ordinate and subordinate group membership. 5 Their model described
the intersection of various social and contextual factors that influence the
individual and social processes underlying sexual identity.
Another researcher, Diamond, reported that some non-heterosexual women
were ‘questioning’ their sexual identities or provided alternative labels that
described ambivalence or resistance to sexual identity labels. 6 In other words, as
social beings, our sexual identities are contextual. 7 Although this phenomenon has
been studied primarily with women who engage in same-sex relationships and/or
sexual behaviour, its potential to describe the sexual orientation of ‘cruisers’ has
been considered in this work.
Stefano Ramello 129
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Queer approaches to understanding and representing gay identity question
traditional presumptions, paths, and identities in relation to the norms of
heterosexuality. 8 Besides recognising the inherent uniqueness of each life, these
perspectives draw attention to the occasional inconsistencies between sexual
identity, sexual behaviour and attraction. 9
This chapter will focus on male identities amongst a particular sub-group: men
cruising for same-sex acts in a park located in a city in northern Italy. The work
will contribute to the discussion of a relatively understudied topic due to the lack of
information about the status and social perception of anonymous same-sex acts in
Italy, as well as about related male identities in general.
2. Participants and Procedure

Between 2007 and 2010, I interviewed 57 men who cruised the park, seeking
same-sex acts. Participants were white Italians, and all reported having sex with
another man at the park in the past month. The common racial/ethnic origin of all
of the participants is not surprising given the previous literature on the topic: men
of different ethnic origins (Brazilian or Romanian, for example) having sex with
other men tends to be found in other contexts in Italy, including male prostitution,
but not in cruising places. This is due to the fact that immigration is a fairly recent
event in Italy in comparison to other Western countries and Italy is far from a fully
integrated multi-ethnic society. 10 The interviews were equally spaced over each
year of the study (2007-2010). The age of the interviewees ranged from 21 to 51
years. All of the participants frequented the selected park at the time of the
interviews.
For the interviews, I activated my personal network of relationships by sending
emails to approximately 50 friends, explaining the aim of my research and the need
to find men who cruised the park during the period of study. I asked my friends to
send out emails to their personal networks advertising the study, including a
document as attachment in which I briefly described the procedure of the interview
and indicated how to contact me (email, mobile number). I gave reassurance about
the anonymity of the contributions of any interviewee in the document. In this way
- using email, with an attached information document - I tried to ensure that
information about the study was distributed to people so that they knew how to
contact me. Then, from the initial informants, I employed ‘snowball’ or ‘network’
techniques of recruiting further interview respondents. 11 I excluded friends who
felt compelled to help me with the research by agreeing to be interviewed from the
sample of participants.
3. Findings
Identity is a much researched and discussed topic in many sociological studies,
but it is rarely considered in the context of male cruising. I found that I could adopt
an operational definition of identity for non-heterosexual men as comprised of
__________________________________________________________________
three elements: senses, or what an individual felt or perceived about himself and
his contexts; experiences, or what and/or how he behaved or acted; and
sensibilities, or the meanings he ascribed to himself and his life concerning his
senses and experiences, in juxtaposition to what he perceived as the normative
values of the contexts of which he was a part. How an individual sensed himself
and his world, behaved in different contexts, and created meaning from his life
circumstances comprised the differences between the types of sexual identities
described further in this chapter.
These considerations framed my understanding of the individual’s concept of
his identity. To understand what these men thought they could ‘be’ as cruisers and
then ‘become’ in their lives, we must also understand concepts of normality and
how these concepts relate to the lives of these men. No single, monolithic ‘gay
identity’ existed, or exists, for cruisers; rather, several forms of understanding, of
meaning, are evident. I have mapped six types of identity concepts, although more
certainly exist. The six identities were constructed not only in juxtaposition to the
concept of heterosexuality (or a heterosexual identity) but also in relation to the
other forms of non-heterosexual identity. Just as homosexuality depends upon the
concept of heterosexuality for its definition, so too the notion of gay needs
homosexual as a contrast, and queer requires the concepts of all three to be
understood.
Specific differences between the types of non-heterosexual male cruiser
identities are evident within the key areas of sense, experience, or meaning. More
might exist, but within this study, six primary domains are discussed. These are the
six areas I found particularly relevant to understanding the identities of non-
heterosexual males in the park: experiences within the city; involvement (or not)
with gay organisations; involvement (for some) in cultural or social activities;
sexual experiences; consideration of a concept of ‘normality;’ and the display and
handling of emotions. I now explore the six types in sequence.
A. Homosexual
Some of the men interviewed knew that their feelings of difference placed them
in a category juxtaposed to ‘straight.’ Their notions of how they could live, their
relationships with other people (both straight and non-straight), and their personal
goals were constricted by their perceptions of other people’s concepts of sexuality.
Homosexual cruisers were not interested in finding others whose feelings and
experiences mirrored their own, and with whom they could socialise more freely
but not necessarily openly. They preferred simply cruising at the park and, if sex
was found, it was usually quick, anonymous, and secret.
In almost all cases, homosexual cruisers considered their sexuality as
something they did not publicly display nor discuss, at most relevant (or revealed)
only to close friends (but rarely to family). Homosexual identities were juxtaposed
with the public lives and emotions of heterosexuals; homosexuals were not only
Stefano Ramello 131
__________________________________________________________________
opposite in their sexual affections but also in their ability to enact (vocally or
physically) those identities. The identity of the typical homosexual male cruiser
was formed as much by his desires as by the dissonance he experienced between
those desires and the cultural norms he perceived. It was the intention and
emotional investment in the desire to have sex with another man that primarily
determined his homosexual identity.
B. Gay
For many men the concept of what it meant to be non-heterosexual was very
different: these men questioned the social components of sexuality and maintained
a ‘free to be you and me’ attitude (an idea of sex not based upon a person’s - or the
desired person’s - gender). In interviews with these men, the duality of sexuality
was redefined and hiding one’s sexual feelings was no longer an option of choice.
A gay identity connoted an open social life with others who felt similar sexual
attractions; implicit in the term gay, too, was a willingness to identify publicly in
solidarity with others sharing the same identity. For some gay cruisers, the
integration of sexual orientation into their identity fostered a need to become
involved in a local community.
Gay cruisers understood their identity as a social one, not constructed in
medical models of pathology as the homosexual men did. Consequently, gay
cruisers’ interactions with peers and institutions differed from those of homosexual
or closeted men. Gay cruisers’ ideology was twofold: first, sexuality - in all of its
permutations, including those not considered ‘normal’ - was viewed as a central
and visible part of social life and thus was ‘normal.’ Second, just as ‘other’
sexualities were to be included in the spectrum of ‘normal’ life, so too should gays
be a part of regular social functions - whether as a part of the existing system
(political or social institutions) or separate yet equal functions that mirrored
heterosexual (or ‘straight’) functions, such as cultural or sport organisations. Gay
men sometimes created relationships at the park, even formed friendships. In other
words, the interactions among these men involved a sense of participation in a
community and allowed for the establishment of social networks.
C. Queer
Queer identity was formed not only in juxtaposition to heterosexual concepts
and culture, but also in relation to the concept of gay. Queer was something
different from both the norm of straight culture and the norm of gay culture
(although the concept had more in common with the latter than the former). Queer
cruisers tended not simply to join community organisations, but instead attempted
to subvert or to reinvent the structures of those very institutions. Whereas gay
cruisers working for change might become involved in many social activities,
queer cruisers tended to form groups to protest many of those very elements of
everyday life, or planned events to highlight the social stigmatisation they felt in
__________________________________________________________________
non-homosexual environments. Indeed, queer was not only a marker of difference
from normal but also a political and social rallying cry.
Queer cruisers, like their homosexual and gay peers, define their lives in
opposition to the lives of heterosexuals. But whereas homosexuals see themselves
as differing from straight people only in terms of their sexual activity (which is
viewed as a private matter), queer cruisers position their differences publicly; this
differentiates their queer identity from homosexual or gay. Their sexuality is seen
less as a variation of the norm and more as an agitator or protest of the notions of
normality. Where gay cruisers strove to fit into accepted societal norms,
organisations and politics, queer cruisers were more likely to challenge the system,
as well as the acceptance of those norms through actions and appearances.
D. Closeted
For the prior three types, coming out publicly was an act of great social and
psychological power and consequence. While some cruisers are cautiously open
about their sexuality during everyday life, others fear social disapprobation more
than the isolation necessary to avoid society’s stings of denigration. The term
‘living in the closet’ serves as a metaphor for denying, suppressing, or hiding one’s
non-heterosexual feelings or activities. Closeted cruisers feel distanced from both
heterosexual and non-heterosexual men despite their efforts to join social
organisations. Some of these cruisers dated and even married women to prove (or
disprove) their sexuality to themselves and their peers. The men of this type, who
spend their lives evading, avoiding, or lying about their sexuality, are living - in the
words of one interviewee - a life ‘on the fringes.’
E. ‘Normal’
A number of cruisers defy the norms of both straight and non-straight cultures.
These men do not identify socially, personally, or politically as gay, homosexual,
or queer, yet these men are engaging in homo-sex, often quite frequently. While
they do not deny to themselves that they enjoy the sex, they feel this has no
correlation to whom they are otherwise or how they view themselves in relation to
other men.
Indeed, these men experience no dissonance between their actions and their
‘selves:’ they are ‘just like everybody else,’ they are ‘normal.’ This category
moves even further away from the binary master categories of heterosexual and
homosexual, blurring the lines of demarcation while conversely corroborating
those classifications as well. This paradox is evidence of the diversity in non-
heterosexual identification, a diversity that is lacking in identity theories for
cruisers and gay men in general.
For these cruisers, life is strongly dominated by social pressure to conform, to
be ‘just like all the other guys.’ Sexuality for ‘normal’-type cruisers, at least in
terms of social identity, was neatly divorced from sexual activity. One can have
Stefano Ramello 133
__________________________________________________________________
sexual thoughts about other males, even engage in sexual activity with them
(which many ‘normal’ guys do, frequently), but such actions do not necessarily
have any bearing upon one’s identity. I found that ‘normal’ was an unconsidered
position, a self-evident concept to those participants who embraced it.
F. Parallel
In contrast to the ‘normal’ cruisers who did not integrate or assign meaning to
their homosexual activities in terms of self-concept, other men keenly felt the
disjuncture of homo- and hetero- experiences. For these men, who exemplify the
parallel type of cruiser, life was a combination of distinctly different sets of
cultures, acquaintances, and behaviours. By day (usually, but not always), these
men attended class, work, spent time with friends, or participated in home or
family life. By night (typically, but not always confined to those hours), they
engaged in different behaviours - they led a ‘secret, shadow life,’ cruising bars,
parks, or other sexualised spaces, looking for male sexual partners, and taking
great pain to ensure their anonymity (at least as far as beyond those sexualised
settings). These men did not think of their lives as normal nor see their behaviour
mirrored in other people; they considered their sexual activity as sex, and not
simply ‘fooling around’ or reaching an orgasm. These parallel cruisers ensured that
the two social milieus in which they were manoeuvring never converged. In the
words on one respondent, ‘I feel I am leading two lives.’ Another man stated, ‘My
life is separated into sort of parallel lives.’ For most of these men, being a public
non-heterosexual man (be that called gay, queer, or homosexual) was not
something that was a part of their everyday life. When the two worlds intersected,
the cruiser felt uncomfortable; as one said, ‘The two worlds, I know, can’t mix.’
The discomfort felt by these men extended between not only the two cultures but
also their emotions and the people they knew in each culture.
4. Conclusions
I have regularly employed the term ‘cruisers’ throughout this chapter in order
to constantly keep in mind that the findings of the study are related to a very
specific population. The emergent ‘typology’ may indeed reflect that of other non-
heterosexual individuals, but this study can only speak to the experiences of the
men within the particular socio-historical context who were sampled. I can only
report the uniqueness of cruisers’ life and sexual experiences, as well as the
specificity of their life trajectories. These observations may lead to further research
in which interviews will focus on how cruisers ‘move through’ the types - for
example, how fluid the six categories are for cruisers. Parallel, closeted, and
‘normal’ cruisers would not typically be found in gay organisations or similar
activities. They are hidden populations, experiencing circumstances and
constructing meanings of their experiences, in manners that gay identity
development theories do not address. Understanding the nuances of non-
__________________________________________________________________
heterosexual cruisers’ identities will prevent other researchers from falling into the
trap of extrapolating from only the visible elements or actions of a diverse
population. The implications of the present work might also include further studies
aimed at examining sexual identity in other populations, such as non-heterosexual
men in different context (e.g. working places, social or political organisations) or
women in the lesbian community.
Notes
1
Marzio Barbagli and Asher Colombo, Omosessuali Moderni (Bologna: Il Mulino,
2001).
2
Chiara Bertone, et al., Diversi da Chi? (Milano: Guerini e Associati, 2003).
3
Vivienne C. Cass, ‘Homosexual Identity Formation: A Theoretical Model’,
Journal of Homosexuality 4, No. 3 (1979), 65-82; Eli Coleman, ‘Developmental
Stages of the Coming-Out Process’, in Homosexuality and Psychotherapy: A
Practitioner’s Handbook of Affirmative Models, ed. John C. Gonsiorek (New
York: Haworth, 1982): 31-44; Richard R. Troiden, ‘The Formation of Homosexual
Identities’, The Journal of Homosexuality 17, Nos. 1/2 (1989): 43-74; Joan Sophie,
‘A Critical Examination of Stage Theories of Lesbian Identity Development’,
Journal of Homosexuality 12, No. 2 (1985/1986): 39-51; Henry L. Minton and
Gary J. McDonald, ‘Homosexual Identity Formation as a Developmental Process’,
Journal of Homosexuality 9 (1984): 91-104; Beata E. Chapman and Joann C.
Brannock, ‘Proposed Model of Lesbian Identity Development: An Empirical
Examination’, Journal of Homosexuality 14, Nos. 3-4 (1987): 69-80.
4
Anthony R. D’Augelli, ‘Identity Development and Sexual Orientation: Toward a
Model of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Development’, in Human Diversity:
Perspectives on People in Context, eds. Edison J. Trickett, Roderick J. Watts and
Dina Birman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994): 312-333. Robert A. Rhoads,
Coming Out in College: The Struggle for a Queer Identity (Westport, CT: Bergin
and Garvey, 1994). Patrick Dilley, Queer Man on Campus: A History of Non-
Heterosexual Men in College (New York: Routledge, 2002): 1945-2000. Bas Van
de Meerendonk and Tahira M. Probst, ‘Sexual Minority Identity Formation in an
Adult Population’, Journal of Homosexuality 47, No. 2 (2004): 81-90.
5
Frank R. Dillon, Roger L. Worthington and Bonnie Moradi, ‘Sexual Identity as a
Universal Process’, in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, eds. Set J.
Schwartz, Koen Luyckx and Vivian L. Vignoles (London: Springer, 2011): 649-
670.
6
Lisa M. Diamond, ‘Sexual Identity, Attractions, and Behavior among Young
Sexual-Minority Women over a 2-Year Period’, Developmental Psychology 36
(2000): 241-250. Lisa M. Diamond, ‘Dynamical Systems Approach to the
Stefano Ramello 135
__________________________________________________________________
Development and Expression of Female Same-Sex Sexuality’, Perspectives on

Psychological Science 2 (2007): 142-161.
7
Simone Monteiro, et al., ‘Sexual Diversity and Vulnerability to AIDS: The Role
of Sexual Identity and Gender in the Perception of Risk by Young People (Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil)’, Sexuality Research and Social Policy 7, No. 4 (2010): 270-282.
8
Geoffrey Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of
the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Dilley, Queer
Man; Daniel Mendelsohn, The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Ritch C. Savin-Williams, The New Gay
Teenager (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Jenna A. Glover,
Renee V. Galliher and Trenton G. Lamere, ‘Identity Development and Exploration
among Sexual Minority Adolescents: Examination of a Multidimensional Model’,
Journal of Homosexuality 56 (2009): 1-25.
9
Ritch C. Savin-Williams and Zhana Vrangalova, ‘Mostly Heterosexual and
Mostly Gay/Lesbian: Evidence for New Sexual Orientation Identities’, Archives of
Sexual Behaviour 41, No. 1 (2011): 85-101.
10
Barbagli and Colombo, Omosessuali Moderni; Bertone, Diversi da chi?
11
Corrine Glesne and Alan Peshkin, Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An
Introduction (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992); Sharam B. Merriam, Qualitative
Research and Case Study Applications in Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1998).
Bibliography
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2001.
Bertone, Chiara, Alessandro Casiccia, Chiara Saraceno, and Paola Torrioni.

Diversi da chi? Milano: Guerini e Associati, 2003.
Cass, Vivienne C. ‘Homosexual Identity Formation: A Theoretical Model’.

Journal of Homosexuality 4, No. 3 (1979): 65–82.
Chapman, Beata E., and Joann C. Brannock. ‘Proposed Model of Lesbian Identity
Development: An Empirical Examination’. Journal of Homosexuality 14, Nos. 3–4
(1987): 69–80.
Chauncey, Geoffrey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of
the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
__________________________________________________________________
Coleman, Eli. ‘Developmental Stages of the Coming-Out Process’. In

Homosexuality and Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Handbook of Affirmative
Models, edited by John C. Gonsiorek, 31–44. New York: Haworth, 1982.
D’Augelli, Anthony R. ‘Identity Development and Sexual Orientation: Toward a

Model of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Development’. In Human Diversity:
Perspectives on People in Context, edited by Edison J. Trickett, Roderick J. Watts,
and Dina Birman, 312–333. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Diamond, Lisa M. ‘Sexual Identity, Attractions, and Behavior among Young

Sexual-Minority Women over a 2-Year Period’. Developmental Psychology 36
(2000): 241–250.
Diamond, Lisa M. ‘Dynamical Systems Approach to the Development and

Expression of Female Same-Sex Sexuality’. Perspectives on Psychological Science
2 (2007): 142–161.
Dilley, Patrick. Queer Man on Campus: A History of Non-Heterosexual Men in

College. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Dillon, Frank R., Roger L. Worthington, and Bonnie Moradi. ‘Sexual Identity as a
Universal Process’. In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, edited by Set J.
Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, 649–670. London: Springer,
2011.
Glesne, Corrine, and Alan Peshkin. Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An

Introduction. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992.
Glover, Jenna A., Renee V. Galliher, and Trenton G. Lamere. ‘Identity

Development and Exploration among Sexual Minority Adolescents: Examination
of a Multidimensional Model’. Journal of Homosexuality 56 (2009): 1–25.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Merriam, Sharam B. Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in

Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.
Minton, Henry L., and Gary J. McDonald. ‘Homosexual Identity Formation as a

Developmental Process’. Journal of Homosexuality 9 (1984): 91–104.
Stefano Ramello 137
__________________________________________________________________
Monteiro, Simone, Fatima Cecchetto, Eliane Vargas, and Claudia Mora. ‘Sexual
Diversity and Vulnerability to AIDS: The Role of Sexual Identity and Gender in
the Perception of Risk by Young People (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)’. Sexuality
Research and Social Policy 7, No. 4 (2010): 270–282.
Rhoads, Robert A. Coming Out in College: The Struggle for a Queer Identity.
Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1994.
Savin-Williams, Ritch C. The New Gay Teenager. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2005.
Savin-Williams, Ritch C., and Zhana Vrangalova. ‘Mostly Heterosexual and

Mostly Gay/Lesbian: Evidence for New Sexual Orientation Identities’. Archives of
Sexual Behaviour 41, No. 1 (2011): 85–101.
Sophie, Joan. ‘A Critical Examination of Stage Theories of Lesbian Identity

Development’. Journal of Homosexuality 12, No. 2 (1985/1986): 39–51.
Troiden, Richard R. ‘The Formation of Homosexual Identities’. The Journal of

Homosexuality 17, Nos. 1/2 (1989): 43–74.
Van de Meerendonk, Bas, and Tahira M. Probst. ‘Sexual Minority Identity

Formation in an Adult Population’. Journal of Homosexuality 47, No. 2 (2004):
81–90.
Stefano Ramello, as an independent researcher in Italy, explores the interactions

between space, erotic practices, identity, gender and sexuality.
Contact by email at stefano.ramello@gmail.com.
Identity, Ideals and the Inevitable: Stories of Experienced
Doctors Revealing Personal Perspectives behind
Professional Actors
Sharon Spooner
Abstract
A state of perpetual change and shifting goals in the UK National Health Service
(NHS) provides the backdrop for my exploration of the working lives of doctors
across a range of settings. Working as a family doctor, my links to these evolving
situations and a fascination with the multi-faceted stories brought by patients have
encouraged an interest in collecting biographical narratives from colleagues
working in NHS posts for more than 25 years. This naturally occurring shared
platform provides an excellent base from which to gather stories which are less
readily voiced outside professional circles. I have conducted individual
biographical narrative interviews, allowing each interviewee to choose their
preferred means of conveying much richness and detail from memories of their
career. These narratives were subjected to probing by reflection-inducing
questions, drawing further details and amplifications which became helpful in
analysis and interpretation. Each story, each co-constructed narrative, reflects the
unique experience of a single career. Taken together, they bring new insights into
expectations in the workplace, the roles undertaken by doctors and the resulting
impact of these duties, pivotal determinants of career choice and job satisfaction
and the challenges of meeting multiple and contradictory expectations. Far beyond
the restrictions of a structured interview, these narratives are laced with emotion,
describe much evocative detail and express nuances which could not easily be
conveyed through another medium. I maintain a strong link between these
meaningful, revealing accounts and the contexts in which they emerge as I aim to
present the interviewees as credible individual actors in these various situations.
Using the language of the storyteller, contextually grounded extracts are
represented here from the data in a poetic form which enables meanings, incidents,
actions and emotions to be effectively articulated. This unwrapping of the spoken
story conveys a concise yet powerful sense of lived experience.
Key Words: Biographical interviews, poetic representations, lived experience,

professional lives.
*****
1. Introduction
The objective of this chapter is to introduce how stories which are told by
doctors reveal contemporary ideas about medical identity, about how this
influences preferences in relation to working practices and the tensions which
140 Identity, Ideals and the Inevitable
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emerge. This chapter explains something of the research background before
presenting extracts from the narratives in the form of poetic representation
subsequently.
2. Orientation
Hints of historic medical identities can be traced through literature such as the
rites of passage of Becker’s Boys in White, a study of rural general practice in A
Fortunate Man or the reflections of practitioners like Arthur Frank. More recently
a smattering of anonymously published books seek to throw open the surgery doors
exposing, not just the problems of the patient, but the reactions and reflections of
the medical practitioner. They receive a mixed response; anecdotal tales of the
weird and wonderful can be entertaining if not truly reflective of the average
doctor’s caseload. Televised documentaries purporting to simply follow hospital
doctors through their normal routines, film, drama, even blogging doctors, all make
a contribution to what is known, or believed to be known, about how it is to be a
doctor. The scale of image creation is such that no control of the image is possible.
Doctors’ leaders may attempt damage limitation when a negative news story
emerges, or seek to raise the profile of a highly successful medical intervention,
but these measures cannot always achieve balance.
With the publication of her 2007 essay on the reshaping of new identities in
general practitioners, Anne Digby acknowledged that since identity is composed
both of exclusion and inclusion, selective portrayal of medical identities can seek
to influence public acceptance or scrutiny of the medical profession in general.
The purpose here is to share aspects of stories collected through interviews with
a group of doctors. They demonstrate how they see themselves, how they view
their work and the inevitable consequences.
3. Study Design
In an effort to hear, understand and situate the lived experience of
contemporary medical doctors I recruited participants from a single cohort, who
graduated in the UK in 1983. Selecting from many willing responses on the basis
of geographical proximity, I met each doctor to record a single interview. Each was
encouraged to develop a biographical narrative to inform my understanding of their
first-hand experience of working in the NHS for 25 years. Many chose to develop
the story chronologically; each became a unique co-construction of narratives,
explanations and reflections.
I proceeded to examine and ponder over the transcribed interviews, identifying
themes and patterns of working. I extended Adele Clarke’s Situational Analysis
mapping to combine all three elements; situational, social world and positional,
into one mapping complex through which I demonstrated linkage and interactions
across all sections of the map.
Sharon Spooner 141
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4. Generating Narrative
The essential characteristics of narrative interviews and the effects of research
from inside the same organisation have a well established literature and they
provide an approach to learning about experience of work at an individual level.
Building on the principle that interviewees need time and space to develop
personal narratives, we arranged informal meetings which seemed to facilitate
rapport and remove distractions. Minimal interventions encouraged the flow of
narrative as we returned to points for clarification only after the stream of talk
diminished. Initial hesitancy was overcome by recalling earliest workplaces, each
story thereafter describing a unique path which criss-crossed a wide range of
medical career experiences. Moments of crisis and resolution were explored,
ambitions and concerns shared as each interview continued to a natural end point.
5. Presenting Situated Narratives

It became clear that doctors do not assume a universal medical identity, do not
through the training process somehow metamorphose into a pre-destined category
of physician. Each new medical student arrives with innate personal characteristics,
with acquired attitudes and ideas reflecting their experience of society, of family
life and cultural variance, influenced by gender, religious views and often shaped
by personal contact with medical practitioners.
To share life experience as understood through narrative interviews in a brief
presentation immediately challenges the integrity of the story by removing it from
its native context and textual extracts struggle to represent changes in tone,
cadence and silences.
The choice of quotes to convey a sense of these narratives must be founded on
a thorough understanding of their place and meaning but having made that
selection, I believe Poetic Representation provides an excellent vehicle to carry the
sense-making and produce a more eloquent impression of the situated story. From
sections of the transcript I have removed those words which I believe are not
essential to the intended meaning leaving those which maintain an authentic re-
presentation of the feeling, message or meaning. On occasion strong words remain
undiluted to adequately express their reactions. The ordering of phrases may flow
jerkily, serving as a reminder that narrative recall can add layer on layer of
remembered detail as the storyteller re-lives the story. The poem becomes a co-
creation of data in a more readily accessible form.
5.1 Identity as a Complex Amalgam, Personally and Socially or Culturally

Understood
The exploration of identity is enriching but complex. Goffman’s writings
considered human actors in everyday lives exhibiting certain aspects of our selves
while concealing others; analogous to the profound difference between theatrical
backstage behaviours and frontstage projection. Anne Digby argued that doctors
__________________________________________________________________
adopt an attitude of self-effacement as part of that identity, ‘private’ self being
subsumed by ‘public’ experience. Insider commonality and narrative space
encouraged these doctors to discard elements of ‘private’ identity resulting in a co-
construction which reflected confident familiarity.
Because entry to this group requires admission to a medical course, successful
completion of this and further postgraduate training, doctors are often viewed as an
‘elite’ group. Many young adults joining this group identify strongly with the
group identity, and their sense of self becomes interwoven with medical self. Alice
reflected on her sense of self and her role.
What does it mean?
It’s what defines me
I live to work
would fear for how I would be
if you took that from me
in the wound down, highly deprived,
high unemployment town
I wouldn’t like to be sitting in an academic practice
pulling my hair out if folk came in with print outs from the
internet
Give me your ordinary, down-to-earth person any day

I have a job to do here
to support people through difficult times
challenging events in their life
to be there for them
whatever they need from me
my job is not to sit here in judgement
it’s to journey with them
If I can do that, it’s a job well done.

Alice
5.2 Identity in Several Layers

Expression of identity, and specifically of medical identity, involves not simply
an appreciation of self but of the culturally determined constructs within which a
medical identity exists. These combine to dictate the space available for individual
interpretations and expressions of medical identities and as discussed by Maynard
may be analysed on a number of conceptual levels; the self, as the person
experiencing identity, personhood, as an extension to include aspects of social
Sharon Spooner 143
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being in relation to close others and ethnic (in this case medical) identity where the
focus rests on the individuals relation to the ethnic (medical) group. To distinguish
between these aspects of identity in analytical terms does not necessarily assist in
gaining greater understanding of the whole. In the narrated accounts I have studied,
individual doctors speak of facets of their identity as a continuum, as components
of their identity, medical and other and these appear mutually interdependent. They
correspond with Strauss’ concept of a shared social world.
George’s sense of being in work encompasses aspects of growing maturity and
responsibility, taking on management tasks, gaining authority in administrative and
clinical spheres and links with retention of a sense of moral action.
The other thing the contract did for me and my career
We had a mysterious red book

my senior partner
my chaotic practice manager
used to cook up this red book
We never knew where we were with money
He and she ran the practice
out of this red book
A classic case of
“We have always done it like this”
A classic case of
a nightmare
and very poorly run
Everything happened at once,

the contract came,
a new efficient, young practice manager
I said
“It’s my time to do it”
So
the contract
with all that QOF stuff,
was so clear about how you earned your money
and what you did it for
and you could fall behind the evidence base
and say
“I want your cholesterol below 5
but actually that’s quite good for you”
__________________________________________________________________
So it didn’t feel immoral
George
5.3 Identity Understood as an Enacted Identity

While some favour this stratification of identity I question whether splitting
apart the pillars on which identity is constructed might not become more
problematic than enlightening. I prefer the approach suggested by Mol of exploring
identity as it is enacted, the entire spectrum of identity including a sense of self, of
relations within an inner circle, of the role expected by a wider public and how
responsibilities are achieved. This view is consistent with Garfinkel and others
whose analysis of human activity was primarily based on the practical outworkings
or interactions they were able to observe rather than based on cognitive processes. I
discovered that regardless of my stated focus on the experience of work, these
narrative accounts offer much insight into a contemporary medical identity as
doctors relate how they operate as individuals and in conjunction with others to
perform the role of physician.
Helen spoke of a seminal moment when a senior colleague’s attitude changed
her career trajectory
Time to move on
We stopped at the lady’s bed

He said “Oh yes, Mrs K,
the section did show cancer
We will have you back in next week for a mastectomy”
Move onto the next
I thought
“Oh shit,
I can’t do that”
That was the moment I decided not to be a surgeon.
Sheer callousness,
lack of communication skills,
the look on the woman’s face
I had to go on
I wanted to go sit with the patient
I thought I can’t,
Sharon Spooner 145
__________________________________________________________________
I wouldn’t be like that
but I can’t work in that environment
Helen
5.4 Identity in Specific Situations

While Goffman preferred to consider his distant view as a superior lens through
which to view the presence of the curtain between front and back stage arenas,
others have preferred to consider that no such backstage entity exists, no curtains
conceal a deeper core identity but each identity is constituted by the elements of
their actions on whatever stage they act. Doctors through their university education
and professional training must acquire knowledge not simply of how to understand
and modify the workings of the human body but to understand also a complex
pattern of communication and behaviours which prepare them for interactions with
a public conditioned to expect certain standards of professional behaviour.
Speaking about the intolerable situation of coping with a colleague whose work
fell far short of expectation and who was not amenable to change Mary revealed
deep feelings of frustration. She had enjoyed a long period of positive development
in this GP practice until…
When I handed my notice in.
I think he had a personality disorder,

you couldn’t argue with him
or put your case forwards
He never answered your question

If he was at all threatened he would be aggressive
or attack on a different level.
It was just very difficult
Half the time he never came to meetings.
He used to run late,

didn’t do the prescriptions,
was appalling at writing referrals.
But he was not open to suggestions,
he wasn’t open to any of that.
He wasn’t writing down his consultations,

or that he had given people antibiotics,
He wasn’t documenting what he was doing,
just wasn’t functioning as a doctor.
__________________________________________________________________
It was difficult to shop him
and who was there to go to?
I went to the PCT and didn’t feel they took much notice
And you didn’t want to totally shop him,

because then the situation would have been
unbearable
You couldn’t help him either,

he just did his own thing
It came to a head
when even the practice manager was not supporting me,
I felt totally overwhelmed, unheard and unsupported,
(I had left meetings in tears of frustration)
I handed my notice in there and then.

I thought “That’s just it, I have got to go”
And I was gone

Mary
6. Conclusion: Ideals and the Inevitable

Some doctors use their background to place themselves in their current life
world, a medical parent, an influential teacher, the desire to make a difference. In
doing so they demonstrate multiple influences, multiple facets of their belief
systems and reveal a transitionary path between the contrasting epistemological
discourses in which they are individually enculturated. They are equally
comfortable in professional consultations, commissioning home improvements and
relating to their own teenage children. Life, of necessity consists of many
fragments and situations determine the role they adopt, the functions they must
perform and the language employed in doing so. Doctors are no different from
anyone else; when they succeed many are appreciative, when they fail there may
be serious consequences, what they remember affects future actions, what they
forget may be vital or inconsequential.
For the majority medical identity is embedded in being part of a group who
interact with patients, listen carefully to their stories, understand their problems,
make diagnoses and initiate treatment as appropriate. To separate behaviours
which demonstrate characteristics based on a medical sense of identity from those
which occur as an enactment of a pre-defined role (Mol) demands a clear
distinction between what the doctor believes to be his sense of medical identity and
an externally determined identity with attached expectations. In as far as I have
Sharon Spooner 147
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understood these interviews, doctors generally maintain what they perceive to be
pre-defined boundaries, taking positions on controversial issues which they believe
will be acceptable, if only to avoid censure or criticism. Aspects of greatest
concern were raised when after speaking positively for some time I observed a
marked transition, as if a mask was slipping to reveal a less publicly paraded face.
The tone of the interview became darker as they voiced concerns for the future of
medical care, concerns for young doctors entering an uncertain profession, concern
for their own ‘happy ending’ as retirement approaches.
Ideal working situations are often recognised in their absence but in these
stories I discovered much acceptance of non-ideal situations, a willingness to
compromise or to prioritise differently to justify their professional role.
In these poems, doctors describe roles which were not part of medical training
but have become prominent in working practice. They may provide medical
certificates for patients who cannot find employment, contributing to legitimising
perceived illness as a reason for not earning to support the household. When cure
cannot be achieved they settle for on-going support through illness.
When treatment recommendations to patients seem onerous, they turn to justify
this risk-reduction strategy on a scientific evidence base which in turn allows them
to feel less uncomfortable about earning quality payments if patients adhere to this
plan.
Finding the right situation, aiming to work with like-minded people can drive
through many career turns with personally damaging knocks along the way. At
times conflicting interests, a prolonged debate of whether to stay to work for
improvement or to leave to force a resolution can provide the impetus to seek out a
cohesive and constructive new team. Changing management structures can bring
them from a period on the sidelines to a position of empowerment, equipped to
lead and influence decisions.
Perhaps it is inevitable that a group which identifies itself with high
achievement will not easily accept compromises. Perhaps working in an
environment where there is relentless pressure to continually improve health and
longevity yet facing challenges of limited spending throughout the NHS will
always militate against universal contentment in work.
In this final poem, George reveals conflicting motives from a personal
standpoint.
Yesterday
My 49th birthday
I worked until 8.30 in the evening
a big mistake
I thought I would
__________________________________________________________________
soldier it
get on with it
but I was just pissed off
I went home, thought

I am going to just give them it for once
let them know how hard my life is
I got in the door

my wife had been very smart
had the six year old
with a cake and candle
smiling at me
I blew it
that was it
I just had to be nice from there on in
extended hours is a pain

I know that we could live quite comfortably
with seven sessions
but greed
and having that money
keeps you working
It’s a great shame
because you then end up spending
what you don’t really need to spend
it’s hard, it’s a shame
I need to be disciplined
think about trimming down another session
I have got plenty of stuff I can enjoy

I used to have a tennis lesson in the good old days
I will have one again
I pick up from school
kick around with the kids
that’s what you should do
George
There are no universal answers in these narratives, and insights on identity are only
one route to understanding these professional actors and their reflections on work. I
believe their value lies in dipping into the complexity of feelings and reflections
Sharon Spooner 149
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which large-scale surveys are ill-equipped to deliver. Sharing them with different
audiences is just one of the ways through which I can discover how others react or
respond to them.
Bibliography
Becker, Howard Saul. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. New
Brunswick, NJ: London: Transaction Publishers, 1977.
Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man. 1st Granta ed. Cambridge,
Cambridgeshire: Granta Books, 1989.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

Routledge, 1990.
Clandinin, D. Jean, and F. Michael Connelly. Narrative Inquiry: Experience and

Story in Qualitative Research. The Jossey-Bass Education Series. 1st Edition. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc, 2000.
Clarke, Adele. Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the Postmodern Turn.
Thousand Oaks, CA and London: Sage Publications, 2005.
Copperfield, Tony. Sick Notes: True Stories from the Front Lines of Medicine [in
English]. Rugby: Monday, 2010.
Daniels, Benjamin. Confessions of a GP: Life, Death and Earwax. London: Friday
Books, 2010.
Edwards, Nick. In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of Life as an A&E Doctor [in
English]. London: Friday Books, 2007.
Frank, Arthur W. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Garfinkel, Harold. Studies in Ethnomethodology [in English]. Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin,

1990.
Gubrium, Jaber F., and James A. Holstein. Handbook of Interview Research:

Context and Method. London: SAGE, 2001.
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Hollway, Wendy, and Tony Jefferson. Doing Qualitative Research Differently:
Free Association, Narrative and the Interview Method. London and Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2000.
Lahman, Maria K. E., Katrina L. Rodriguez, Veronica M. Richard, Monica R.

Geist, Roland K. Schendel, and Pamela E. Graglia. ‘(Re)Forming Research
Poetry’. Qualitative Inquiry 17, No. 9 (November 1, 2011): 887–896.
Maynard, Kent. Medical Identities: Health, Well-Being and Personhood. Social

Identities. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2007.
Mishler, Elliot G. Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative [in English]. 1st
Harvard University Press, Chapterback Edition. Cambridge, Mass. and London:
Harvard University, 1986.
Mol, Annemarie. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC

and London: Duke University Press, 2003.
Rooney, Pauline. ‘Researching from the Inside - Does It Compromise Validity? - A

Discussion’. Articles (2005). Chapter 5.
Strauss, Anselm L. Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order.

San Francisco and London: Jossey-Bass, 1978.
Wengraf, Tom. Qualitative Research Interviewing: Biographic Narrative and

Semi-Structured Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA and London: SAGE, 2001.
Sharon Spooner is a General Practitioner and PhD student at the University of

Liverpool, UK. The poems used in this chapter are composed by her.
Part 4
Visual and Performative Stories

When to Hold and When to Fold: How Dying People Tell
Their Story
Mary Gavan
Abstract
Although we use words to convey information, we think not in words but in
images and metaphors. As images and metaphors are our mental organising tools,
they flourish in the domain of story. Story amplifies and exemplifies not only the
teller but also the relationship between teller and listener. This chapter discusses
the use of story from two personal perspectives: that of a palliative care Nurse and
that of a Celtic Storyteller. In this context, several short stories reveal not only the
essential components of a narrative but also how the telling of a story differs
qualitatively from the recounting of information. With this critical understanding,
narratives continue as the means to highlight how people use story to relate their
living and their dying. The story is the bond of communication, the basis of
relationships. At the end stage of life, however, the energy required to talk exceeds
the capacity of these people. Yet the need to relate their story continues. How do
they narrate without the use of words? How do they present their images and
metaphors and maintain meaningful communication? The resolution is an eloquent
one: they shift the presentation of their story which is no longer vocal but mental.
Consequently, the reception by this listener no longer remains auditory but
becomes visual. This mode of presentation amplifies and exemplifies the definition
of story by the travelling people of Scotland: the story is told heart to heart; eye to
eye and mind to mind.
Key Words: Story, narrative, image, metaphor, end stage, dying, communication,
senses, palliative, presentation.
*****
Introduction
From my perspective as a Celtic storyteller and a palliative care nurse, this
chapter describes through personal vignettes how the dying tell their story. As few
studies exist on this topic, the chapter is a pioneer study and uses personal narrative
as its format. The first part of this chapter focuses on the traditional story format
and its components; the second on storytelling by the dying within end-of-life
palliative care.
The title phrase of ‘When to hold and when to fold’ comes from the Kenny
Rogers’ song in which an old gambler’s secret of survival is knowing which cards
to hold onto and which to throw away.
My experience is that the dying exhibit this knowing, thereby holding onto their
quintessential humanity and folding on the rest. In holding, the dying use the
154 When to Hold and When to Fold
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traditional story format but tell in non-traditional ways. Their telling is rarely oral;
instead they avail themselves of the other senses to communicate their story.
Their desire to communicate meaningfully resonates strongly and underpins the
bond with the listener. As the listener, I put words around my experience, an
experience shared by others but rarely discussed. For the dying, telling their story
addresses the perennial question: Who am I? Moreover, telling satisfies the most
basic of human requirements: the need to be heard.
Part 1: Story and Its Components

As story has many formats, I share my rationale of the traditional story format.
Four brief stories are compared to highlight the elements of the traditional story
format: the essential component of emotion; the relationship between listener and
teller; and the tools for telling.
A. Essential Component of a Traditional Story: Emotion

Consider these four brief stores:
1 The king died. The queen died.

2 The king died. The queen ascended the throne.
3 The king died. The queen was instructed to ascend the throne.
4 The king died. The queen wept.
The first three stories recount facts but the fourth one contains the essential
element of the traditional story format: emotion. Recounting facts can happen
without attracting the attention. Such disconnect is readily observed in fact-rich
areas such as malls, airports etc; also in medicine where beeping machinery no
longer attracts the attention of staff. Relaying facts is a stand-alone operation and is
self-sufficient. Thus, the first three stories relaying factional information function
as monologues.
The shift from recounting facts in the first three stories to conveying emotion in
the fourth moves the narrative from a monologue to a dialogue. The fourth story
states that the queen wept. Both the listener and the teller interpret this act of
weeping from their own internal perspective. This act of referencing internally
anchors the teller and listener within themselves.
Consequently, the understanding of the story shifts from an objective
appreciation of facts to a subjective response to an emotion. By subjective
interpretation, the listener creates their own understanding of the story. As the
understanding of the story reflects the listener as much as the teller, an unspoken
dialogue evolves between them.
My palliative care nurse training involved partaking in this unspoken dialogue
consciously. I learnt to sit in a meditative state and be unconditionally receptive.
This receptivity is akin to the state of heightened awareness known in parental
Mary Gavan 155
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care, rapport with pets, sixth sense etc. As I am visually orientated, images
dominate my state of receptivity. At other times, my reception is auditory, tactile
and olfactory. Thus, all senses can be employed.
For example, one night while sitting in this state with an elderly, city gentleman
near death, I became vividly aware in my mind’s eye of a wagon wheel. Later, I
shared this image with his daughter and, at her request, detailed the carvings on
each spoke. While the daughter interpreted the details internally, a relationship
evolved between us.
B. Relationship between Listener and Teller: Safety and Sincerity

Although the basis of the relationship between the listener and the teller is their
individual interpretation of the story, the relationship is contingent on two
conditions: safety and sincerity. Both the listener and the teller must feel safe. In
the above story, the daughter listened intently because the situation was safe: I was
reporting as requested.
Finding the detail tedious to recount, however, I skipped a couple of spokes.
Instantly, she remarked on their omission. For her, the storytelling was no longer
safe because I could no longer be trusted to deliver the story fully. I had a duty of
care to reveal all the details. Telling as agreed constitutes safety between the
listener and the teller.
The complementary condition to safety is sincerity, that is the teller believes the
story during its narration. Story genres vary widely e.g. ghost stories, tall tales,
fairy tales etc. Thus, a ghost story has parts designed to be scary while a true story
is valid in its details. By telling with conviction within the parameters of the genre,
the teller conveys sincerity. Such telling resonates with the listener. Together,
safety and sincerity sustain the relationship between listener and teller. Also
sustaining the relationship, are the tools for telling.
C. Tools for Telling: Image and Metaphor

Although words are used in speech and print, I subscribe to the understanding
that we think not in words but in images and metaphors. As the tools for organising
our mental constructs, images and metaphors flourish in the domain of story. The
potency of image and metaphor derives from subjective interpretation. Continuous
interpretation further anchors the listener within the story and within relationship to
the teller.
Interpretation is not necessarily a shared experience between teller and listener.
The image of a wagon wheel engaged me as a general metaphor for farm life but
engaged the daughter as a specific metaphor for her family life. The divergent
interpretations, however, reveal a common factor: the willingness to access and
share a part of our personality. This sharing contributes to the unspoken dialogue.
__________________________________________________________________
D. Conclusion
The traditional story format is a potent vehicle for creating relationships. The
emotion of the story stimulates subjective interpretation and creates a relationship
between listener and teller. This relationship is sustained by the sincerity and safety
of the telling as well as the individual interpretations of the images and metaphors
of the story. By highlighting our individual reactions, the traditional story format
reveals how we exist as people. Traditional story format creates relationships based
on individual experience and without reference to shared ideals.
Part 2: End of Life Storytelling

In the end-of-life palliative community where I work as a Registered Nurse, I
consider two items of significance to storytelling: Energy and the Otherworld.
A. Energy
In palliative care in general and at the end-of- life stage in particular, the dying
person’s energy is diminished. Undiminished, however, is the urge to tell one’s
story. Indeed, the urge appears amplified. In my experience, people with reduced
energy restrict their talking. How do they tell without talking?
The resolution is an eloquent one: they present through visual, auditory, tactile
and auditory avenues. By choosing an alternative avenue but one commensurate
with the listener, the relationship between listener and teller is sustained.
For example, a dying man informed the hospice nursing staff that a friend had
come to help him. We expected a regular person but this friend had another
materialisation. Although we each experienced this friend through our preferred
visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory senses, we each witnessed a girl about ten
year old, named Ingleoid and a miniature Brunhilde type who summoned us as
required. Her summons were non-verbal but understood.
The strength of non-verbal communication is remarkable but well known. For
example, cat owners remark on knowing when their pet wants in and out; bus
drivers seated with their back to the public say they develop eyes in the back of
their heads. Instances of sixth sense are commonly reported.
I recall how through perceiving her images, I learnt how one apparently devout
Christian lady had actually lost her faith many years earlier. At her prompting, I
relayed this to her family. They discussed this unexpected information with her.
Although she said nothing, they grasped that she wanted a celebration of her life
telling her story as a woman active in many charities rather than the planned
funeral service focusing on her role as a devoted church goer.
My experience is that sharing their story is an aspect of end-of-life.
Noteworthy, the story shared is rarely one of achievements and career. For
example, the man with the wagon wheel image was highly recognised for his
talents but the story he shared focused on a wagon wheel, the symbol of his family
life according to his daughter.
Mary Gavan 157
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At times, however, the story is based in physical activity. To ensure his friends
would remember him daily, a self-absorbed young man idiosyncratically
bequeathed to each friend a spoonful of his ashes to be placed in fridge magnets.
Content that his story would now be acknowledged daily, he passed peacefully.
Reviewing the stories shared with me, I believe that the dying communicate the
essence of their humanity. In this way, the dying affirm who they are. This desire
to be known is matched by the desire of the living to know. I am mindful that most
countries have the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to acknowledge the dead whose
story is not known. As all stories need a listener, my role as the palliative care
nurse is to hear their story.
B. Otherworld
As a Celtic Storyteller, my understanding of dying means to move over to the
Otherworld. To die, three things are required simultaneously: to leave the body; to
be invited by the Otherworld; and to part from friends and family. Leaving the
body is usually viewed with relief when the body is worn out. An invitation from
the Otherworld also tends to be viewed positively and the rapport with the
Otherworld is well documented in the Near Death Experience literature.
The act of parting with friends and family, however, is the step most often
fraught with reluctance. I recall a wife relieved when her husband died after a
troublesome illness. Some 20 minutes after his death, however, she suddenly let
out a wail from the depths of her being and her deceased husband returned to life.
Two hours later, she announced he was dying. Die he did but she again wailed
grievously. Return he did and only on his third try did she let him pass over to the
Otherworld without recall.
A close relationship exists between those at end of their lives and the
Otherworld. Sitting with a restless elderly lady in her final days, I settled into my
meditative state by means of my familiar scene. Into my scene, however, came the
untoward aroma of beans simmering. In my mind’s eye, I saw Molly, a past
patient, stirring bean soup. Prior to her death five years previously, Molly had
repeatedly regaled how to make bean soup. In my scene, she again regaled the
procedure; I listened. Mentally, I thanked her for her calming influence and
returned my focus to the restless, elderly lady.
She was now calm but amidst the aroma of beans. Whenever this lady became
restless, the aroma of beans simmering pervaded and she settled. Of similar age but
in different worlds, Molly with her bean soup nursed that lady along her last mile.
Amidst the aroma of beans simmering, this lady eventually passed serenely to the
Otherworld.
The Otherworld is meaningful to Celts. Traditional Celtic stories relate that
when offered the choice between a long life or a quick death, heroic Celts opted for
the latter. The rationale is that only in dying is a person truly living in their core
being.
__________________________________________________________________
My experience concurs. In a life time of working with the dying, I have yet to
see two people die the same way. The process of dying is a significant part of the
person’s quintessential story. Consequently, I maintain that our only unique task in
life is to organise our dying.
While the dying organise the process they want, friends and family recognise
this seminal moment more clearly in retrospect. For example, an exceptional sunset
was streaming through the overhead window when a geologist died at 8.45 pm.
Later, his spouse commented that he planned it perfectly: sunset was his favourite
time of day and he died at the moment he had decreed for his death many years
earlier when he was healthy.
Noteworthy, hearing is the sense that stays and stays acute. A wife noted for
her wit reported to her deeply comatose husband that she booked his church
service but warned the minister there could be breathing sounds from the open
casket. The comatose husband chortled. Shortly thereafter, he died with a smile
still on his face. She commented that he had fulfilled his wish to die laughing.
Sometimes, the dying communicate with their pets. A large dog, reminiscent of
the Hound of the Baskervilles, squished itself through the minute space under the
kitchen door to be with his master in his last moments. Another dog, a Stafford-
Rottweiler Cross, suddenly leapt onto the bed and slobbered over his dying
mistress. Under his protective eye and his loving drool, she passed over to the
Otherworld.
At other times, the communication is with wild animals. A modern young man-
about-town with no apparent interest in nature stated he would summon geese to
escort him during his dying. One murky day, the sky suddenly cleared and waves
of geese flew past in formation for several minutes, during which he died. Such a
flypast was a unique occurrence.
In conclusion, as their physical energy is diminished, the dying use all senses
except oral in telling their story. Their story is received through visual, auditory,
tactile and olfactory senses. In addition, the dying arrange circumstances to reveal
the story of their quintessential being. Thus, every dying is unique.
Conclusion
In my experience, the dying reveal their quintessential humanity. In place of
oral telling, they use other sensory avenues to convey their story. Reviewing their
unique stories, I believe two questions are addressed: Who am I? and How will I be
heard?
The dying address the former question of who am I? by excluding roles
performed and careers undertaken in favour of portraying their core being in a
manner recognized uniquely by their family and friends. For example, the man
with the wagon wheel image was recognised by his daughter as his life as a family
man.
Mary Gavan 159
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At times, their core being appears in physical activity. An Italian lady shook her
nearly comatose husband awake and commanded him: ‘You who are about to die,
eat breakfast.’ She rammed food into his mouth, ignoring that most fell out
immediately. Yet, a radiant look of trust flowed from him to her. She said: ‘Look,
he is my beloved husband.’ She wiped his face, laid him down and amicably
watched him depart for the Otherworld.
The dying resolve the latter question of how to be heard? by telling their story.
The need to be heard is rooted in our being. Psychoneuroimmunology notes we are
hard wired for joy and our greatest joy is to be heard. Conversely, our greatest fear
is abandonment, whether physical or emotional.
The need to be heard, however, poses the problem: how can I be heard? The
age old answer is: tell your story. Storytelling occurs in conditions of safety and
sincerity together with listeners grounded in their own humanity.
Thus, telling their story through all available avenues enables the dying to share
not only their unique being but also to satisfy the most basic human need: the need
to be heard. To paraphrase Descartes: I am heard, therefore, I am.
Mary Gavan is a PhD candidate as well as an acclaimed storyteller performing her

own material; her CD ‘Celtic Otherworld’ won a Storytelling World Award. She is
a past president of the National Storytellers of Canada; and a palliative care nurse
enjoying the stories of the indomitable human spirit.
An Invitation to the Wedding of Inanna and Dumuzi: A
Contextual Paper on the One Woman Performance
Raelene Bruinsma
Abstract
This chapter contextualises a performance presentation that was a re-working of a
one woman show which appeared in its original form as a ‘work in progress’ 17th
September 2011 in Canberra, Australia. It is part of a creative PhD research project
exploring the relevance of the 5000 year old mythic stories and poems of the
Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna, for contemporary women. The main methods of
exploration involve story and a range of storytelling approaches both theatrical and
musical. Ancient Sumer existed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a place
currently known as Iraq. It was a place where writing was invented, and
agriculture, arts and music flourished. Much of the year the land was dry and
barren. But with the ritual marriage and sexual union of Inanna to the king of the
day - considered the earthly embodiment of her heavenly consort Dumuzi - the
floods would come and the land would prosper with abundant fertility. An
examination of the poetry relating to the above story shows there are other stories
embedded within: beautiful stories of love, romance, and sexual flourishing; and
darker stories suggesting cultural control and manipulation. The performance
presented stands as a form of ‘autoethnographic’ research output where story is
data (what is being studied), method (how it is being studied) and result (the
outcome of the research - alongside a written exegesis). In the performance,
personal stories of the performer were woven together with the ancient poems and
contextual stories of the sacred marriage. You will hear original songs, watch a
ritual re-enactment and be transported back to Ancient Sumer through the sensual
language of the poetry. 1
Key Words: Performance, feminism, sexuality, songwriting, singing, ritual,

Sacred Marriage, autoethnography, practice-led research.
*****
1. Introduction
They tell me I am lucky,

And I collude.
My feet are not bound,
I am not covered,
Denied humanity
Nor stoned.
And so my protests wither on their way to my mouth.
162 An Invitation to the Wedding of Inanna and Dumuzi
__________________________________________________________________
Mutely, I bind myself to expectations,
Cover my passion, deny my power,
And stone myself silent.
Still,
Within me lives a Power:
A Passion;
A Joy so strong,
So exultantly wild,
It can find no foothold
In this feminine wasteland.
Demoted to rage
It bubbles and boils within.
Molten mercury
Seeping through cracks and crevices
Like unexpected vapours in unexpected moments.
Saying without saying,
Accusing without sound.
If I could find my voice I would scream:
‘Do not bind me to half a life

With false gratitude
To a society which paints me
For a lesser creature than I am.
For there is no more room
Left within me
To be less
Than I am.
I am woman,
And that is enough. 2
Many feminist scholars have turned to the 5000-year-old stories and poems of
the Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna to attempt to fill a hole they perceive in
Western culture. This hole has been created by a silencing of women's voices 3 and
a lack of positive affirming images of strong womanhood especially in our mythic
stories. 4 Ancient Sumer existed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a place
currently known as Iraq. It was a place where writing was invented; agriculture, arts
and music flourished; and where at one stage in history, a goddess named Inanna
was the most powerful deity in the pantheon.
In addition to the above mentioned shortcomings, I believe contemporary
culture lacks images of healthy empowered female sexuality, needed as an
Raelene Bruinsma 163
__________________________________________________________________
alternative to counter what Liz Byrski describes as ‘the pornographic wallpaper’
with which we are bombarded. 5 This presents a homogenised unrealistic ideal of
how women should look and behave. For these purposes some scholars turn to the
Inanna-Dumuzi love songs, believing them to provide an example of empowered
autonomous expressions of female sexuality. The songs themselves refer to the
ritual marriage and sexual union between Inanna and the king of the day, who was
considered to be the earthly embodiment of her heavenly consort Dumuzi. In Sumer
the land was dry and barren for much of the year, but this sexual union brought the
floods causing the land to prosper with abundant fertility.
Nancy Tuana for example, criticises a contemporary investigations of female
sexual biology for a lack of rigour and sophistication beyond the reproductive
system. 6 She quotes the following love poetry excerpt as evidence of lost ancient
knowledge of women’s multi-orgasmic potential:
He caressed me on the… fragrant honey-bed.

My sweet love, lying by my heart,
Tongue playing, one by one,
My fair Dumuzi did so fifty times.
Now my sweet love is stated. 7
I turned to Inanna’s stories for similar reasons. Struggling to express a trapped

inner strength, I hoped simultaneously to: create an entertaining piece of
performance using original song and other storytelling methods; provide alternative
images of womanhood to a wider audience; and express my strong self, which is
hard to experience positively when I feel it is devalued by my culture.
Once I began, I quickly discovered that the stories behind and within the poems
are complex: they represent not only potential empowerment, but also
disempowerment for women.
This chapter attempts not only to contextualise the performance I presented in
Prague - which is itself a reworking of an ‘in progress’ performance-discussion
forum which first took place in Canberra, Australia, September 2011 8 - but also to
provide a complementary narrative journey through my creative and scholarly
autoethnographic encounter with the Inanna-Dumuzi Love Songs. 9
2. The Courtship: A Love Story

My first contact with the love poetry of Inanna and Dumuzi was in the form of
the story presented as if one of four chapters in the life story of a goddess: the
chapter where she falls in love and gets married. 10
I had come to the Victorian State Library in Melbourne in search of translations
of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld. This myth had been suggested to me 11 as a
possible centre piece for creating a one woman show using song and other
__________________________________________________________________
performative storytelling methods. The motivating model for this goal had been a
one man show, Orpheus by a singer songwriter named Simon Oats. 12 I had loved
it: entertaining, thought provoking, and soulful.
I sat in my chair, hunched forward, elbows on knees with Wolkstein and
Kramer’s Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth 13 on my lap. I had found my story.
Or should I say ‘stories.’ My performance, I thought, should include all four
stories: they were chapters in a whole. It was as much the beautiful language and
rhythm of the poetry that drew me in, as the overarching story itself.
In the first days,

In the very first days,
In the first nights,
In the very first nights
When everything needed was brought into being 14
My project was growing, and it was not long before I decided to apply to do it
as a practice-led, or creative production, PhD: a decision which resulted in my
move to Perth to study at Curtin University with a scholarship about a year later.
I was particularly drawn to the tender, vulnerable poetry of The Courtship.
Sweet is the sleep of hand to hand,

Sweeter still is the sleep of heart to heart. 15
I have always struggled to be vulnerable enough for such intimacy, and I felt
comforted by the simple tenderness of those lines. The sense of two human beings
softly naked together, in the trust of sleep was soothing. I wanted to put some of
this poetry to music and feel those sentiments in my own voice. And I have, in fact,
put those two lines to music in the performance.
The plot is simple: Inanna’s brother tells her it is her time to marry; she is
courted by Dumuzi; initially resists; their mutual desire grows; she proclaims that
he’s the ‘man of her heart;’ they marry in a ceremony with lavish preparation,
followed by a tender and erotic consummation; and finally, sated, Dumuzi begs
Inanna to set him free.
While there were troubling elements about this plot for a feminist like me, such
as the role of Inanna’s brother, and the possible implication that Dumuzi was
‘trapped’ by Inanna’s voracious sexual appetite, these were eclipsed by the beauty
of the poetry, and by my knowledge that Inanna did not ‘give up her power’ on
getting married, she remained Queen of Heaven and Earth.
The therapist in me - I am a registered music therapist with some additional
experience of depth psychology - saw Inanna’s quests as parallel to developmental
phases of life, and, like Marianne Kimmit as a much more appropriate model for
women than traditional Western psychology provides. 16 The heroic elements
__________________________________________________________________
symbolised the challenges we must psychologically face as we grow first into
adulthood, and then grow across the lifespan. Exploring the love poetry, I hoped,
would give some clues as to ways in which I, and others, as contemporary women,
could surrender to the positive elements of romantic love, without giving up and
losing ourselves, as we have historically been required to do, and often continue to
do of our own accord.
I was also struck by Inanna’s uninhibited joy in, and celebration of, her body
and her sexuality.
Plough my vulva, man of my heart 17
Behold, my breasts have become firm,

Behold, my nakedness has sprouted hair,
Baba, going to the lap of the bridegroom, let us rejoice!
Dance! Dance!
Baba, for my nakedness let us rejoice! 18
I found this inspiring, but also confronting. My own experience of entering

physical and sexual maturity was somewhat less celebratory. This experience made
me feel self-conscious, unsafe in the face of predatory men, and somehow that I
was always not living up to some standard I didn’t understand. To publicly allow
my sexuality to be seen was to invite trouble. In an early research journal entry I
wrote:
How can a contemporary woman who has had such an assault

on her sexuality (through cultural “splitting” of women into
mothers or whores; through actual sexual assaults; through the
negative connotations associated with words that describe
female genitalia; through the lack of words, or failure to use
words to describe female genitalia; through conflicting
expectations and judgements of how we do or don’t express our
sexuality), how could we relate to a goddess who upon entering
adulthood leans against a tree and praises her genitalia? Can I
imagine myself leaning against a tree and praising my vulva?
Even just in performance? 19
3. The Breakdown of the Overarching Story Concept

In the early stages of my research, despite having evidence of at least one other
Inanna story, 20 I did not seriously question my ‘developmental lifespan model.’ I
also believed Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth 21 to be the definite most up to
date translation available.
__________________________________________________________________
In 2011 I went on a research field trip to view archaeological artefacts in US
museums. I received a caution from archaeologist Richard Zettler, 22 curator of the
Near East Section of the Pennsylvania University Museum, 23 via an email from
William Hafford 24 to not perceive the Inanna stories as unified, which cemented
my growing realisation that the idea of these four stories as chapters in an
overarching story was a construct of folklorist Diane Wolkstein. 25
Zsolnay, a tablet expert at the same museum, alerted me to the existence of the
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature or ETCSL. 26 This an online
collection of more recent translations of Ancient Sumerian literature, created to
‘meet the need for a coherently and systematically published, universally available
textual corpus.’ 27
Zsolnay also recommended I read Sefati’s Love Songs in Sumerian
Literature, 28 a book which not only includes all of the love poems that have been
catalogued and translated, it provides a commentary and analysis of the problems
in translating, in some cases discusses some of the alternative analyses that have
been made, and gives a comprehensive summary of the contextual information and
debates relating to the love poetry.
From perusing the ETCSL and the Sefati texts, three facts became evident.
Firstly, The Courtship as a story was also a construct of Wolkstein’s, created by
linking several songs together. I discovered many more songs than Wolkstein had
included, some of which feature in my own performance. This knowledge was
affirming: I had never fully comprehended the chronology of the love story. The
couple was always just about to have sex, and then to have had sex, and then be
preparing to have sex for the first time again. I had always imagined creating love
songs from pieces of the text, and had already begun to do so. Knowing that the
poetry actually was understood by scholars to be love songs, reinforced the
appropriateness of this idea. The first three lines of the following, a song I had
written before cognitively knowing that the story was really a set of songs, are
taken from Wolkstein and Kramer. 29 The following two lines are mine, added to
create a workable musical form while expressing my perception of the intent of the
poetry.
What I tell you let the singer weave into song

What I tell you let it flow from ear to mouth
What I tell you let it pass from old to young
I am Inanna and I’m ready for Love,
I am Inanna and I’m ready for love 30
Secondly, I became increasingly irritated by sexist connotations as I

encountered more examples of an apparently patriarchal frame of reference. For
example, the poem that in my performance became the song Usumgalana 31
(another name for Dumuzi) tells the story of Dumuzi sexually pursuing a
__________________________________________________________________
seemingly unwilling Inanna during courtship. It is difficult to tell whether her
resistance is lack of interest, coy flirtation, or genuine fear of moral recrimination,
but she responds by indicating she would not know how to explain her overnight
absence to her mother. The following lyrics are Dumuzi's answer to her objections,
adapted from the Sefati version: 32
Let me teach you, let me teach you, let me teach you the lies of
women,
This you could tell your mother
This is what you could tell your mother for a lie, and stay with
me
Although I cannot date the songs relative to one another, I wondered if some
had been written at an earlier time when women’s status had been higher, and
others during its decline. The idea that women’s status declined during
Mesopotamian history is supported by several scholars including Ruby Rohrlich 33
and Samuel Noah Kramer. 34 Kenton Sparks, 35 in analysing the Hebrew Song of
Songs - sometimes considered to be derived from the Inanna-Dumuzi love songs -
postulates that someone collected several diverse existing poems and subtly
changed them to promote the moral political agenda for women at the time. I
wondered alternatively, if some of the written versions of the Inanna-Dumuzi
songs had also already undergone a similar transformation.
Thirdly, the love poetry pertained to an ancient Sacred Marriage or kingship
ritual. This became in my mind the overarching story within which the love poetry
sat.
4. The Sacred Marriage

According to Sefati the Sacred Marriage was a ceremony in which the goddess
Inanna was ritually married to the King of the time. 36 The King was considered the
earthly stand-in for Dumuzi. Whether or not there was a stand-in for Inanna, or
whether the sex rites were purely ritualised, is debated. Joanna Stuckey presents
evidence to suggest that an ‘En-priestess,’ who was considered an incarnation of
Inanna, performed the rights. 37 One of my songs poses the question from Inanna's
point of view ‘Who is the girl who stands in for me?’ 38
Stuckey also postulates that the kingship ritual grew out of an earlier ‘goddess
making’ ritual designed to bring the earth to fertility. 39 If true, this is consistent
with my sense that possibly some of the poems and stories were rewritten to suit
patriarchal political ends.
There were four phases to the ritual: the courtship, which involved bride and
groom dowries, flirtatious episodes, and seemingly a declaration of love; the
marriage ceremony; the sex rites; and a large celebratory banquet. The ceremony is
__________________________________________________________________
believed to have lasted two days. Instrumental music, singing, and feasting were all
part of this. There was a chorus, and so I sometimes ask my audience to sing along.
Another debate questions if the purpose of the ritual was to confer the validity
of the new king’s reign, or simply to secure its prosperity and successes in war. 40
Apparently there were times in history when all three major deities - Inanna, An
the sky god, and Enlil the air god - were required to ritually confirm the validity of
the king’s reign. 41 In any case, Inanna can be seen as having been used as a tool in
helping establish male sovereignty. No longer was she entirely the empowering,
self-actualised, model of my fantasy.
5. Conclusion
In Philadelphia, the place where my knowledge and access to contextual
material suddenly mushroomed thanks to the encouragement and support of a
number of staff at the Pennsylvania University Museum, I had a sudden insight that
my research was less about finding out whose perception of Inanna and her stories
was historically accurate, and much more about the various ways in which people -
including the Sumer experts and myself - make meaning from them. After all, my
research question is:
How do the 5000 year old stories and poems of the Ancient
Sumerian goddess Inanna continue to speak to contemporary
women?
The archaeological evidence was here an important factor for me, but it was not
the only one. In autoethnographic research we are encouraged to acknowledge the
biases and personal experiences that shape the way we view our material. 42 Even
archaeologists, despite the rigourous evidence-based nature of their research, are
viewing that evidence through the lens of their own life experiences. Those
experiences, even for women, have taken place in a culture which has thousands of
years of patriarchal history. Even where contemporary meaning-making has not
been consistent with historic evidence, these stories have often profoundly and
positively influenced on the lives of many women.
In the end perhaps what matters is how we engage with mythic stories, rather
than seeking an absolute truth within them. Expecting to find an absolute role
model for life from any one source is, after all, the road of fundamentalism.
Additionally, the impulse to universalise stories that are clearly culturally specific
has also been criticised. 43 While I agree with this in many ways, in particular in
relation to the need to respect other cultures and not simply appropriate their
stories in a colonising manner, my own experience of immersion in the world of
dreams and imagery has also convinced me that incredible personal enrichment, as
well as increased empathy and compassion, can be found from engagement with
the concept of archetypes and universal grand stories. I feel the tension between the
__________________________________________________________________
universal and the specific is ever present in story, and while issues of cultural
appropriation are less pressing with stories from a culture long gone, care must be
taken to find some balance.
Effectively, for me, the Inanna stories have provided, and continue to provide,
an opportunity for critical thinking about these issues, as well as a vehicle for
creatively exploring them. It also offers a mirror for some of the challenges I - and,
I believe, most women - face. Sometimes Inanna, if considered to be something
approximating an identity, succumbed to and participated in her own
disempowerment. This is evident in some of the love poetry, and in some other
stories. At other times the stories and poems demonstrate her refusal to submit to
patriarchy, her struggle to fight and overcome it, and her determination to become
everything that it was in her power in destiny to be.
Notes
1
Performance Credits: Songwriting by Raelene Bruinsma. Spoken text by Raelene
Bruinsma and Robin Davidson. Direction by Robin Davidson.
2
Raelene Bruinsma, ‘They Tell Me I’m Lucky’, unpublished poem performed as
part of one woman show, Venus Envy (Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2003; Turning
Wave Folk Festival, Gundagai, 2005).
3
For example, Anne Lickus Cravens, ‘Elephant Dreams: An Exploration into the
Importance of Re-Storying’ (PhD diss., Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara,
1999).
4
Marianne Sturges, ‘Beyond the Feminine Stereotype: A More Holistic Self
Concept for Women and Men through the Discovery of Female Mythology’,
Advanced Development 5 (1993): 59-71.
5
Liz, Byrski, ‘Claiming the Future - Why We Still Need Feminism’, unpublished
address for International Women’s Day (8th March 2012).
6
Nancy Tuana ‘Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of
Ignorance’, Hypatia 19, No. 1 (2004): 194-232.
7
Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth:
Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
8
Raelene Bruinsma, ‘An Invitation to the Sacred Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi’,
(Canberra: ‘in progress’ performance and discussion forum, 2011).
9
Ancient text. My (translated) sources included: Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna,
Queen of Heaven and Earth; Yitschak Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature:
Critical Edition of the Dumuzi Inanna Songs (Ramat Gan: BarIlan University
Press, 1998); and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/general.php. Various contributors published
translations of Ancient Sumerian texts to this website, 2003-2006.
10
Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.
__________________________________________________________________
11
By Robin Davidson, the theatrical director for the project.
http://www.robindavidson.co-operista.com.
12
Simon Oats, Orpheus (Melbourne, live one man show: 2008, 2010).
13
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Marianne Kimmitt, ‘Female Midlife Transitions: Dreaming the Myth On’
(Pacifica Graduate Inst, Santa Barbara, 2000).
17
18
Although I had not yet discovered this source at the time I am writing about, I
felt this was a particularly good example of the concept I am expressing: Sefati,
Love Songs in Sumerian Literature, 137.
19
This quote is from my unpublished research journal (Melbourne, 2009). The
moment I am describing in which Inanna leans against a tree and praises her vulva,
comes from the story ‘Inanna and the God of Wisdom’ in Wolkstein and Kramer,
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.
20
Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963).
21
22
Richard Zettler was an archaeologist involved in excavating the Inanna temple at
Nippur, and kindly showed me around the museum storeroom as there was not a
relevant display open to the public at the time of my visit.
23
According to Kramer in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, archaeological
finds between 1889 and 1900 were divided between The University of
Pennsylvania and the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient. Translating the clay
tablets on which the stories are written thus involved reassembling fragments held
in different parts of the world.
24
William Hafford is a consulting scholar at the Unniversity of Pennsylvania
Museum, in the Near East Section. He is also a writer who was introduced to me
by email by a mutual acquaintance in Melbourne, giving me the opportunity to
meet specialists in the field. The referred to information was sent to me by email
before we met in 2011.
25
Diana Wolkstein in Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.
26
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/,
began in 2003 and provides a collection of the most up to date translations of
Sumerian literature until the funding stopped in 2006. There are many contributors,
sometimes even to each individual story or poem translation, and the website does
not allow tracking of individual contributors.
27
Ibid.
28
Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature.
__________________________________________________________________
29
30
Raelene Bruinsma, ‘Ready for Love’, unpublished song (Melbourne, 2009).
31
Raelene Bruinsma, ‘Usumgalana’, unpublished song (Perth, 2011).
32
33
Ruby Rohrlich, ‘State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women’,
Feminist Studies 6, No. 1 (1980): 76-102.
34
In Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and
Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
35
Kenton Sparks, ‘Wisdom for Young Jewish Women’, The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 70, No. 2 (2008): 277-299.
36
37
Joanna Stuckey, ‘Inanna and the “Sacred Marriage”’, Matrifocus 4, No. 2
(2005).
38
Raelene Bruinsma, ‘Who Is the Girl Who Stands in for Me?’, unpublished song
(Perth, 2011).
39
Ibid.
40
41
Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature. Ilona Zsolnay, ‘The Function of Istar
in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: A Contextual Analysis of the Actions
Attributed to Istar in the Inscriptions of Ititi through Salmaneser III’ (PhD diss.,
Brandeis University, Boston, 2009).
42
E.g. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner, ‘Autoethnography, Personal Narrative,
Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject’, in Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds.
Norman. K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000).
43
Michael Wilson, Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Storytellers and Their
Art (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
Bibliography
Bruinsma, Raelene. (Artist). ‘They Tell Me I’m Lucky’. Melbourne: unpublished
poem from one woman show ‘Venus Envy’, 2003.
—––. ‘Unpublished Research Journal’. Melbourne, 2009.
—––. (Artist). ‘Tell You a Story’. Perth: unpublished song, 2011.
—––. (Artist). ‘Usumgalana’. Perth: unpublished song, 2011.
—––. (Artist). ‘Who Is the Girl Who Stands in for Me?’. Perth: unpublished song,
2011.
__________________________________________________________________
Bruinsma, Raelene, and Robin Davidson (Artists). An Invitation to the Sacred

Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi. Canberra and Perth: unpublished performance
text, 2011.
Byrski, Liz. ‘Claiming the Future - Why We Still Need Feminism’. Curtin
University: Unpublished address for International Women’s Day, 8th March 2012.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/general.php. Various contributors published
translations of Ancient Sumerian texts to this website, 2003-2006.
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from Rape’. PhD diss., Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, California, 2010.
Jones, Phillip. ‘Embracing Inana: Legitimation and Mediation in the Ancient

Mesopotamian Sacred Marriage Hymn Iddin-Dagan’. Journal of the American
Oriental Society 123, No. 2 (2003): 291–302.
Kimmitt, Marianne. ‘Female Midlife Transitions: Dreaming the Myth On’. PhD
diss., Pacifica Graduate Inst, Santa Barbara, 2000.
Kramer, Samuel. From the Tablets of Sumer. Colorado: Falcon’s Wing Press,
1956.
—––. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Lickus Cravens, Anne. ‘Elephant Dreams: An Exploration into the Importance of

Re-Storying’. PhD diss., Pacifica Graduate Inst, Santa Barbara, 1999.
Oats, Simon. (Artist). Orpheus [Live one man show]. Melbourne: 2008, 2010.
Perera, Silvia. Descent to the Goddess: a Way of Initiation for Women. Toronto:
Inner City Books, 1981.
Rohrlich, Ruby. ‘State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women’.

Feminist Studies 6, No. 1 (1980): 76–102.
Sefati, Yitshak. Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi
Inanna Songs. Ramat Gan: BarIlan University Press, 1998.
__________________________________________________________________
Sparks, Kenton. ‘The Song of Songs: Wisdom for Young Jewish Women’. The
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 70, No. 2 (2008): 277–299.
Starhawk. Truth or Dare. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.
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2010.
Stuckey, Joanna. ‘Inanna and the “Sacred Marriage”’. Matrifocus 4, No. 2 (2005):
unpaged. Accessed August 12, 2011.
http://www.matrifocus.com/IMB05/spotlight.htm.
Sturges, Marianne. ‘Beyond the Feminine Stereotype: A More Holistic Self

Concept for Women and Men through the Discovery of Female Mythology’.
Advanced Development 5 (1993): 59–71.
Tuana, Nancy. ‘Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of

Ignorance’. Hypatia 19, No. 1 (2004): 194–232.
Wilson, Micheal. Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Storytellers and Their

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Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
Zsolnay, Ilona. ‘The Function of Istar in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: A

Contextual Analysis of the Actions Attributed to Istar in the Inscriptions of Ititi
through Salmaneser III’. PhD diss., Brandeis University, Boston, 2009.
Raelene Bruinsma is a singer songwriter storyteller, singing teacher, registered

music therapist and full time PhD student in performance and mythology at Curtin
University, Perth, Australia. She is currently intrigued by the paradox of how the
same set of stories can be used as subversive in one culture and oppressive in
another.
To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood: Tearing Air to
Draw Displacement
Catherine Hamel
Abstract
To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood is a drawing out of the personal cartography of
forced displacement in space. It charts the unresolved existence that oscillates between
the dangerously manipulative memories of a lost place and the difficulty of adaptation
to new cultures and their accompanying space. It is a rich existence that defies the
comfort of stale meaning. Life relentlessly demands to be reinterpreted from a
different point of view. The 1975-1990 war in Beirut, Lebanon provided the real stage.
This body, violent and violated, and the social space of the theatre are the consequent
medium of expression. The body, a memory theatre where the fictional and factual are
juxtaposed, yields complex interactions. It becomes author; performer and foolish
witness forced and trained to continuously observe difficult knowledge. The narrative,
as a way of knowledge formation, structures a discussion on identity in post conflict
situations. The project evolves from work done in a residency with the One Yellow
Rabbit Theatre group. Building on the question of how we seek definitions of identity
in the built environment, it maps the author’s performance To My Beirut Of Flesh and
Blood in drawing and words. It is a cartography of the territories of experience of
identity fragmentation. The attempt to map this continuously shifting space emerges
from the translations that occur in the oscillation between the different modes of
expression [drawing, reflective words, scripts and performance] that constantly allude
to another possible formulation. This intentional tracing of elusive shadows is the
voicing of a subject to help it stand, not as a temporary emotive story, an accidental
smudge, but as a narrative that confronts imposed ubiquity. We draw lines of
distinction in the construction of our world. Lines that are rigid, aggressive, imposing.
Lines that can be subtle, delicate, wondering. Vulnerable lines turn drawing into a
questioning process, one that challenges one’s assuredness, intentions and
assumptions. By intentionally displacing space to draw out an experience, the body
becomes a site of migration of knowledge that dispels the boundaries imposed. It is a
collision between modes of expression and experience that can never be perfectly
matched. The reverberation of a collision is always more interesting than the obvious
explosion.
Key Words: Social space, identity, forced displacement, memory theatres, personal
cartographies, scripts, foolish witnessing.
*****
176 To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood
__________________________________________________________________
Image 1: Icarus / Pen and ink, C. Hamel.
1. This is My Voice. There Are Many Like It, But This One Is Mine 1
This is my voice. It attempts to tell a story; part autobiographical, part
biographical, parts are imagined realities. Stories often have beginnings, middles
and ends. This voice likes to seep out of this contained order. It often gets confused
and relishes, indulging in the loss. It gets bored with the restrictions of words and
the restrain of the channel from which it has to emerge. It deviates. It withholds in
silence. Annoyed, it avoids. It shuns words and draws. It shuns drawing and makes.
It shuns making and dances.
This is a story that cannot be accurately told, but constantly attempted. It is
about a life misremembered. There is safety in speaking the intimate to a public,
the public that never knows if it is revelation or imagination.
How a story changes when it is told. How it changes and is rediscovered when
it is re-told; when it is written; when it is scripted to be performed; when it is
intellectualized; danced in the dark; told to a lover. It changes most when it is told
to an indifferent lover. One who hears only what he can distort and manipulate.
How well he listened … .
That questions have no answer does not make them less beautiful. This voice is
mine, there are others like it, but this one is mine. It is not told to him, her, them or
you. It is, for it lives, in memory, in a body and is slowly unravelled as it is
discovered, rediscovered, remembered and misremembered. These are a few
excerpts of her story; a move, a nervous gesture, a mischievous push; a playful pull
to displace and replace the details. A story retold with a different highlight, from a
different angle, with different forgetfulness. She did not know she was a story to be
told… .
Catherine Hamel 177
__________________________________________________________________
Image 2: Beirut Landscapes #2 / Pen and Ink, C. Hamel.
2. One Yellow Rabbit Performance

This is a 3-week immersive theatre studio. Open to actors, writers, directors,
dancers and other artists with advanced study in their field. The outcome is a 10-
minute public performance at The Secret Theatre in Calgary, Canada. The work
expands on research on the space of forced displacement previously explored in
traditional drawings and words. Starting from the understanding of drawing as a
site of migration of knowledge, the intent was to draw with the body. To displace
space rather than trace lines with a tool as a means to explore the intersection of
words and non-verbal dialogue stored in the flesh.
Application Text
10 minutes / 600 seconds / 1/6th of an hour / for ever / not long enough / to
unravel 43 years of memories imprinted in one heart / 2 femur bones / 10 fingers /
630 muscles / a few grams of cellulite / 5 artificial teeth / painted toenails / tainted
colour / a tongue / licked - tasted - repelled / blissful amnesia / a testimony / 1200
words / 20 images / a short silence / a long dance / to displace space / light air /
invisible pain / to succeed / light body / visible joy / banal / exposing a
transformation / a struggle / in public / to tell the story already told / in a new
language / to learn from the translation / to draw with the body / to unravel this
drawing / one can utter a mute cry / call without noise / without the call tearing the
air / to my Beirut of flesh and blood / a futile attempt to reach the one that no
longer wishes to be found / hot, bothered and the wrong kind of dirty / what words
describe retracing the steps of the vanished / to place one’s body where theirs had
been / displace the same air / embrace the memory that never will be again / to run
into the unknown / fall / fly / lift / there is more bird in us than we think / hollow
bones / what freedom discovered when the throat no longer tightens with fear. /
sips of air / all day / all night / to run / walk / saunter / to stand / lean /sit / to lay /
ah! to lay... / linger / to absorb / to seep out / to walk / again ... 10 minutes that is
all!
__________________________________________________________________
Image 3: To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood. Performance / Kris Kelly as the evil
soldier and C. Hamel, video stills, courtesy of the One Yellow Rabbit.
3. To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood 2
An angel knocks on your window

You pretend you are not there
There is a struggle
It is inside. 3
Scene One [Featuring Kris Kelly as the Evil Soldier]

There is an aggressive physical dialogue between a bare footed woman and a
soldier whose feet are clad in heavy army boots.
Scene Two
As he forges towards her one more time with increasing frustration, she gently
steps out of his way. He stumbles on his momentum that throws him to the edge of
the stage. To the side, she notices a shimmer. A pair of green boots awaits. Boots.
They take you places the other had said. Wear them and they will take you
somewhere. The best outfit for those boots was skin. Nothing but pure skin sawn
by Mother Nature. She was not ready for such exposure. Was she? As green boots
replace mask, the soldier removes his protective armour and walks off stage.
Scene Three monologue

I said: That is the way to my home
He said: No, you will not go through
and he lifted his gun.
I could see traces of perspiration on the handle.

He had big hands.
I imagined him a nervous lover and got closer.
This is the way to my home.
His tightened his grip.
Catherine Hamel 179
__________________________________________________________________
But his gun had not been shot.
I wanted to contaminate him,
convinced as he was of his authority.
Image 4: A Life Misremembered, Alberta Foundation For The Arts Travelling

exhibit / C. Hamel.
I wondered if he understood the implications of his rigidity.
A moment was born of this meeting between my tormentor and I.

Between city and rejection.
My Beirut of flesh and Blood.
I got engaged to it
It offered me its ring
at every occasion that time suffocates me,
I provoke it.
A face intimately known.

A look in the eyes.
a faint and mocking smile that lingers.
But no, I could not describe that face to you.

Such is the space of Beirut that bewilders me
an intimate look that haunts and is never regained.
That moment lives with me now, at the height of its journey.
I have let others touch me.

I even touched a few of them back.
But you, you transformed yourself into a scab on my finger,
numbing, always distorting, hiding, guarding my boundaries,
The boundaries of disillusionment, of imagined perfection,
of constructed futures, of comparison, of constant disappointment.
__________________________________________________________________
It was a futile effort to love what I can only teach myself to appreciate.
My era tells me bluntly:
You do not belong.
I answer bluntly:
I do not belong.
I have all the houses of the world.
Image 5: To My Beirut of Flesh and Blood. Performance / C. Hamel/ video stills,

courtesy of the One Yellow Rabbit.
We draw lines of distinction.

They become lines of confrontation.
Lines that are rigid, aggressive, imposing.
Lines that can be subtle, delicate, wondering..
He stopped me from crossing the lines I want to cross,

the vulnerable lines that exhale
and forced me over the ones I wanted to avoid.
Perpetually crossing,
my merchant of pain.
His question was not can they reason?
Nor can they talk?
But can they suffer?
Can they suffer?
You asked me a question?

Embrace death first to ignite such a wound.
Descend into my ashes and ask.
You ask which is my country?
My body is my country
Catherine Hamel 181
__________________________________________________________________
Scene Four
The body awakens as the Arabic music plays.
Initially timid, it sheds its fear and appropriates their attention with its own
language. The grin that appeared was not scripted.
Scene Five monologue

Boots.
Green boots. Green is for go.
I have high boots. Low boots.
Come on boots and get lost boots
You, You like sandals
Image 6: Captive #1/ Pen and Ink/ C. Hamel.
4. Taught with a Gun and a Human Aim

I get agitated! You get agitated at what? You asked. I get agitated at our ability
to collect thousands of people into a group and label them: stupid. To collects
another few thousand because they share a physical trait and label them: sub-
human. And yet another because they share a belief and label them: greedy.
Because we group a continent that feels suppressed and label them: fanatic.
I get agitated because we can choose a group of children and sympathize with
the fear that they live under, a potential threat that has not yet succeeded, and
dismiss thousands of others that live near them with a threat that has succeeded in
making them witness what no human should witness.
As ideal as it is and, as far away from reality as it is, as there are always a few
murderers among us, no child should be subjected to this. I get agitated because it
frightens me when a child can grow up to believe that they need to blow
themselves up in order to defend their people and they get labelled. I get agitated
that so few try to imagine the desperation, and the cruelty that must surround such
a child to be driven to such a belief and such an act; a bomb; a machete; rape. I get
agitated that they are made to do this in the name of religion, skin colour and land.
__________________________________________________________________
I get agitated when I imagine the desperation of the parent who would drive their
child to this. It is a tourism of cruelty!
I get agitated, because beneath the curves and the wrinkles, I am one of those
children, taught with a gun and a human aim. It did not matter where the missile
was made, as all sides make them, and if not, buy them, threaten to use them, and
subsequently do. I get agitated that someone designs these things to char a body
deemed unworthy under these generic labels. What mattered when the jet fighter
screamed by, an ally defending me from the barbarians that were attempting to take
over my country, what really matters is not the exaggerated fear instilled in us that
we will be killed or exiled, but the reality that in a few seconds, as the latchet is let
go, or the red button pushed, after we hear a big thud, what really matters is
Image 7: Captive # 5/ Pen and Ink/ C. Hamel.
knowing that a in these few seconds bodies will be shredded, lives taken away,
mothers will witness their children die, children not realising the impact of never
seeing their fathers again. Maybe some were weak, some are hateful, some even
made love to the plotting murderers. Most likely they were human, poor creatures
attempting to survive life, the instincts we are driven by and the circumstances they
find themselves in. It is this knowledge, that one human can do that to another that
agitates me, that frightens me, that cripples me.
No side is worthy of subjecting a child to this. No side - no people! Yes, ideals
that do not match the realities of the world, the need for homes, for water, for food,
for politics, the realities of human greed, and the savagery we will subject each
other to in order to survive. No, in order to live lavishly, but at what cost? That is
what agitates me, not the sides people take, but the lines they draw in order to be
able to take them. It is this reality, that repeats itself all over the world, under the
guise of many identities, nationalities, religions that instils a deep-rooted fear and
hence agitation as I sit and sip on my Indian beer.
It does not escape me that you, my supposed enemy, sit across the table willing
to listen to the best of your ability through your prejudices. You too are agitated,
Catherine Hamel 183
__________________________________________________________________
though you have more control, or is it more fear? We suppress the anger that seeps
as we laugh nervously, fixing each other from the pull of the door. We are each
oscillating between walking away, and being anchored by the possibility of being
heard. Or is it merely bedded? You must like the curves of my corpse, for there is
death in the blood that flows in me collected from witnessing too much hate. The
possibility of bedding the enemy! Not with aggression as so many do but through
seduction; intellectual subtle seduction that seeps into you, as you seep into me.
Too slow to be felt, too late to be averted. To transform the hate to need, the
exclusion to longing; that, that instils a deep-rooted hope; that instils a deep-rooted
fear; and hence agitation as I sit and sip on my Indian beer.
From your friendly neighbour.
5. But Where is the Humour?

Octavio Paz wrote: not what you say, what you forget is what you say.
I forgot humour. It takes lightness and humour to survive.
they have not found their way into words yet.
to choose to walk with a smile
despite being a deviant of the imagination
how did you survive? How do you survive?
mistakes, there are always mistakes
to be a trespasser
in a world of systems
to chose to smile
the twinkle in the eyes evades words for now
the twinkle of the yes
the lightness that contrasts the weight
how do you sleep at night? Safely thank you
to transform the intensity of the pain into life
to distil the cruelty into drops of absurdity
to distil the absurdity into drops of mischief
that dissolve the reason imposed
to use this absurdity as a playing field
to play within the crippling armour of fear
to hold on to ones arbitrary survival
to look at the innocent knowing what they are capable of
to play. to love. to kill
how far will they go?
to live with that knowledge
to lay with it
to play on it
to cry with it
to simply smile
__________________________________________________________________
It takes lightness and humour to survive!
Image 8: Rakku details + montage / C. Hamel.
Notes
1
Shayne Koyczcan, A Short Story Long, Music CD.
2
Italics verses are adaptations from the poem ‘The Desert’ by Adonis, Mémoire du
Vent: Poèmes 1957-1990, préface et choix d’André Velter, tranduit par Adonis et
Andre Velter (France: Gallimard, 1991). (English translation by C. Hamel).
3
This is an arbitrary cue provided to me by the teaching team on which to build the
performance.
Bibliography
Adonis. ‘The Desert’. Mémoire du Vent: Poèmes 1957-1990. Préface et choix
d’André Velter. Tranduit par Adonis et Andre Velter. France: Gallimard, 1991.
Koyczcan, Shayne. A Short Story Long. Music CD.
Catherine Hamel is Associate Professor of Architecture, Faculty of

Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.
Part 5
Alternative Stories in the Media

Public Relations Campaigns as Ante-Narratives: New ROM
Chocolate and Romania: The Carpathian Garden
Lavinia Cincă and Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie

Abstract
In the quest for understanding sense-making processes, communication scholars
have singled out story-telling as optimal method of creating meanings, constructing
identities or raising interests. 1 Since the early ‘hypodermic-needle’ theory
considering organisations able to impose messages in form of non-challengeable
‘petrified stories,’2 public relations (PR) have suffered radical changes due to
globalisation and cyberspace. PR is now pitching fragmented stories or ante-
narratives3 defined as alternative, not-ready-made stories testing the future,
collectively produced, polyphonic, and combining cognitive, aesthetic, ethical,
national or global discourses.4 Both centripetal and centrifugal forces act on these
micro-stories that reject linearity in favour of cyclic, spiral or rhizome
entanglements, causing unforeseen twists into the ‘Grand Story’ of an
organisation.5 The research highlights that post-modern public relations call for
action. Organisational ante-narratives turn consumers and stakeholders into
narrators reciting the about-to-become stories from individual perspectives and
eventually distributing them along their personal networks.6 The article analyses
the online echoes of two branding campaigns from Romania touching upon
national feelings: New ROM chocolate and ‘Romania - the Carpathian Garden.’
New ROM, a 2011 Cannes Lion winner, is a successful ‘un-masking the
masquerade’ ante-narrative7 that has bet on altering the national component of the
chocolate brand identity to initiate public debate. The heavily contested Romanian
touristic brand campaign ‘Romania - the Carpathian Garden’ (produced by THR-
TNS Spanish-British association in 2010) is an ‘ante-narrative moving in and out
of being, but never quite going away’8 having generated national and international
polyphonic vibes from journalists, bloggers, interest groups, online users. Both
campaigns are analysed in relation with ante-narratives characteristics and puzzling
out nationalistic, expert, consumer’s, ethical and political discourses. The content-
based analysis of online pages from the period 2010-2011 demonstrates that linear,
single-plotted PR stories cannot be imposed in the cyber-space and strong
opposing ante-narratives impact branding, sales and public acceptance. The chapter
outcome will shed light on post-modern PR, acknowledging ante-narratives at the
very core of organizational storytelling and analysing the impact of the research
results on branding campaigns and stakeholders’ relations.
Key Words: Story-telling, public relations, ante-narratives, stakeholders, branding.
*****
188 Public Relations Campaigns as Ante-Narratives
__________________________________________________________________
1. Concepts and Theories: Ante-Narratives and Social Media
In line with several foundation theories linking public relations to ‘construction
of social reality’9 or manipulation, PR practitioners have gained a negative
reputation as image-makers and spin-doctors. However, their attempt to define
social reality so that organisations could project a desirable image is considered by
constructivists as the very essence of communication. This process is known as
framing effective messages10 through which organisations choose parts of reality to
emphasise and communicate to their publics. Its most complex form is
storytelling.11
Though organisational ‘petrified stories’ ‘require a plot, to bring them into a
meaningful whole,’12 the situation has changed with the emergence of Web 2.0
consisting in ‘micro-content’ and ‘social media.’13 Non-technology savvy users
create micro-content - smaller content chunks. These are uploaded on various
forms: blog posts, wikis, YouTube comments, Picasa etc., gathering micro-content
from other users with similar interests, actively involved in discussions.14 On top of
that, Web 2.0 benefits from content ‘findability’ through tags and keywords and
conversation to go beyond one tool. The rising of Web 2.0 has given birth to the
so-called citizen journalism where ‘ordinary citizens are appropriating new
technological means and forms in order to build their own networked
communities.’15
In the world of Web 2.0, controlling the message and disseminating coherent,
desirable stories of the organisations has become a mere possibility. Thus, beyond
story-telling, ante-narratives are plurivocal, polysemous, ‘dispersed pre-narrations
that interpenetrate wider social contexts, a dialogic conversation among a
carnivalesque crowd […] engaged in textual (re)production, (re)distribution, and
(re)consumption.’16 There are several types of ante-narratives: the boomerang
(changes direction and returns to where it took off), the loose-end (seeming to
unravel the entire mask, or un-mask the masquerade), the white noise ante-
narrative (moves in and out of being, but never quite goes away) and the
transformative.17
Boje18 states that ante-narratives damage the ‘portrayal of the publicly narrated
face of the institution,’ whereas narratives are constantly attempting to create a
coherent message, constituting a multi-story layering. Ante-narratives
entanglements can be: linear, cyclic, spiral, and assemblage (rhizomes).19 Referring
to the Enron example, Boje added that it is ‘fashionable for reporters to research
trials of campaign contributions […] where rhizomes seem to go dormant and
achieve resolve, only to re-appear as ghostly characters, themes, and frames.’20 In
the Web 2.0 both reporters and citizen journalists contribute to the evolution of
organisational discourse.
Furthermore, Boje is proposing a multi-faced view, a ‘dialogism’21 of
organisations, emphasising that ‘different ante-narratives tend to coexist because
they provide alternative and competing versions of organisational reality and
Lavinia Cincă and Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie 189
__________________________________________________________________
change.’22 The discourses are characterised by polyphony - legitimising the views
and interests of other actors and ‘architectonic dialogisms in the form of interplay
between various cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical discourses’23 which tend to gain
control over the sense of the organisational storytelling.
2. Research Design and Methodology

The aim of the article is to analyse the antenarrative entanglements of two
branding campaigns from Romania touching upon national feelings: New ROM
chocolate and ‘Romania - the Carpathian Garden.’ The chapter covers the period
2010-2011 when the campaigns were active and is based on a sample made of the
first 100 relevant Google search results (using the name of the campaign as key
words). The 100 selected articles for each campaign were read, analysed, put in a
time sequence and recurrent themes gathered in rhizomes or sub-rhizomes. The
choice is justified as the total number of references is over 1 million pages each
campaign and it includes the articles reaching the largest audiences (Google is
indexing pages by ranking the pages in a decrement order, starting with the ones
which were viewed most).
The model of research is based on Boje’s theory and it is looks at ante-
narratives from two perspectives. The micro-view focuses on rhizomes (the main
themes of the ante-narrative) composed of sub-rhizomes (a subordinated ante-
narrative part of the main rhizome) and their ante-narrative features, type of
discourse, actors involved and media coverage. Rhizomes can be described as
‘viral,’ ‘word of mouth/ mouse’ allowing ‘an easier, accelerated, and cost-reduced
transmission of messages by creating environments for a self-replicating,
exponentially increasing diffusion […] and impact of the message.’24 The macro-
view captures the entanglements of rhizomes, chronology, their morphing and
death. The article identifies the ante-narratives and the types of sources mentioning
them which recorded the highest numbers of references.
The study investigates the following hypotheses: 1. If the rhizome is generated
by citizen journalists, it will develop more sub-rhizomes than if distributed only by
traditional media. 2. If the discourse touches upon highly important topics for the
public interest (the national feeling, here), it will generate a higher number of
citizen journalist references. 3. If the initiating rhizome involves polemical
discourse, it will create more sub-rhizomes. 4. The more the traditional media
covers the topic, the more polylogical the ante-narratives become.
There are two types of research limits we can identify. Firstly, both case studies
refer to national feelings in Romania, thus applying the findings to other topics and
countries might lead to different results due to cultural contexts. Secondly, the
analysis results depend at an important extent on the findability of micro-content,
which could have been deleted after the campaigns (website owners reserve their
right to delete pages or to entirely remove the website, especially because most of
the references are user-generated).
__________________________________________________________________
3. Analysis of Results
Romania - The Carpathian Garden Campaign (Picture 1). In 2010, the
Romanian Ministry of Tourism and Sustainable Development launched a new
country image campaign to encourage foreign tourists visiting Romania. The
campaign was announced during the Shanghai Exhibition on June 28 2010 by the
Romanian Minister, Elena Udrea, controversial politician.25 Moreover, previous
country branding campaigns ended up in political and media scandals.26 ‘Romania
- The Carpathian Garden’ (produced by THR-TNS, a Spanish-British association)
was built around the idea of Romania being naturally beautiful, focusing on the
Carpathian Mountains and its unpolluted landscapes.27
Considering the micro-view, the research identifies ten rhizomes stretching
over one year (as seen in Picture 1). R0, or the genesis, is represented by rumours
around the potential launch which leaked in the press just a day before the official
announcement. R1 is the launch - a press release and conference of the Ministry
explaining the brand identity generating 9 rhizomes and many sub-rhizomes. In
spite of being dispatched through public information tools, it can rather be
considered an ante-narrative than a story. The argument is delivered by the
Minister who considers that debates around the campaign offer visibility to the
topic.28 It is a heteroglossic and polylogic discourse: the purely political and
national themes of the Minister quickly evolve into specialist and economic
considerations anticipating R2, the anti-chamber of ‘the logo scandal.’ The pro and
con specialist discourse of communicators, tour operators, academicians, endorsed
by citizen journalists engages in a debate whether the brand identity, logo and
slogan are appropriate choices.29
R3, ‘the logo scandal,’30 has generated the highest numbers of rhizomes and
sub-rhizomes (12), being a true ante-narrative. The initiator is a visible Romanian
blogger, Piticu, who found a similar logo used by a British transport company in an
online photographs database, opening the appetite of specialists and journalists to
question its origins and price and find the supposed author. Microcontent and
social platforms allowed a strong ethical and specialist discourse to be performed,
however it has also urged the emergence of pretenders - very vocal users who gave
expert opinion without having the competence to do so. If in case of other
rhizomes one can identify ownership, R3 is truly polylogic as it has involved all
actors of the campaign: the Ministry, THR-TNS, traditional and citizen journalists,
specialists. Heteroglossia is particularly noticeable, bringing together different
themes (quality, money, ethics) and stressing the plagiarism. R3 gets the second
highest number of references after R8, most of them being generated by citizen
journalists.
‘The logo scandal’ has lasted long time and ended in bloggers’ irony touching
various themes of the Romanian society: from bitter to grotesque humour, from
pessimistic view with nationalist accents to attacking the political class as a
whole,31 gathered under R8, a genuine ante-narrative getting the second biggest
__________________________________________________________________
number of mentions. Polylogia and heteroglossia reach a top level and move the
debate towards reflections on the state of nation, politics, and communism
gathering the highest number of references (33), being led mainly by citizen
journalists.
R 7 and 9, characterised by economic arguments (costs of the campaign,
advertising placement), are consequences of R3.32 Thus, the story ‘is never quite
going away:’ the WWW turns the previous rhizomes into collective memory, while
citizen journalists are always ready to reopen conversation.
Though ante-narratives R 4, 5, 6 (spelling errors,33 domain bought by a private
person,34 Facebook partnership35) did have the potential to burst into similar
scandals, this has not happened because the initiator was not an online opinion
leader.
In terms of the macro-view, the network has maximum three levels in depth
and 10 levels in length. Definitely R1 has the highest number of top-down levels,
however, R3 - the blogger’s intervention got the highest number of sub-rhizomes
and was responsible for the widest covered R8. Therefore, the impact of the
campaign would have been halved had it not been for R3, showing that the
intervention of a citizen journalist can lead to a shift into the planned
communication process.
The campaign is not linear and unfolding, but rather a rhizomatic multi-plotted
entanglement of antenarratives organised into packs. It is transitioning, as rhizomes
change the original communication plan, and unsettling as it never quite reaches an
end (being referred even today). Plural voices of traditional media and citizen
journalists assume a crucial role propagating heteroglossic ethical and journalistic
discourses.
‘The New ROM’ Campaign (Picture 2). In 2010, ROM chocolate launched a
campaign aimed at challenging young public’s national feelings. ROM, the oldest
and one of the most popular Romanian chocolate bars, has positioned itself as an
authentic product supporting Romanians during hard times. New ROM changed
the original packaging (the Romanian flag) and slogan with the American flag so
that ‘Romanians could feel proud when they eat the chocolate all over the world.’36
The campaign was communicated mostly on TV and online through user generated
content, with public’s contribution focused on controversial aspects.
At micro level, the research identifies five rhizomes and 14 sub-rhizomes,
mostly concentrated during and near the campaign’s launch (October - November
2010). The plot begins at rhizome R0 - an outdoor and retail teasing plot activated
before the official release. This was the breaking point when online users began to
create the story of the ‘New ROM’ in the form of early blog posts. A press
release37 marks R1, the official launch of the campaign, the message being
transmitted through TV, a website and online banners. Fans multiply the message
in the WWW, through social media - blog posts, comments,38 forum debates,
multiple Facebook, Twitter hashtags, etc.
__________________________________________________________________
R2 - ‘the new packaging discussion/ new Flag’ appears even before R1, as a
consequence of the teasing campaign. The actors of the polylogic and heteroglossic
discourse of R2 are fans, bloggers and specialised bloggers and press, and the
brand’s agency as well. Fans and specialist bloggers question defensively the
campaign’s ethical significance and efficiency.39 S-R 2.2, S-R2.3 and S-R2.3.1. S-
R2.2 challenge the nation feelings through textual content, not only packaging. It
also relives nostalgic memories and links to the country’s communist past: R4, S-
R4.1, S-R 4.2, S-R 4.3.
R2 creates R3 - ‘the marketing campaign’ which dies once the loose-end
antenarrative R6 appears. The actors of rhizome R3 mix specialized and patriotic
discourses generated by their personal reaction to the brand’s courageous turn.40
The discussion around the new packaging brings to life S - R2.1 - ‘the old
Packaging discussion / Flag,’ initiated by ROM chocolate fans. The discourse is
heteroglossic, due to the diverse themes awaken through R4 and polylogic due to
voices that keep it alive (journalists, fans, bloggers, communication specialists).41
The campaign implies some risk (S-R 4.2.1 and S-R4.2.2 - some chocolate
ROM fans will not buy it again), but it did not emerge in countless references. The
end, R6, can be considered an unmasking the masquerade, as the initiating agency
admitted that this was just a pretext to rejuvenate the nationalistic feelings and
boost sales. However, some users doubted about the explanations and thought
considered the campaign a twist aimed at turning failure into success.
At macro-level, the network has maximum three levels in depth and six levels
in length. The ante-narrative is linear only in the case of voluntarily arisen
rhizomes - R0, R1, R6. The ones created involuntarily by the public spread in
rhizomatic entanglements. The engine rhizomes are R2 and R4. ‘The New ROM’
was planned to have its course, although the process was not fully controlled. Most
of the web contributors (bloggers) had competent views on the campaign and were
aware about the campaign’s aim from the very beginning (S-R3.1 and R6).
The campaign truly awoke the nationalistic feelings as, right after it, most of
the consumers were happy to have the Old ROM back. However, some swore that
they would never buy a ROM chocolate again and blamed the agency for having
dared to play with a nation’s feelings (S-R4.2.2, S-R4.2.3. Had it not been for
rhizomes R1, R2 and R4 - which generated the most of the rhizomes, the whole
campaign could have been considered just a petrified story.
4. Discussion, Importance and Limits

In the Web 2.0 era, petrified organisational stories can no longer be considered
a viable model, ante-narratives and social networks challenging PR theories
already in place.
Ante-narratives’ heteroglossia and polylogia are a consequence of the viral
contents disseminated in Web 2.0. The negative, investigative, ethical discourses
__________________________________________________________________
are also fostering word-of-mouse and the more important the topic is for the
general public interest, the stronger and more numerous the reactions are.
At macro-level, polylogia (multiple voices) is a direct effect of the freedom of
expression on the Internet. The majority of rhizomatic entanglements leading to
ante-narratives derive from citizen discourses. Multiple public categories are now
in the privileged position of voicing their opinion, regardless of their competence
in the field discussed. Concerning the hypotheses, we consider:
As for hypothesis 1, it has proved to be partially true for the

Carpathian Garden and generally true for New ROM. Not only
does the rhizome need to be generated by a citizen journalist in
order to be viral, but also, it has to be endorsed by a visible,
reputed one. Thus, the viral character is linked to who is
responsible for generating the rhizome.
Hypothesis 2 has been proved partially true in both cases: topics

which are very important for numerous categories of publics tend
to be widely covered by citizen journalists. It is no longer
traditional media only deciding what news is; citizen journalists
launch rhizomes with news attributes.42 Although recent facts are
newsworthy, Internet has increased the dissemination speed and
reliving of apparently past stories. Odd facts are getting the
attention (e.g. the ironical re-makes of the Carpathian Garden
logo and the new ROM package).
In line with the agenda setting theory,43 traditional media is still

shaping which topics are interesting for the public, thus
hypothesis 3 proved generally true for both cases. High media
coverage draws the attention of the public on certain issues: in
both cases, TV and online news agencies ensured sufficient
exposure (salience) so that publics could be reachable. In these
particular cases, salience was the trigger for antenarratives to
follow.
One of the most important characteristic of ante-narratives in

social media is controversy, as shown by the confirmed
hypothesis 4. The more the topic is controversial and the
discourse is investigative, defamatory or ethical, the more will it
generate rhizomes and become viral. Citizen journalists tend to
follow ante-narratives that have potential of dispute, as the very
core of social networks lies in the ability to engage users and
__________________________________________________________________
lead to further conversation. Organisational reputation is always
at risk.
Regarding ante-narratives’ relation to PR theories, the two-ways, symmetrical

communication model ‘uses research, listening, and dialogue to manage conflict
and to cultivate relationships with both internal and external strategic public.’44
Sender and receiver roles interchange at a great extent and the organisation can no
longer afford the illusion of controlling the communication flow and impose
petrified narratives. This model reaches a new dimension with social media, where
corporate discourse becomes ‘a conversation that is […] given form and substance
by the interlinked, aggregated messages that emerge from internet mediated social
networks.’45 Ante-narratives puzzle the organisational image and influence the PR
function, ‘making it more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical
or dialogical, and socially responsible.’46
However, as described above, social media can open up crises as well: ante-
narratives spread by word-of-mouth can boost sales (ROM) or generate an ethical
dilemma (country logo). The connection between social media and crisis47 lies in
conversation, traditional media and direct communication. Whether or not involved
in the conversation, the organisation can suffer from image prejudice during a
crisis and it will be constrained to react to opposing users. Moreover, social media
provide visibility opportunities in traditional media, as reporters are extensive users
of Web 2.0. And last, new media tools allow communicators to engage directly
with online audiences:48 organisations need to monitor these ante-narratives in
order to be able to predict or prevent a crisis from happening and respond
appropriately.
Above all, ante-narratives and social media shed the limelight on several
paradigms and theories of PR.49 The image making paradigm suffers a face-lift:
organiSations can bet on ante-narratives and launch them to be taken over by
traditional media or citizen journalists and change the Grand Story (e.g. New ROM
challenged the national feelings). Secondly, the strategic management paradigm50
emphasises the need of organisations to listen to ante-narratives before starting a
campaign and monitor them. Generating behaviours (e.g. sales or discussion
around policy) can only be achieved through research and involving PR in decision
making from the very beginning. As demonstrated by the Carpathian Garden, the
public information model showed its limits, a scandal can burst due to lack of
research, of good crisis management and of tailored communication tactics. This
leads to the theory of publics:51 in social media, more categories of publics become
active and the organisation has to join the conversation. Relationships between
traditional and new media turn PR into a more complex model, but the basic theory
of agenda setting stays in place. Although within social media anybody can be a
journalist, still, visible and reputed citizen journalists and traditional ones decide
which topics deserve the attention of the publics.
__________________________________________________________________
Notes
1
Janne Tienari and Eero Vaara, ‘On the Narrative Construction of Multinational
Corporations: An Antenarrative Analysis of Legitimation and Resistance in a
Cross-Border Merger’ (Helsinki, Finland: Hanken School of Economics; Strategy
and Organization Department, EMLYON Business School France, 2010), 3-4.
2
Barbara Czarniawska, Narratives in Social Science Research (London: Sage,
2004) David M. Boje, What Is Antenarrative? 2001, 2012, accessed March 20,
2012, http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/what_is_antenarrative.htm.
3
David M. Boje, ‘The Antenarrative Cultural Turn in Narrative Studies’, to appear
in The Cultural Turn Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions,
eds. Mark Zachry and Charlotte Thralls (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing,
2003), 6-8.
4
Tienari and Vaara, On the Narrative Construction, 10.
5
David M. Boje, Storytelling Organizations, 1999, revised 2011, accessed March
20, 2012, http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/storytellingorg.html.
6
Boje, What Is Antenarrative?
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New
York: Freeman, 1996); Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction
of Social Reality (New York: Freeman, 1978); Hallahan, ‘Seven Models of
Framing: Implications for Public Relations’, Journal of Public Relations Research
11, Issue 3 (Routledge, 1999): 206.
10
S. F. Duhé and L. M. Zoch, ‘Framing the Media’s Agenda during a Crisis’,
Public Relations Quarterly 34, No. 4 (1994): 42-45; Hallahan, Seven Models of
Framing, 207.
11
Hallahan, Seven Models of Framing, 207.
12
Barbara Czarniawska, ‘A Narrative Approach to Organizational Studies’,
Qualitative Research Methods Series 43 (Canada: Thousand Oaks, Sage
Publications, Inc., 1998); Boje, The Antenarrative Cultural Turn, 2.
13
Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine, ‘Web 2.0. Storytelling. Emergence of a New
Genre’, Educause Review (November/December 2008): 42.
14
Ibid.
15
M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Second Edition.
Blackwell, 2000); Stuart Allan, ‘Citizen Journalism and the Rise of “Mass Self-
Communication”: Reporting the London Bombings’, Global Media Journal
Australian Edition 1 (Bournemouth University, 2007): 2.
16
Boje, The Antenarrative Cultural Turn, 8.
17
Boje, What Is Antenarrative?
18
Boje, The Antenarrative Cultural Turn, 9.
__________________________________________________________________
19
David M. Boje, Storytelling Organization, 2011, accessed March 20, 2012,
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/pages/Storytelling%20Organization.html.
20
David M. Boje, ‘Critical Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and
Metatheatre’ (New Mexico State University, 2002), accessed March 20, 2012,
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON_critical_dramaturgical_analysis.h
tm.
21
David M. Boje, Storytelling Organizations (London: Sage, 2008); Tienari and
Vaara, On the Narrative Construction, 7.
22
Tienari and Vaara, On the Narrative Construction, 7.
23
Ibid., 8.
24
C. B. Welker, ‘The Paradigm of Viral Communication’, Information Services
and Use 22 (2002): 3-8; Guy G. Golan and Lior Zaidner, ‘Creative Strategies in
Viral Advertising: An Application of Taylor’s Six-Segment Message Strategy
Wheel’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, International
Communication Association (2008): 961.
25
Cristina Iana, ‘Explore the Carpathian Garden Este noul Slogan Turistic al
României’, 2010, accessed March 20, 2012,
http://www.adevarul.ro/actualitate/Explore_the_Charpatian_garden-
_este_noul_slogan_turistic_al_Romaniei_0_306569460.html.
26
‘De la “Fabulospirit”, la “Explore the Carpathian Garden”. Care Slogan ne
Reprezintă cel Mai Bine?”, 2010, accessed March 20, 2012.
http://www.realitatea.net/sloganurile-romaniei-care-credeti-ca-ne-reprezinta-cel-
mai-bine_725561.html.
27
Iana, ‘Explore the Carpathian Garden’.
28
‘Noul Brand Turistic al României - “Explore the Carpathian Garden”. Udrea:
“E Bine că Există Atâta Interes Pentru Promovarea Brandului”’, 2010, accessed
March 20, 2012, http://www.gandul.info/news/noul-brand-turistic-al-romaniei-
explore-the-carpathian-garden-udrea-e-bine-ca-exista-atata-interes-pentru-
promovarea-brandului-6741636.
29
‘Explore the Carpathian Garden - România Are Brand Amăgitor’, 2010, accessed
March 20, 2012, http://stiri.rol.ro/-explore-the-carpathian-garden--romania-are-
brand-amagitor-639748.html.
30
Piticu.ro, ‘Descoperiţi Diferenţele din Cele Două Imagini’, 2010, accessed
March 20, 2012, http://www.piticu.ro/descoperiti-diferentele-din-cele-doua-
imagini.html.
31
M. G., ‘Explore the Carpathian Garden Varianta din 1964’, 2010, accessed
March 20, 2012, http://www.ziuaonline.ro/societate/explore-the-carpathian-garden-
varianta-din-1964-video.html.
32
Oana Rotaru, ‘Elena Udrea a Cheltuit 300.000 de Euro pe Sondaje Telefonice
Realizate Pentru Brandul de Ţară’, 2010, accessed March 20, 2012,
__________________________________________________________________
http://www.ziuaonline.ro/societate/fapt-divers/elena-udrea-a-cheltuit-300000-de-
euro-pe-sondaje-telefonice-realizate-pentru-brandul-de-tara.html.
33
‘Noul Slogan Turistic al Romaniei: Explore The Carpathian Garden’, 2010,
accessed March 20, 2012, http://stiri.rol.ro/video-noul-slogan-turistic-al-romaniei-
explore-the-carpathian-garden-636877.html.
34
‘Realizatorii Brandului de Ţară au Uitat de Internet, Domeniul “Carpathian
Garden” Fiind înregistrat de Către un Particular’, 2010, accessed March 20, 2012,
http://www.stiri-turism.com/2010/07/29/realizatorii-brandului-de-tara-au-uitat-de-
internet-domeniul-carpathian-garden-fiind-nregistrat-de-catre-un-particular/.
35
Roxy, ‘Explore the Carpathian Garden’, 2010, accessed March 20, 2012,
http://roxy-guzzy.info/explore-the-carpathian-garden.html.
36
‘Noul rom Fără Senzaţii Româneşti’, 2010, accessed on March 19, 2010,
http://www.reclame-tv.ro/noul-rom-fara-senzatii-romanesti/.
37
‘Noul Rom şi Mama Noastră’, 2010, accessed on March 19, 2012,
http://www.bursa.ro/noul-rom-si-mama-noastra-
97413&s=print&sr=articol&id_articol=97413.html.
38
‘Să Construim America Aici cu Noul Rom’, 2010, accessed on March, 19, 2010,
http://mariussescu.ro/2010/10/sa-construim-america-aici-cu-noul-rom/.
39
‘Noul Rom şi Patrionitismul din Mine’, 2011, accessed March 19, 2012,
http://sorin.rusi.ro/noul-rom-si-patriotismul-din-mine.html.
40
‘Noul şi Autenticul Rom, a Fost Sau nu a Fost Fail?’, 2010, accessed, March 19,
2012, http://www.focusblog.ro/2010/10/noul-si-autenticul-rom-a-fost-sau-n-a-fost-
fail/.
41
‘Campania Rom Face Vâlvă’, 2010, Accessed, March 19, 2012,
http://jurnal.artvisiona.ro/campania-noul-rom-face-valva/.
42
Journalism Handbook (Indiana Defense Information School, Fort Benjamin
Harrison, 1992), 11-13; Dr. George David, Tehnici de Redactare în Relaţii Publice
(Bucureşti: Comunicare.ro, 2007), 11-20.
43
Eugene F. Shaw, ‘Agenda-Setting and Mass Communication Theory’,
International Communication Gazette, Sagepub.com (1979): 97-98.
44
James E. Grunig, Paradigms of Global Public Relations in an Age of
Digitalisation, 2009, accessed March 20, 2012,
http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/GRUNIG.pdf, 2.
45
D. Phillips and P. Young, Online Public Relations: A Practical Guide to
Developing an Online Strategy in the World of Social Media (London and
Philadelphia: Kogan Page, 2009), 247-248; James E. Grunig, Paradigms of Global
Public Relations, 6.
46
Grunig, Paradigms of Global Public Relations, 1.
47
Gerald Baron and Dr. John ‘Pat’ Philbin, Social Media in Crisis
Communication: Start with a Drill, April 2009, accessed March 20, 2012,
__________________________________________________________________
http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/view/7909/105/Social_media_in_crisis_commu
nication_Start_with_a.
48
Ibid.
49
Grunig, Paradigms of Global Public Relations, 4.
50
Ibid.
51
Grunig, ‘A Situational Theory of Publics: Conceptual History, Recent
Challenges and New Research’, in Public Relations Research: An International
Perspective, eds. D. Moss, T. MacManus and D. Vercic (London: International
Thomson Business Press, 1997), 3-46; Grunig, Paradigms of Global Public
Relations, 12.
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Lavinia Cincă is Master graduate in Management and Business Communication at

the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest, Romania.
As exchange student in Belgium, she focused her studies on intercultural
management and international marketing.
Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie is Master student in Corporate Communication and

Brand Management at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies
- Bucharest, Romania. As exchange student in Belgium, she focused her studies on
intercultural communication and global issues.
__________________________________________________________________
Table 1.
__________________________________________________________________
Table 2.
Stories Representing Disabled People in the British Press
Lucy Reynolds
Abstract
The chapter explores the ways that British newspaper articles tell us stories about
disability and disabled people; it investigates how different newspapers write
about the same story. Specifically, I discuss how three newspaper articles report
the story of Katie Thorpe, a teenager who has severe Cerebral Palsy that affects
her both physically and intellectually. The first newspaper article I consider carried
the headline: ‘I want my girl to have the “Ashley Treatment.”’ In this article,
Katie’s mother, Alison, shares the difficulties she faces caring for Katie who is
getting bigger. The second newspaper article I examine began with the headline:
‘Why I want surgeons to remove my daughter’s womb.’ This story tells us that a
consultant surgeon has backed Alison’s request for her daughter’s hysterectomy.
The third newspaper article discussed is written by Kate Ansell who has Cerebral
Palsy. The headline of Ansell’s story was: ‘An unkind cut: Why Katie Thorpe
should not have a hysterectomy.’ In this final article, Ansell outlines the reasons
why she believes Katie Thorpe should not have a hysterectomy.
Key Words: Disability, British press, Katie Thorpe, hysterectomy.
*****
The media are powerful carriers of societal values. The stories we read in
newspapers and the ways we interpret them can influence how we think and act.
Radio, television, film and internet stories also influence us. In this chapter I focus
on newspaper stories about disability and disabled people.
The chapter draws on my doctoral research on the ways that disability and
disabled people are represented in the British press. I have conducted focus groups
with disabled and non-disabled people and individual interviews with disabled and
non-disabled journalists. In both interviews and focus groups, I have elicited
participants’ views about a range of newspaper stories. From these I have
identified a number of themes, including ‘patronising’ stories; ‘heroic’ stories;
‘victim’ stories; and ‘fluffy feel good’ stories.
In this chapter I focus on the story of Katie Thorpe, a teenager who has severe
Cerebral Palsy which affects her both physically and intellectually. In 2007,
Katie’s story stirred controversy in Britain. What I am interested in most is how the
British press represented Katie’s story in strikingly different ways.
1. I Want My Girl to Have the ‘Ashley Treatment’

One newspaper article about Katie Thorpe began with the headline: ‘I want my
girl to have the “Ashley Treatment.”’ 1 Ashley X was a severely disabled child in
206 Stories Representing Disabled People in the British Press
__________________________________________________________________
the United States whose parents wanted doctors to give her oestrogen therapy to
prevent her from growing so that it would be easier to care for her. In this
newspaper article, Katie Thorpe’s mother, Alison, built on the Ashley X case by
arguing that her daughter, Katie, should have a hysterectomy as she would not be
able to understand menstruation nor to cope with the discomfort it can cause.
Alison also criticised the professionals and ethicists charged with making the
ultimate decision about the hysterectomy in the article. Caroline Davis, the article’s
author, wrote that Katie Thorpe’s mother said:
She was fighting for her daughter to have a hysterectomy. She

criticised “so-called professionals” and ethicists who made
crucial decisions from comfortable offices far away from the
reality of living daily with a severely disabled child. 2
Davis portrays Katie’s family as victims because they have to care for Katie.
She quotes Alison as saying, about Katie:
She is unable to do anything for herself at all, which includes

feeding, she is doubly incontinent, she is unable to sit up. I think
of myself as Katie’s mum first and her carer second, but that
does become very difficult and muddled at times and it’s very,
very hard to be a mum when you have to do the sort of things to
your teenage daughter that I have to do on a daily basis. 3
Personally, I feel Katie’s mother capitalised on the opportunity to be so public

about what she and her partner have to do for her daughter. It must certainly be
very difficult to care for a severely disabled child. However, there are many other
parents in similar situations who manage these challenges without publicising
them.
Davis also cites Katie’s mother’s opinion on why she thinks medical
intervention is justified for her daughter:
I think medical intervention can be justified if the child can be

given an increased chance of enjoying the life they have…If that
person is enjoying her life then I think it shouldn’t be for us to
intervene just because someone is sitting on high morals in a
hospital a long way from what is really happening. 4
Katie’s mother seems very adamant about what she believes is best for Katie. She
wants to be in control over Katie’s life. She may find it difficult to accept help
from others.
Lucy Reynolds 207
__________________________________________________________________
In her article, Davis uses a quote from an interview on BBC Radio 4, in which
Katie’s mother heavily criticised the professionals who had made comments about
Ashley X:
Listening to the reactions from consultants and so-called

professionals in the UK I’m afraid just makes me extraordinarily
angry…I have to say I really don’t think they have a clue. Yes,
they see these children in their surgeries for a few minutes at a
time. But they don’t live with children like Katie, they do not
live with them on a daily, hourly basis. They don’t have to do as
I and many other parents like me have to just to give their child
an existence. 5
Here, Katie’s mother is criticising paediatricians who have extensive knowledge

about Cerebral Palsy. Some will have empathy for the parent and child. Katie’s
mother seems to be criticising them because she is not getting what she wants from
them.
Caroline Davis also interviewed Peter Reynolds, who is the partner of Katie’s
mother. Peter told her that Katie’s mother could not manage to care for Katie on
her own:
If I wasn’t there, Alison couldn’t cope on her own. Katie has just
got so big and heavy…The carers who come here are not allowed
to lift unless there are two of them. We have a hoist, but it is
broken. 6
Peter Reynolds seems to emphasise with Katie’s problems. It is also clear that
Katie and her family are not receiving appropriate support. The article leaves me
wondering if they have asked for the help they need as there should be no reason
for the family to have a broken hoist.
2. Why I Want Surgeons to Remove My Daughter’s Womb

The headline for the second newspaper story I will discuss read as follows:
‘Why I want surgeons to remove my daughter’s womb.’ 7 The story explained that
a consultant surgeon had backed Mrs Thorpe’s request for Katie to have a
hysterectomy. In this article, the journalist, Andrew Levy, wrote that if the surgery
went ahead it would be the first time this procedure was carried out in the UK
without the patient’s consent. He explained some of the details of Katie’s life in the
article and why her mother believes Katie should have a hysterectomy. The article
quotes Katie’s mother as saying:
__________________________________________________________________
She [Katie] is doubly incontinent and going through
menstruation would only add to her discomfort. She is never
going to develop and be a normal adult with the expectation of
getting married and having children. She is my daughter and of
course there are doubts. But I feel in the short-term the
inconvenience she will go through is nothing compared to the
enormous long-term gain. 8
Levy explains that when Katie’s mother first approached the consultant surgeon
about a hysterectomy for her daughter, the surgeon recommended the
contraception pill or injection instead. Katie’s mother rejected this suggestion
because she was worried about possible medical complications. On her second
visit, the consultant agreed to the request for the hysterectomy.
Levy also wrote that on a different occasion Katie’s mother had requested
Katie’s appendix to be removed, claiming that Katie would not be able to report
the early symptoms of appendicitis. Thus, Katie’s mother seems to envisage that
Katie will experience additional medical problems in her life. Levy includes the
opinion of the consultant surgeon referred to in the article, who said:
I think the girl’s mother makes a very cogent argument for

proceeding with that course of action, albeit it is rather drastic. 9
Levy also includes the opinion of Scope, a leading UK charity for people with
Cerebral Palsy. Andy Rickell, a spokesperson for the charity, argued that society
should accommodate the needs of disabled people. He said:
It is very difficult to see how this kind of invasive surgery, which

is not medically necessary and which will be very traumatic, can
be in Katie’s best interests. 10
3. An Unkind Cut: Why Katie Thorpe Should Not Have a Hysterectomy

The third and final newspaper story I compare in this chapter began with the
headline: ‘An unkind cut: Why Katie Thorpe should not have a hysterectomy.’ 11
This article was written by Kate Ansell who also has Cerebral Palsy. Ansell
articulates why she thinks Katie Thorpe should not have a hysterectomy. She
explains that no two people with Cerebral Palsy are the same:
No two people who suffer from Cerebral Palsy have identical

experiences. The first thing people tend to notice about me is that
I walk with a stick and talk with a lisp. 12
Lucy Reynolds 209
__________________________________________________________________
Ansell’s Cerebral Palsy seems to be very mild. In her story, she recalls how she
coped with menstruation at university. She writes:
I was having more difficulty walking than usual, and I couldn’t

get to the launderette. I lived in student accommodation so it was
arranged that while I was recovering, the university cleaning
staff would do…[my washing] for me…Then one day the college
nurse popped round to tell me there was a problem. 13
Ansell continued, explaining that on that same week she was taking medication
and had a heavy menstruation. The cleaning staff would not launder her bed linen.
She explained:
The cleaning staff, I was told, “wouldn’t deal” with bloodstained

laundry so I was asked if I could “do that [bit myself].” It was an
interesting request considering I had extremely limited stamina
and no access to washing facilities. 14
Ansell was embarrassed when the nurse approached her to discuss the cleaning
staff’s problem. She commented that if Katie’s mother was worried about her
daughter not being able to be discreet, why had she made the story headline news?
Ansell writes:
It would seem I got off lightly compared to Katie Thorpe, whose

menstrual cycle has become headline news. That such personal
matters are being discussed on GMTV is ironic given that one of
her mother’s reasons for requesting the procedure is that she will
be unable to be “discreet” or “private” about it if she does
menstruate. 15
I agree with Ansell; there are many women who need assistance with such
personal care. This does not mean that their dignity or privacy is automatically lost.
I am a disabled woman. I have never been in the same position as either Katie or
Ansell, but I can sympathise with them. Katie’s mother may think she is doing the
best thing for her daughter, but she is not; she is taking part of her daughter’s
identity away from her.
Ansell understands why Katie’s mother may want her daughter to have a
hysterectomy. She realises that some women with Cerebral Palsy may experience
more pain and muscle spasms during menstruation. Ansell believes Katie’s mother
could consider a hysterectomy once she has started menstruation. She writes in her
article:
__________________________________________________________________
So Alison Thorpe might be right. Periods could be a trial for her
daughter. But it is possible that they won’t. I don’t believe she is
wrong to suggest a hysterectomy, but I’m perplexed as to why
it’s being considered before Katie’s periods have started, before
anybody knows how they affect her. 16
Here, Ansell makes a very important statement that was not made in the other
newspaper articles. Since, like other people, Katie’s menstruation may not bother
her, Ansell asks why Katie should be put through traumatic surgery.
4. Concluding Remarks
In this chapter I have demonstrated how different British newspapers tell the
same story in different ways. In his chapter in this volume, Gavin Fairbairn argues
that we can change the world through the stories we tell. 17 In line with this, I argue
that the ways journalists choose to tell stories about disability and about disabled
people will influence how readers think about them. In Katie Thorpe’s case, it
seems clear that how Caroline Davis, Andrew Levy and Kate Ansell have written
about Katie could change the ways that people think about Katie and what should
happen to her. My discussion of the articles written by these authors highlights this
as well as the ways in which choices are sometimes taken away from people who
have learning disabilities. I suggest that journalists need to have a clearer
understanding of disability before they write about disability and disabled people.
Notes
1
Caroline Davis, ‘I Want My Girl to Have the Ashley Treatment’, Daily
Telegraph, 8 January 2007, accessed December 3, 2007,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/
01/.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Andrew Levy, ‘Why I Want Surgeons to Remove My Daughters Womb’, The
Daily Mail, 11 October 2007, accessed March 19, 2011,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486217/Why-I-want-surgeons-remove-
disabled.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
Lucy Reynolds 211
__________________________________________________________________
11
Kate Ansell, ‘An Unkind Cut: Why Katie Thorpe Should Not Have a
Hysterectomy’, The Independent, 16 October 2007, accessed March 19, 2011,
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthd-news/an-
unkind-cut.
12
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
17
Gavin Fairbairn, ‘Changing the World through the Stories We Tell’, in this
volume.
Bibliography
Ansell, Kate. ‘An Unkind Cut: Why Katie Thorpe Should Not Have a
Hysterectomy’. The Independent, 16 October 2007. Accessed March 19, 2011.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthd-news/an-
unkind-cut.
Davis, Caroline. ‘I Want My girl to Have the Ashley Treatment’. Daily

Telegraph, 8 January 2007. Accessed December 3, 2007.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/0
1/.
Fairbairn, Gavin. ‘Changing the World through the Stories We Tell’. In The Many
Facets of Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative Complexity, edited by
Melanie Rohse, Jennifer Jean Infanti, Nina Sabnani, and Mahesh Nivargi, 3–11.
Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012.
Levy, Andrew. ‘Why I Want Surgeons to Remove My Daughters Womb’. The

Daily Mail, 11 October 2007. Accessed March 19, 2011.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486217/Why-I-want-surgeons-remove-
disabled.
Lucy Reynolds is an independent researcher. Her research and writing is devoted

to the representations of disability and disabled people in the British press.
Part 6
Stories in Myth, Legend and Folk Religion

Legendising: From History to Story
Jo Henwood
Abstract
A legend is a traditional story of a hero who is somewhat larger than life. The seed
is someone real, although the real person may have vanished with the greatness of
the story and the passing of time. A legend often begins with the events of
someone’s life that touch something within the hearts of other people, that gives
form to what these listeners value, or satisfies a longing for a hero, a sacrifice or a
great love. When these events - so important to the hearers - are retold repeatedly,
the life-giving elements in them are polished each time so that they shine brighter.
This process of legendising may be a very conscious part of the mutual moulding
of a people and their culture and values, driven by social needs. The characters
often carry an array of meanings, symbolising rebellion, or hope, or (less
commonly in Australia) victory. Legendising can also be a deliberate act of social
manipulation by government, media, church or advertising to create a particular
face for a culture, so that history serves civic ends by means of a publicly-approved
story. This sort of legend harnesses meanings for particular goals; in short, it is
propaganda. Newspapers and other mass media can be similarly as deliberate in
taking events and shaping them to fit into existing story templates. For a
storyteller, choosing to entertain, and adapting historic material for entertainment,
is axiomatically a process of legendising: the storyteller shapes a series of events to
fit a narrative structure, in turn highlighting particular meanings and evoking
specific emotions.
Key Words: Legends, history, cultural identity, meaning, heroes, folklore.
*****
1. The Value of Storytelling

Until a couple hundred years ago the definition of the word storyteller was
‘liar.’ 1 Even today a storyteller continually dances between what is real and what is
true, in stark contrast to the historian whose goal is always the pursuit of accuracy.
This division, however, has not always existed; at one time, the stories were the
same. Stories change though, and so do their meanings; this is due to the audiences
who contribute half the meaning of any story. As stories need people - for stories
only exist once they are shared - so people need stories.
Stories happen in the recounting of the events in our lives; we are

the stories we tell. Drawing together elements from the muddle
of experiences and making sense of the interplay of facts and
feelings, needs knowledgeable and skilled facilitation. 2
216 Legendising
__________________________________________________________________
There are four main purposes for stories: education, healing, propaganda and
entertainment. None of these functions are achieved if a story does not appeal to its
intended audience.
Identities and relationships are also measured in stories which are shared when
we come together; individuals offer up stories that are then selected, refined and
integrated into what becomes the agreed account. A gathering of any group -
family, club, religion, nationality - will use stories to celebrate their shared identity
and values, the relationships between group members, and between insiders and
outsiders. Collective stories have to be more dynamic than private ones because
they have more work to do. If the human need to share stories is damaged (for
example, with people who are homeless, traumatised, mentally or physically ill)
then the right stories can also help to heal or mend what is broken. Indeed, stories
create cultures and communities.
One does not go to the past as a public utility. So why?...We go,

perhaps, to find ourselves; perhaps to free ourselves. It is certain
we shall never know ourselves, till we have broken out from the
brittle capsule of Megalopolis, and taken a long look back along
the rocky road which brought us to where we are. 3
But is it history or legends that have brought us to where we are today?
2. Origins of Storytelling and Legends

To understand how stories begin, consider how ordinary people continually
pass them around within informal communities, such as in staff rooms or kitchen
tables (consider your own stories, the stories of people you know, and tales that
everyone knows). This is the process for the evolution of urban legends, but also of
ghost stories, fairy tales, wisdom stories, and legends in general. They all originate
as folklore, and are often then collected as representative and published. 4
Almost everything we know about storytelling in the past is due to historical
records, in most cases written several centuries after their original performances.
These records come in various forms: chronicles, annals, legends, sagas, folktales,
fairy tales, and myths.
Historically, storytelling begins with someone using their skills in poetic speech
for the delight and pride of the community during religious rituals, historical
recitations, epic compositions, or for the purpose of educating. Different records of
storytelling can be seen on Egyptian amphora, in Plato’s descriptions of rhapsodes
(c. 400 BCE), Homer’s praise singers, the aidos, Sanskrit chroniclers and minstrels
known as sutas (c. 500 BCE), and the Celtic bards described by the Romans (c. 5
BCE). 5
Bardic storytelling combined historic and religious functions in reciting epics
and hero stories, as in Beowulf, for example, the Saxon poem composed sometime
Jo Henwood 217
__________________________________________________________________
between the 8th and early 11th century CE, but set in the 5th century. 6 In fact
Beowulf’s deeds seem to be precisely the sort of chronicles which are recited over
centuries before becoming historically enshrined. Yet, whilst many of the
characters are based on real people, Beowulf himself is fictional. This form of
story-working-as-history also includes The Anglo Saxon Chronicle (9th-12th century
CE); the Gesta Herewardii (early 12th century CE), our main source for the
prototypical outlaw hero, Hereward the Wake; monk-scribed Irish annals such as
the Leinster Saga (9th century CE); 7 and the Icelandic sagas, written down in the
14th century, and stylistically the earliest European historical novels, interweaving
real events with supernatural occurrences. 8
Literature and history once were/still are stories: this does not
necessarily mean that the space they form is undifferentiated, but
that this space can articulate on a different set of principles, one
which may be said to stand outside the hierarchical realm of
facts. 9
Finn Mac Cool, a mighty Irish hero, progressed from factual to apocryphal and
back over the last five centuries, nonetheless holding far more sway than many of
the more historically-verifiable Irish leaders: 10 in this case, history became legend,
legend became myth. 11
3. Division of History and Legends

History was experienced as oral stories even while the first histories were being
written by Herodotus and Thucydides, each of whom initiated a different strand of
what we define as history today. While Thucydides was writing a structured,
analytic, linear narrative, Herodotus was using a frame story in the same manner as
The Arabian Nights in which he inserted all the material he wanted to
communicate. 12 Meanwhile, by keeping legends alive, ordinary people seemed to
agree with Aristotle that poetry was more truthful than history ‘for poetry
expresses the universal, and history only the particular.’ 13
Until two centuries ago history was still viewed as a branch of literature. In the
early nineteenth century though, Romanticism insisted that literature and poetry
were much more than a craft, while the Enlightenment nudged history toward the
increasingly ordered natural sciences. 14 Crucial to this was Leopold von Ranke,
who wrote, in 1824,
We cannot expect from history the same free development as is,

in theory at least, to be expected in works of literature...A strict
presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive as that may
be, is the highest law. 15
218 Legendising
__________________________________________________________________
The division was not absolute, however: ‘Any large, inspiring narrative
requires significant narrowing of vision and manipulations of the truth,’ including
history. 16 Yet, for the most part, history rigorously attempted to shed its traces of
unverifiable narrative, focusing only on evidence, and leaving everything else to be
subsumed into legend.
When history separated itself from story, it started indulging in

accumulation and facts. Or it thought it could. It thought it could
build up to History because the Past, unrelated to the Present and
the Future, is lying there in its entirety, waiting to be revealed
and related. The act of revealing bears in itself a magical (not
factual) quality...story-writing becomes history-writing, and
history quickly sets itself apart, consigning story to the realm of
tale, legend, myth, fiction, literature. Then, since fictional and
factual have come to a point where they mutually exclude each
other, fiction, not infrequently, means lies, and fact, truth. 17
When encountering legends, historians or pseudo-historians tend to polarise:

either, their response is to seek evidence to validate their belief in the historicity of
the outlaw hero, or they adopt the attitude of a social scientist attempting to
disprove the hypothesis. 18 Folk tales, and the storytellers who express them, have
less interest in either approach, and much more in the character, his adventures and
his relevance to others.
Euhemerism is the ‘historical interpretation’ of mythology, treating myths as
history in disguise: a reflection of historical events or characters which have been
modified by retelling 19 so that legends are filled with many truths, rather than one
factual truth. 20
The story can be understood as a true tale of historical events and

characters, which indeed is how it was presented for many
centuries. Or it can be seen as a metaphor for social and
economic distress and as a fanciful wish fulfilment fantasy for
the poor. 21
Undeniably, real people existed - Hereward the Wake, Spartacus - who fit a
pattern of the social bandit: rebelling against unjust laws for the common good,
being unfairly outlawed, retreating to the wilderness, avenging injustices and
sharing their booty with the poor. 22 Stories of such characters were told because it
felt good to hear them. These are tales, unlike the bardic legends of gentlemen
(kings, knights, warriors, magicians), so subversive they must start in the village
rather than the hall, and be passed on and embellished until such time that they can
be published as ballads. The legend thus takes form not in the initial telling but in
Jo Henwood 219
__________________________________________________________________
the re-telling, in the decision a performer makes that this will please and in the
audience being pleased.
Each legend is perpetuated as a product of the interaction between informal oral
traditions and other cultural forms such as mass media, literature, and online
resources 23 because it is not the historical personage who is the folk hero but the
representation of that person and his or her impact on contemporary people. 24 As
Graham Seal describes, ‘the relationship between history and folklore is one in
which folklore always gets the upper hand, regardless of the historical facts.’ 25
Legends are fundamentally local stories, told by insiders with the inbuilt props
of the environment so that they represent a place and its people. 26 These ‘collective
memories...might hold a beleaguered group together in the face of persecution, or
keep a vision of a better future bright in the face of a dreadful present.’ 27
Outlaw hero legends utilise a cultural script which can be re-worked across
cultures, eras, art forms and in real life. 28 This is played out when the power of a
state becomes oppressive: certain individuals will revolt and thrive in such
circumstances with the support of otherwise law-abiding citizens, providing they
are perceived as operating within the moral code of the outlaw hero tradition,
acting outside the law but inside the lore. 29 Often this will be a conscious
manipulation of elements of the tradition by individual outlaws, guerrilla groups
and their sympathisers. 30
Thus, Robin Hood legends sprout around the world: Song Jiang in China, Juray
Janacek of the Baltics, William Tell of Norway, Hereward the Wake, arguably
Phoolin Devi of India, and Ned Kelly and Jundamurra in Australia. Some would
add Jesus of Nazareth to this list too.
4. Contemporary Uses of Story

The orderings and creations in narratives - whether in history, story, film, novel
or news - are cultural rather than natural; both the stories of the past as history and
the stories of the present as news endow events with artificial boundaries,
constructing ‘meaningful totalities out of scattered occurrences.’ 31 News stories
recycle traditional plots and characters, rewriting contemporary events according to
unspoken cultural assumptions about what is worthy of being a story. By
extension, news acts as an agent of folklore, ‘perpetuating the functions of
education, validation of culture, wish fulfilment and a force for conformity.’ 32
Journalists therefore ‘do not “tell it like it is” but “tell it like it means.”’ 33 Hard
news becomes chronicle, describing the facts about how an event unfolded. Soft
news becomes more of a story where the telling allows for greater interpretation by
the journalist, merging information and entertainment like a medieval bard. 34
This exploitation of the past for all manner of private and public enterprises
also includes politics, intentionally making or following the community’s story. 35
For example, the Anzac myth of a warrior hero lost in battle is prominent in
present-day Australia, where the sorrow of losing youth to battle is perpetuated and
220 Legendising
__________________________________________________________________
recycled in reactions to nearly every new global conflict.
5. Storytellers
I am a storyteller. I take history and manipulate it into a story, choosing
meaning and tone, beginning and end. Historians do the same thing, structuring a
narrative based on the most convincing causal relationship. Historians, however,
must test their interpretations against the evidence; I have no such restraint. My
challenge is one of balance, primarily between respectful representations of real
people and my primary obligation to my audience. Storytellers - whether an
ancient rhapsode or me today - select for performance out of ancient motif menus,
recycling stories as part of a common pool of narratives in response to what the
audience wants. Historians ask for accuracy. Storytellers - liars though we may be -
aim for a deeper truth, and in this way pass on legends.
The Myth of Arthur

G. K. Chesterton
O learned man who never learned to learn,

Save to deduce, by timid steps and small,
From towering smoke that fire can never burn
And from tall tales that men were never tall.
Say, have you thought what manner of man it is
Of who men say “He could strike giants down”?
Or what strong memories over time’s abyss
Bore up the pomp of Camelot and the crown.
And why one banner all the background fills,
Beyond the pageants of so many spears,
And by what witchery in the western hills
A throne stands empty for a thousand years.
Who hold, unheeding this immense impact,
Immortal story for a mortal sin;
Lest human fable touch historic fact,
Chase myths like moths, and fight them with a pin.
Take comfort; rest–there needs not this ado.
You shall not be a myth, I promise you. 36
Notes
1
Anne Pellowski, The World of Storytelling (Bronx, New York: The H. W. Wilson
Company, 1990), 3.
Jo Henwood 221
__________________________________________________________________
2
Elizabeth Farmer, Preface to Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education:
Using Reflection & Experience to Improve Learning, by Janice McDrury and
Maxine Alterio (London: Dunmore Press, 2002), 4.
3
Mary Renault, ‘The Fiction of History’, in The Giant Book of Heroic Adventure
Stories, ed. Mike Ashley (London: Book Company International, 1997), xii.
4
Ron Edwards, Fred’s Crab and Other Bush Yarns (Kurunda, Queensland: The
Rams Skull Press, 1989), 223; Graham Seal, Encyclopaedia of Folk Heroes (Santa
Barbara, California: ABC CLIO, 2001), xviii.
5
Pellowski, World of Storytelling, 8, 9, 21, 22-23 and 27.
6
Ibid., 28.
7
Richard Marsh, Irish King and Hero Tales (Dublin: Legendary Books, 2011), 5,
94.
8
Jane Smiley, Preface to The Sagas of the Icelanders: A Selection, by Ornolfur
Thorsson (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), ix.
9
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 121.
10
Marsh, Irish King and Hero Tales, 98.
11
Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, The Lord of the Rings: The
Fellowship of the Ring (Wellington: New Line Cinema, 2001).
12
Ann Curthoys and John Docker, Is History Fiction? (Sydney: UNSW Press,
2006), 34 and 30.
13
Aristotle, Poetics (Part IX), trans. S. H Butcher, accessed March 14, 2012,
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html.
14
Curthoys and Docker, Is History Fiction?, 50-52.
15
Ibid., 56.
16
Inga Clendinnen, ‘The History Question: Who Owns the Past?’, Quarterly Essay
23 (2006): 46.
17
Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 119-120.
18
Mike Dixon-Kennedy, The Robin Hood Handbook: The Outlaw in History, Myth
and Legend (Thrupp: Sutton Publishing, 2006), 407-408.
19
Thomas Bullfinch, Bullfinch’s Mythology (Whitefish: Kessinger, 2001), 194.
20
Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 4.
21
Graham Seal, The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and
Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 186.
22
Graham Seal, Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History (London: Anthem Press,
2011), 3.
23
Graham Seal, Encyclopaedia of Folk Heroes (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO,
2001), xii.
24
Ibid., xix.
25
Seal, The Outlaw Legend, 82 and xii.
222 Legendising
__________________________________________________________________
26
Ibid., 182.
27
Clendinnen, ‘The History Question’, 39.
28
Seal, Encyclopaedia of Folk Heroes, xii-xxi; Seal, The Outlaw Legend, xii, 17
and 182.
29
Seal, Outlaw Heroes, 16-17.
30
Seal, The Outlaw Legend, 184.
31
Elizabeth S. Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, ‘Myth, Chronicle and Story:
Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News’, in Social Meanings of News: A Text-
Reader, ed. Daniel Allen Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1997),
322.
32
Daniel Allen Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader (Thousand
Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1997), 347.
33
Bird and Dardenne, ‘Myth, Chronicle and Story’, 335-337.
34
Ibid., 322.
35
Clendinnen, ‘History Question’, 65.
36
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, ‘The Myth of Arthur’, in The Ballad of St. Barbara
and Other Verses (London: Cecil Palmer, 1922).
Bibliography
Aristotle. Poetics (Part IX). Translated by S. H Butcher. Accessed March 14, 2012.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html.
Berkowitz, Daniel Allen. Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader. Thousand

Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1997.
Bird, Elizabeth S., and Robert W. Dardenne. ‘Myth, Chronicle and Story:
Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News’. In Social Meanings of News: A Text-
Reader, edited by Daniel Allen Berkowitz, 333–350. Thousand Oaks: SAGE
Publications, 1997.
—––. ‘Rethinking News and Myth as Storytelling’. In The Handbook of

Journalism Studies, edited by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, and Thomas Hanitzsch, 205–
217. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology. Whitefish: Kessinger, 2004.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. ‘The Myth of Arthur’. In The Ballad of St. Barbara and
Other Verses. London: Cecil Palmer, 1922.
Jo Henwood 223
__________________________________________________________________
Clendinnen, Inga. ‘The History Question: Who Owns the Past?’. Quarterly Essay
23 (2006): 1–69.
Curthoys, Ann, and John Docker. Is History Fiction? Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006.
Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. The Robin Hood Handbook: The Outlaw in History, Myth
and Legend. Thrupp: Sutton Publishing, 2006.
Edwards, Ron. Fred’s Crab and Other Bush Yarns. Kurunda, Queensland: The
Rams Skull Press, 1989.
Farmer, Elizabeth. Preface to Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education:

Using Reflection & Experience to Improve Learning, by Janice McDrury, and
Maxine Alterio. London: Dunmore Press, 2002.
Jackson, Peter, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens. The Lord of the Rings: The
Fellowship of the Ring. Wellington: New Line Cinema, 2001.
McIntyre, Stuart, and Anna Clark. The History Wars. Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 2003.
Marsh, Richard. Irish King and Hero Tales. Dublin: Legendary Books, 2011.
Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Pellowski, Anne. The World of Storytelling. Bronx, New York: The H. W. Wilson
Company, 1990.
Renault, Mary. ‘The Fiction of History’. In The Giant Book of Heroic Adventure
Stories, edited by Mike Ashley, vii–xii. London: Book Company International,
1997.
Sawyer, Ruth. The Way of the Storyteller. New York: Penguin Books, 1970.
Seal, Graham. Encyclopaedia of Folk Heroes. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO,
2001.
—––. Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History. London: Anthem Press, 2011.
224 Legendising
__________________________________________________________________
—––. The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Smiley, Jane. Preface to The Sagas of the Icelanders: A Selection, ix–xiv. New
York: Penguin Books, 2001.
Jo Henwood is an Accredited Storyteller with the Australian Storytelling Guild

(NSW) and holds a Master of Cultural Heritage from Deakin University. She is
also a Tour Guide with the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales and
National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW), an Education Officer at the Royal
Botanic Garden Sydney, a librarian, and a committee member of the Children’s
Book Council of Australia (NSW). http://www.johenwoodstoryteller.com.au.
Storytelling as an Act of Embodying Reflexive Selves among
Alevi-Bektashi People in Turkey
Nuran Erol Isik

Abstract
The characteristics of folk religious traditions in Turkey offer an opportunity to
study a combination of narrative structures in everyday life. The heretic nature of
religious sects such as Alevism, for example, can be clearly observed in the
narrative and everyday practices of its followers. The way in which most Alevist
rituals are constructed and interpreted deviates from Sunni Islam, the form of faith
institutionalised in the Ottoman Empire and by the republican order. The rites and
rituals of Alevi-Bektashi people include the religious ceremony known as ‘cem,’
with singing of religious poems and narration of stories during and after the
ceremony. One of the interesting characteristics of these storytelling rituals is that
both narrator and listener are invited to engage in a process of self-evaluation,
resulting in feelings of consolation. The narratives, borrowed from Sufism, the
mystical teachings of Islam, are led by a member of a hereditary priestly caste
(‘dede’). Uttered in the form of religious stories and hymns, the narratives are
constructed as spiritual and ethical guidelines for the participants. During the
ceremonies, the leader of the ritual invites listeners to think about the spiritual
meaning of the story being told, and to evaluate themselves and others in light of
the story in order to gain a more ethical outlook and obtain insight into God’s
revelation at that moment of time. Storytelling among the Alevi-Bektashi people
therefore functions as a source of collective consensus, as well as a symbolic
vehicle for reflecting on personal and collective problems. In this chapter a short
introduction of the Alevi-Bektashi order is followed by an example of a story told
by dervishes. The chapter focuses on the ways in which different interpretations of
the story are related to mysticism and the esoteric nature of the Alevi-Bektashi
belief system.
Key Words: Alevi-Bektashi culture, conversations, storytelling, reflexivity,

spirituality.
*****
1. Introduction
The Alevi people of Turkey, estimated to comprise twenty percent of the
population, share a number of cultural characteristics, one of which is a tradition of
storytelling and related rituals. The narratives told are borrowed from Sufism, the
mystical teachings of Islam, and are led by a member of a hereditary priestly caste
(dede). Bektashi people can be considered a sub-group of the Alevi sect, sharing
syncretistic characteristics of the Sufi order. Alevis and Bektashis are often not
226 Storytelling as an Act of Embodying Reflexive Selves
__________________________________________________________________
distinguished; instead it is common to speak of Alevism-Bektashism which refers
to the veneration of the first Shiite, Imam Ali.
The tradition of Alevism includes similar beliefs to Shamanism and
Maniheanism, as revealed in the various characteristics of Alevi-Bektashi rituals,
particularly the Cem, or religious ceremony, and the associated performance of
religious poems and narratives which accompanies these ceremonies. The
following examination of storytelling among Alevi-Bektashi people is based on
three points in particular: first, major features of the belief system in Alevi-
Bektashi culture; secondly, an example story; and, finally, linkages between
different interpretations of the story and the spiritual tradition.
2. Major Features of the Alevi-Bektashi Belief System

The Bektashi order belongs to the many Sufi movements in Islam that
developed from the 8th century onwards. The Bektashi ‘tarikat,’ or brotherhood,
established itself in Anatolia during the 14th and 15th century and is primarily of
Shi’a and pantheistic character, but has many other, heterogeneous origins as well.
The order has a hierarchical structure consisting of the grades of ‘ashik,’ ‘talip’ or
‘muhip’ (novices); ‘baba’ or ‘murshit’ (dervishes); and ‘halife’ or ‘dede’ (elder
scholars). The secret lore includes the idea of four gateways on the spiritual path,
consisting of ‘sharia’ (law), ‘tarikat’ (the way or path; brotherhood), ‘marifet’ or
‘ma’rifa’ (mystical knowledge), and ‘hakikat’ (honesty; union with the god). 1 The
underlying principles of belief rely on: the principle of constant change within
permanence; the principle of the uncertainty of human cognition; and the principle
of love, or understanding with the heart. 2 These principles have an affinity with
various spiritual themes in Sufism.
One of the important forums in which storytelling occurs is through
‘conversations,’ which have both a communal and spiritual nature. Conversations
are important for the Alevi-Bektashi people as they serve several functions. They
are a moment for sharing what is told by spiritual leaders and they also serve as a
discursive tool for negotiation; that is, they are a medium by which listeners both
understand what is told and evaluate their own experiences and feelings of the
narratives. The conversations in companionship 3 are also accepted as moments in
which the sacred is directly experienced; the sacredness of the ritual being served
not only by the narrations themselves, but also by what is known about them
through experience. Since the idea of unification with God is significant in these
conversations, any discussion or disagreement on the stories or narratives is
forbidden. Participants are not permitted to make claims regarding the proceedings
either, nor pass judgment on or deviate from the form of the conversations.
Mannerism in the sense of respecting the rules and principles of the ritual is highly
valued. In addition, the conversations include praying, hymn singing and ‘saz’
playing, a traditional instrument. The leader of the conversation does not impose
his ideas or feelings on the community; instead, he attempts to invite the listeners
Nuran Erol Isik 227
__________________________________________________________________
into a sacred sphere where they can share spiritual experiences and thoughts. 4
Everybody is expected to respect and honour the sacred ideas embedded in the
stories, hymns, and poetry. These different genres of rituals are selected by the
leader of the community depending on the experiences and the expectations of
participants.
3. The Story of an Ex-Bandit in Search of the Truth

The following story originally told by Isik Ruhan, a dervish who lived in
Amasya, Turkey, was documented by his grandson, Caner Isik, in 2008. 5 The story
is recounted in order to illustrate different ways of understanding on stories shared
by Alevi people.
The story begins with an ex-bandit contemplating his life and deciding that he
had been a cruel and remorseless person throughout his life. This realisation leads
him to repent for all his misdoings. He goes to the dergah of Haji Bektash Veli, the
spiritual leader of Alevi people, and asks for mercy:
Please, I beg you to forgive me. I wish to be a person who wants

to serve for God; but how can I ask for mercy? I am such a sinful
person; how can I beg for repentance; please guide me!
Giving him a branch of a tree, Haji Bektash utters the following:
You are like a piece of dry wood; you should make a garden; you
should start cultivating the land. You should offer fruits and
vegetables for those passing through the garden. Do not ignore
anybody. Try to plant a tree in the middle of the garden; try to
water it regularly. When the dry leaves turn green, that’s the sign
that your sins are pardoned.
The man takes the pieces of dry bush, he buys a garden, he does everything he
has been told to do. He plants a tree; he offers food to the people passing by; he
offers them water and whatever else he has. People living in the neighbourhood
start calling him ‘the gardener.’ The years pass by but the piece of dry wood does
not turn green. The man grows old. He starts feeling that he has not been forgiven;
he regrets everything. He constantly offers people food; he waters the branch; and
he waits for it to turn green.
One day, a man riding a horse passes through the garden. The gardener, who is
walking in the garden at the time, stops the man suddenly: ‘You must stop at once.
I made a promise to Haji Baktash. Let me serve some food for you.’ The man
riding the horse says: ‘Step aside! There is a wedding about to start, but I cannot
allow it to happen. The bride must be mine, or she must die.’
__________________________________________________________________
The gardener realises that the man means to take the girl by force. He says: ‘If
it was in the old days, I would have killed such an immoral man, but I made a
promise.’ The man answers: ‘Do not ever talk about your promise to the holy
person; get the hell out of here, or I’ll show you.’ The gardener replies: ‘Did they
trust you with me?’ and he takes out his sword and kills the man.
The gardener then feels hopeless. He could not control his anger and he had
killed the man. He was sure that no one would forgive him anymore. He started
packing and preparing to leave his garden. Before leaving though, he waters the
dry branch one more time and regrets everything he has done. All of a sudden, he
realises that the piece of branch has turned green and he believes that his sins have
been forgiven. Indeed the green leaves indicate that he was forgiven.
This story imparts the following message: No one can question the holy beings
as real apologies and real deeds are transparent to God. God asks that you forgive,
take risks, give without taking, and share with others. God asks for the protection
of holy values, the protection of lovers, respect for holiness, and to never abandon
God’s ways. Being hopeless means being devoid of love; being hopeless means not
believing. The house of God is not a place of hopelessness; rather it is a place for
awakening, inspiration and amnesty.
4. Interpretations of the Story

During their travels, spiritual leaders (dede, baba, dervish) give advice about
what is meant by being human, living in the world, and moral responsibilities. The
construction of their stories is not intended to impose a particular morality but,
rather, to encourage reflection on the spiritual or moral world. The spiritual leaders
believe that imposing rules would harm spiritual growth; their aim is instead to
make listeners think about themselves and their individual spiritual roles. Once
listeners make such self-evaluations, it is assumed that they will proceed in the way
of becoming holy individuals. Such knowledge is transmitted through stories,
legends and other genres described via different narratives. Stories in this sense
resemble myths and folk tales with characteristics that transcend time and space.
These narratives are constructed to relate to the mundane as well as the spiritual
domains. Therefore, listeners identify with the characters and relate to the
‘otherworld’ by identifying with the spiritual references in the stories.
As mentioned earlier, the Alevi-Bektashi tradition relies heavily on heterodox
beliefs including Batınism (Gnosticism), which defines the spiritual path through
the concept of four gateways: (1) sheria (law), (2) tarikat (the path or
brotherhood), (3) marifet or Ma’rifa (mystical knowledge), and (4) hakikat (union
with the God). The degree of an individual’s spiritual growth is revealed by the
stage he or she has reached on the continuum of these four stages. The way in
which a listener interprets a story is the key to understanding his or her spiritual
position in relation to these four gateways.
Nuran Erol Isik 229
__________________________________________________________________
When people get together in such rituals as ‘conversations,’ they are expected
to be conscious of their ties with and to the spiritual world. The spiritual path
described above is a key to understanding different interpretations of the stories
presented during conversations. For example, if an individual is at the first stage of
sharia (law) his or her interpretations of the story presented above would be
expected as follows: These dervishes lived such a virtuous life; I cannot live like
this. Well, the world is such a place. We cannot act in the same way as they do. We
have our weaknesses and limitations. I cannot act like this person, or become a
dervish. It’s good to avoid all bad deeds but it is difficult. The individual may think
about some moral questions, but the answers are left for the otherworld. For
example, he would not understand the reason for killing the man on the horse but
would think that this could be clear in the otherworld. People at the first stage of
the spiritual path think strictly according to religious principles. They focus on the
rules described in the sacred story. At this level, it is too difficult for people to
interpret the story in different ways, and the storyteller would make no attempt to
warn the listeners against a literal interpretation.
Individuals at the second stage of the spiritual path, tarikat (the path or
brotherhood), rely on mentors to interpret the story for them. They desire a
spiritual mentor to intervene on their behalf to purify them and unify them with
God. Listeners who interpret the story based on the second level emphasise the
way in which the ex-bandit gives up his harsh times and becomes a gardener, his
commitment to his new job and his surroundings. In addition, importance is
attached to the way in which the gardener’s life changes. The path involves some
principles: people ought to live their life as their mentor expects them to live. The
relationship between the mentor and the follower becomes visible because nobody
can understand life alone, without a mentor. At the second stage, the way in which
rules are constructed by the spiritual master becomes significant.
The third gate or stage is marifet (mystical knowledge), or Ma’rifa. As Renard
notes:
Ma’rifa, experiential, infused, intimate or mystical knowledge is

arguably the quintessential Sufi concept. If the central occupation
of the mystic was the effort to know God experientially, then all
other human activity was to be subordinated to this cultural
goal. 6
People who approach the story from this third spiritual level have a degree of
independence which enables them to pose questions. This stage of mystical
knowledge is also the stage of scientific thinking as these individuals would seek
causal relationships for the events described. They would think about materiality
in relation to spirituality. They would be interested in the way in which the ex-
bandit offers food to his guests, done in the service of God. The person with a
__________________________________________________________________
history of immoral deeds can only purify himself by giving and doing good.
Interpretations of the story made at this stage are independently scripted.
‘Marifet’-talent is a condition for becoming an individual. Sufi thought
requires individuals to grasp the principle of being part of a unity. Without
realising this, a person would be selfish. Thus, those at the third stage would ask
the reason for serving food to people, for supporting poor people. The individuals
would realise that manifestations of God are everywhere. A person at this stage is
both a material and a spiritual being, knowing that the real author of spirituality is
God. They would also ask how they may live life in accordance with the
expectations of God. This is an empowered person in the sense that asking these
types of moral questions reveals an effort to construct a life based on moral
choices. It is assumed that the ex-bandit killed the man in the service of God.
There is a division between moral and immoral life, and humans have the ability to
choose. The gardener is considered not guilty as he prevented an action that would
have separated two people who loved each other.
The fourth spiritual level, hakikat, represents union with God. From this
perspective the ex-bandit is seen as a hand descending from God. People who
interpret the story at this level would not need to ask questions; the spiritual level
of this person is almost identical with the narrator. An individual at the fourth level
never challenges the spiritual leader. The revelation of God through the story of
the reformed bandit cannot be perceived by everyone, but, like a secret path, can
only be discovered through spiritual growth. The gardener realises everything
when the branch turns green, which symbolises the revelation of God as well as
unity with the ‘truth’ (Hakk) that is God. The gardener kills the man because he is
not hopeless. By doing this, he is being purified; he knows that God was revealed
in the green leaves of the branch which were previously dry.
5. Conclusion
The division between the interior and the exterior worlds in the Alevist belief
system has an inevitable impact on the way in which listeners interpret the stories
in different rituals as well as in conversation in companionship. The narrator
constructs a story to respond to the unspoken or spoken demands of the members
of the community. For their part, the participants respect the spiritual hierarchy of
the ritual because of their expectation that the narrator will satisfy their existential
and spiritual needs. Once the story is told, the storyteller observes the listeners,
listens to their replies, and attempts to formulate a series of answers for their needs,
which may vary from individual to individual. The listeners trying to interpret the
story can be positioned on the spiritual spectrum or path as described above. The
four gates or spiritual levels are the key to understanding the story, the
interpretations of which may be given directly or implied.
The storytelling rituals of the Alevi-Bektashi community constitute a tool with
normative and spiritual features. In addition to these features, there are unspoken
Nuran Erol Isik 231
__________________________________________________________________
dimensions of these rituals which emphasise ambiguity about the human condition.
The uniqueness of the Alevi-Bektashi storytelling ritual relates to the complex
relations between the storytellers, listeners and the act of the conversation.
Together these constitute a cultural avenue where self-reflexivity and narrativity
appear as components of the very same unity.
Notes
1
Frank Kressing, ‘A Preliminary Account of Research Regarding the Albanian
Bektashis - Myths and Unresolved Questions’, in Albania - A Country in
Transition: Aspects of Changing Identities in a South-East European Country, eds.
Karl Kaser and Frank Kressing (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002), 65-92.
2
Jale Erzen, ‘Islamic Aesthetics: An Alternative Way to Knowledge’, The Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, Special Issue: Global Theories of the Arts and
Aesthetics (2007): 69-75.
3
Brian Silverstein, ‘Disciplines of Presence in Modern Turkey: Discourse,
Companionship, and Mass Mediation of Islamic Practice’, Cultural Anthropology
23 (2008): 118-153.
4
Caner Isik, ‘Alevi Bektaşi Geleneğinde Muhabbet: Ruhsal Bir Bilgi Ortamı’
(Conversation in the Tradition of Alevi-Bektashi Tradition: A Spiritual Climate of
Knowledge), Milli Folklor 12 (2011): 147-159.
5
Caner Isik, ‘Derviş Ruhan Örneğinde Alevi Bektaşi Dervişlik Geleneği’ (The
Alevi-Bektashi Tradition in the Case of Dervish Ruhan) (PhD diss., Yuzuncu Yıl
University, 2008).
6
Jean Renard, Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic
Mystical Theology (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2004), 88.
Bibliography
Erzen, Jale. ‘Islamic Aesthetics: An Alternative Way to Knowledge’. The Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65. Special Issue: Global Theories of the Arts and
Aesthetics (2007): 69–75.
Isik, Caner. ‘Derviş Ruhan Örneğinde Alevi Bektaşi Dervişlik Geleneği’ (‘The
Alevi-Bektashi Tradition in the Case of Dervish Ruhan’). PhD diss., Yuzuncu Yıl
University, Turkey, 2008.
—––. ‘Alevi Bektaşi Geleneğinde Muhabbet: Ruhsal Bir Bilgi Ortamı’

(‘Conversation in the Tradition of Alevi-Bektashi Tradition: A Spiritual Climate of
Knowledge’). Milli Folklor 12 (2011): 147–159.
__________________________________________________________________
Kressing, Frank. ‘A Preliminary Account of Research Regarding the Albanian

Bektashis - Myths and Unresolved Questions’. In Albania - A Country in
Transition: Aspects of Changing Identities in a South-East European Country,
edited by Karl Kaser, and Frank Kressing, 65–92. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002.
Renard, Jean. Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic

Mystical Theology. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2004.
Silverstein, Brian. ‘Disciplines of Presence in Modern Turkey: Discourse,

Companionship, and Mass Mediation of Islamic Practice’. Cultural Anthropology
23 (2008): 118–153.
Nuran Erol Isik is Scholar in Residence at the Izmir University of Economics,

Department of Sociology. She is interested in popular religion, folk narratives, and
bricolage of narratives in media.
Part 7
The Politics of Literary Storytelling

Narrative Distancing and the Space for Compassion in
Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’
Allison Shelton
Abstract
Mahasweta Devi’s well-known short story, ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha,’
within the collection, Imaginary Maps, is a careful meditation on the implications,
both personal and political, of representing another’s cultural history. The story
examines notions of misunderstanding, authenticity, and truth, as well as the
interconnectedness of narrative and history. Analysing the story in terms of
narratology, I consider the author herself, the English translator, Gayatri Spivak,
and the characters of the pterodactyl, Bikhia, and Puran, as different kinds of
storytellers with unique perspectives on, connections with, and responsibilities to
the fictional village of Pirtha and the conditions of life there. Reading these figures
through both the textual and paratextual material reveals an interesting,
multilayered narrative matrix. Each storyteller is an interpreter with a different
discursive understanding and set of tools with which to represent/re-present a
narrative. Together they comprise a similarly multilayered political project that
explores those difficult questions that occur again and again within wider post-
colonial literary contexts: What does it mean to enter, and therefore forever alter
the trajectory of someone else’s story? Is it possible to recount someone else’s
history, to translate another’s past while avoiding presumption and consumption?
What is true in history? What is true history? Devi’s celebrated work explores
these questions in relation to indigenous Indian tribal people, calling attention to
the issues they face in the current neoliberal climate of decolonised India, such as
famine, drought, discrimination, and exploitation.
Key Words: Interpretation, storyteller, discursive practice, narratology, Indian

tribal, postcolonial.
*****
Mahasweta Devi’s well-known short story, ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and

Pirtha,’ within the collection, Imaginary Maps, is a careful meditation on the
implications, both personal and political, of representing another’s cultural history.
The story examines notions of misunderstanding, authenticity, and truth, as well as
the interconnectedness of narrative and history. Analysing the story in terms of
narratology, the author herself and then the English translator, Gayatri Spivak, the
characters of the pterodactyl, Bikhia, and Puran are considered as different kinds of
storytellers with unique perspectives on, connections with, and responsibilities to
the fictional village of Pirtha and the conditions of life there. Reading these figures
through both the textual and paratextual material reveals an interesting,
236 Narrative Distancing and the Space for Compassion
__________________________________________________________________
multilayered narrative matrix. Each storyteller is an interpreter with a different
discursive understanding and set of tools with which to represent/re-present a
narrative. Together they comprise a similarly multilayered political project that
explores those difficult questions that occur again and again within wider post-
colonial literary contexts: What does it mean to enter, and therefore forever alter
the trajectory of someone else’s story? Is it possible to recount someone else’s
history, to translate another’s past while avoiding presumption and consumption?
What is true in history? What is true history? Devi’s celebrated work explores
these questions in relation to indigenous Indian tribal people, calling attention to
the issues they face in the current neoliberal climate of decolonised India, such as
famine, drought, discrimination, and exploitation.
At the epicenter of the story is the pterodactyl, or pterodactyl-like creature, that
alights upon the village of Pirtha, a drought region where the people are slowly
starving to death, largely due to governmental failure. The pterodactyl is described
as the ‘soul of their ancestors’ 1 a shadowy figure in the sky, haunting the villagers
while they struggle to comprehend its meaning and its mark. The image calls to
mind the haunting described in Spivak’s later text, A Critique of Postcolonial
Reason. As Spivak attempts to recover the Rani of Sirmur from the historical
archives of colonial India, she imagines that the Rani haunts her, a constant
reminder to resist the dangerous temptation to rewrite the past. Like this image of
the Rani, the pterodactyl is a silent, stoic creature that seems to harbor a message
or story about Pirtha’s cultural history that it cannot or will not convey. As Devi
says in the conversation that precedes the text, ‘There is no point of
communication with the pterodactyl.’ 2 Yet unlike Spivak’s spectral Rani of
Sirmur, the pterodactyl is flesh and blood. When Puran Sahay finally sees it after
receiving an almost mythic account of its presence, he exclaims, ‘This is the
unearthly terror? This is an embodied creature, that can spread its wings and fly.’ 3
Far from a metaphorical threat or an otherworldly figure, it is most importantly an
anachronism. Indeed, a prehistoric creature, the pterodactyl gestures toward
Pirtha’s pre-history. Its corporeality and anachronistic presence, then, along with
its silence, create a narratorial paradox that highlights the inability for the past,
especially the subaltern past, to speak for itself. Therefore its death is a sobering
message about the village’s exclusion from the development of the rest of India
and the future of the tribal villagers, and of indigenous Indians in general. Puran
implores the pterodactyl, ‘Have you come here because Pirtha is also endangered,
its existence under attack...?’ 4 But of course the creature has no answer to give,
and the message about Pirtha’s cultural history dies with it.
The young, illiterate Bikhia is also a silent storyteller who creates his own
narrative voice by chiseling the image of the pterodactyl on a stone, setting in
motion a series of interpretive dilemmas. Upon making this inscription, he falls
mute, becoming the pterodactyl’s silent guardian. The text reveals, ‘[Puran] knows
Bikhia can hear him. He has only stopped speaking after he drew the picture.’ 5
Allison Shelton 237
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Thus Bikhia becomes the vessel through which the cultural history of Pirtha
connects to its present and to the outside, as represented by Puran. A paradoxical,
wordless interpreter, Bikhia’s muteness and illiteracy suggest that what he is
protecting cannot be verbalised or written down. Indeed, oral and written records
lead to false truth-claims about history, thus in a way Bikhia is the safe-keeper of
the authenticity of the village. To borrow once again from Spivak’s Critique,
Bikhia is the native informant of Pirtha, for Puran, the outsider, and for us, the
educated readership. Spivak describes the native informant as a problematic figure
within the colonialist narrative who gains a sort of discursive power through
questionable authenticity. Bikhia, however, is unable to connect fully to either the
authentic (the pterodactyl), or the outside (Puran), and thus transcends this
paradigmatic, intellectual category and instead inhabits the concept itself. He is
unfettered by the confusions of discourse, by the power structures inherent in
language. Instead, silence actually affords him a kind of narrative power: ‘A most
imperial laughter in Bikhia’s eyes. His lips don’t move, don’t speak…Bikhia has
received his ancestral soul. That is why his face is now so full of a quiet wisdom.’ 6
Indeed, Bikhia gives himself over to the pterodactyl, offering it reverence and
ritual, and in this exchange he is both a representation of real tribal suffering and
also the interpreter of a figure lost to time. In this way, like the pterodactyl, he
appears to occupy a different time, or a timeless space, as suggested when he and
Puran are together in the shack: ‘Bikhia’s eyes are unblinking...Bikhia is still,
unmoving, immobile. They sit, the two of them sit. An eternity passes. Bikhia has
possibly gone to his ancestors, then, taking an eternity he traverses five thousand
years and gradually returns.’ 7 A complex storyteller without language, Bikhia
seems to offer a different kind of existence for his forgotten village, one that does
not involve a false, exploitative relationship with the outside world.
Worlds apart from Bikhia, Puran Sahay’s occupation is words. As a journalist,
he is an interpreter, an experienced documentarian, observer, and artful storyteller.
Puran’s job is to take in a situation or event and transform it into a concise,
digestible story for the public. However, faced with the problematic situation of the
tribal people of Pirtha, he must grapple with the complexity of what is true, what is
myth, and what is in between. Throughout the text, Puran is unable to relate to the
villagers, at times shocked, frustrated, and sickened by their plight. He is separated
by class, by appearance, and ideology. The Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO)
exclaims, ‘You will understand them with your urban mentality? You will fathom
the Indian Ocean with a foot-ruler?’ 8 Even the difficulty of their topography is a
metaphor for this failure to relate: ‘The way to reach them is so inaccessible.’ 9 Yet
the pterodactyl chooses Puran, an outsider with a complicated relationship to truth,
interpretation, and text, to bear witness to its life, and its death. In this way Puran is
encapsulated into Pirtha’s mythos. When, on the night of his arrival rain comes to
the drought region, he muses that this may ‘give rise to another legend,’ 10 and he
tries to deny the correlation. However, whether legend or not, Puran cannot escape
__________________________________________________________________
his involvement, his connection to Pirtha; it is irreversible. As such he comes again
and again to the shack that houses the pterodactyl, helping Bikhia to care for it.
They become a narrative trio, Puran the storyteller twice-removed. But the reality
of his relationship with the pterodactyl frustrates and saddens him: ‘Puran is
witnessing his own futility. Having seen history from beyond pre-history,…Puran,
a modern man, could not read the message in its eyes.’ 11 The pterodactyl chooses
to force an impossibility of communication into the light, and as such, Puran must
question his interpretation of and dedication to the truth. What will Puran write?
What can he write? Any way he chooses to represent Pirtha will result in
misunderstanding, misreading, and the possibility of further violence to the
villagers. Because of this dilemma, Puran contemplates his own history, his
manhood, his connection with Pirtha, and his connection to everything.
Like Puran, Devi’s occupation is also words. She was also a journalist, and is
an activist, committed to the struggles of indigenous Indian people in such places
as Madhya Pradesh, in which Pterodactyl takes place. Puran can be read as a
metaphor for Devi herself. Through Puran Devi explores the constant struggle of
the writer/outsider to represent without doing harm, to speak, but not to speak for
those suffering from misreading and neglect. She inevitably sits outside the text,
three steps removed from the pterodactyl, from the secrets of the cultural ancestry
of Pirtha. She is the author; one might say the principle storyteller in the matrix,
the overseer of the truth. And yet her creation of this narrative hierarchy calls that
authority into question. In this way Devi acknowledges her limits, and the limits of
anyone who attempts to know another’s story, another who is excluded from the
current paradigm of existence; to know as intimately as Puran is allowed to know,
as Bikhia is allowed to know. Yet despite these limits, the text itself reveals Devi’s
commitment to try. She chooses to write, though problematic and removed. Her
commitment to the realities of tribal people can be found in the constant motif of
government failure in the text: the ‘arrogant roads’ 12 that allow the exploitation of
the tribals by moneylenders and abductors; the terrible irony of giving goats to a
starving population; and most chilling, the fertilisation of the hillsides that leads to
the poisoning of the population when the rains finally come. (Here, and elsewhere
in the text, Devi alludes to the historic Bhopal disaster of 1984.) This is paired with
an equal commitment to constantly remind the reader of the impossibility of
accurately representing another’s cultural reality through the character of Puran,
the gaps in the text, all that she leaves unsaid, and the motifs of silence and
extinction. In fact, it is within the theme of extinction that we can read Devi’s
decree, a sobering metaphor for the danger of keeping silent out of a fear of
misrepresentation. Devi chooses not to let the silence continue, revealing in her
footnote at the end of the story: ‘I have merely tried to express my estimation, born
of experience, of Indian tribal society, through the myth of the pterodactyl.’ 13
Finally, Spivak’s role is perhaps the most difficult to describe, fraught with
instability and textual responsibility. As translator, she is faced with the delicate
Allison Shelton 239
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task of interpretation, hovering precariously above the text with a magnifying glass
and the best of intentions. What immediately stands out about Spivak’s translation
of the wider volume containing Pterodactyl is the plethora of paratextual material.
There is The Author in Conversation, the Translator’s Preface, the Translator’s
Note, and the Afterword, all penned by Spivak. Though all aids in the reading and
analysis of Devi’s text, it is as if Spivak wants to constantly remind the reader how
removed the text is from its original form, her heavy hand a metaphor for the heavy
task of reiteration and representation. Throughout these various sections, she
continually engages in self-critique and explanation almost to excess: ‘This is
indeed an authorised translation. Any faults that remain are of course mine;’ 14 and
‘I present my services to [Devi’s] work - translation, preface, afterword - in the
hope that you will judge the instructive strength of that embrace.’ 15 In addition to
the extra material, she chooses to italicize the isolated English words in the original
Bengali text, in order to lend a difficulty to the reading that is ‘a reminder of the
intimacy of the colonial encounter.’ 16 Spivak’s commitment to overdetermination
both in and outside the text calls into question, literally and symbolically, any
truth-claims in the narrative and surrounding it. In this way she too is a storyteller
along this vertical narrative matrix. Most notably, she concludes her preface with a
quote by J. M. Coetzee about his own work as a translator, further inscribing
herself within a vast network of authorial figures, textual interpretation, and
imperfect representations. Coetzee remarks on the inherent loss, and the inevitable
prejudice involved in any translation effort. Spivak follows, ‘Upon this
acknowledgment of prejudice…I invite you to acknowledge your own and turn
now to the text.’ 17 Thus Spivak calls attention to the reader’s final role in this
hierarchy: indeed, she confronts the reader as the final translator, the final
interpreter - the final storyteller of the text.
Each of the storytellers mentioned here is faced with a dilemma: how to
represent Pirtha without silencing Pirtha? To speak to this difficulty, I return to the
protagonist Puran Sahay. Like Devi, Puran’s decision to write is a political act, and
a transformational one. He cannot write about Pirtha without changing Pirtha, and
in turn changing himself. Inherent in his decision is a binary of protection and
harm, that is, he fears that writing about the pterodactyl will cause unwanted
attention on Bikhia, and on the tribal people. He has discovered in himself a
protective impulse for Pirtha that he feels for no other person, not even himself, a
transformative love that is anchored by the acknowledgement of his difference:
‘He feels inadequate. It’s true that he can’t reach [these] people by eating little or
sleeping on grass mats. There is a great gulf fixed between Puran’s kind and [their]
kind. But he does want to get close.’ 18 This is the ultimate message Devi imparts.
How can Puran write about Pirtha when all knowledge is an erasure? How can he
fill the gaps in the story of Pirtha without creating new gaps in Pirtha's history?
The text’s vertical narrative matrix helps put these questions into perspective.
Puran is not the voice of Pirtha any more than Devi is the voice of indigenous
__________________________________________________________________
India, but he does want to get close. In the end, Puran chooses to write a half-truth,
an attempt at a half-history, uncovering certain facts about the neglect of Pirtha’s
famine, but omitting his entire encounter with the pterodactyl. The SDO inquires,
‘Won’t you write about Bikhia’s picture? - No, that’s their own affair. - You’re a
journalist, weren’t you intrigued? - It’s the soul of their ancestors, not mine.’ 19
Thus, by avoiding the pterodactyl encounter, Puran feebly attempts to avoid the
inevitable: the writing of himself onto and into Pirtha.
The story ends on a strange, inconclusive note, pointing the reader in a
direction outside the text. Devi, through writing, attempts an entirely new history
and we, to the best of our ability, attempt to read and understand it, gaining a new
perspective on Pirtha, on tribal India, and on the inherent difficulties in the
narration of history. Even as the text may seem weighed down by the multi-
layering of storytellers and cyclical modes of analysis, these complications serve to
heighten our awareness as readers to the seduction and ultimate failure of textual
authority and truth. In the Afterword, Spivak states, ‘I am learning to write on
Mahasweta as if an attentive reading of texts permits us to imagine an impossible
undivided world...this is a learning because such a permission can be earned only
by way of attention to the specificity of these writings.’ 20 Like Spivak, we the
readers are learning to (re-)read history, attuning ourselves to the inevitable gaps
with this same attention to specificity. As newly attuned readers, we ask ourselves:
What is true in this narrative, if anything can be true? The truth, the pterodactyl
seems to suggest, is the existence of a soul, a real connection to the past, however
impossible to grasp. The text asks us to embrace that impossibility, to approach
complex problems (about history, writing, and the subaltern) with complex
solutions. There can be found in the strange life and death of the pterodactyl a
paradoxical space in which our questions about the limitations of writing and
history are part of a fluid process of understanding. I find the ultimate refrain of the
text in this message: there is always a great gulf between any our kind and their
kind. But as conscious storytellers, we do want to get close. Bikhia cannot speak,
but chooses to chisel an image on a stone, to care for a trembling creature - he can
do that much. Puran cannot represent, but chooses to bear witness, to write what he
feels will do the least amount of harm - he can do that much. Devi cannot
transform a nation, but she chooses to write, to work as an activist and to bear
witness - she can do that much. And Spivak cannot perfectly translate, but chooses
to interpret as self-consciously as she can, to the best of her ability - she can do that
much. The textual journey into Pirtha is a metaphor for our readership and our
rendering of history, the multi-layered storytelling matrix to which we all belong.
We cannot change the past, we cannot completely understand it, but perhaps we
can sit with it. And perhaps in doing so, we can lay it to rest properly, as it might
wish to be. We can do that much.
Allison Shelton 241
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Notes
1
Mahasweta Devi, ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’, in Imaginary Maps
(New York: Routledge, 1995), 170.
2
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Preface to ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’, in
Imaginary Maps, by Mahasweta Devi (New York: Routledge, 1995), xxii.
3
Devi, ‘Pterodactyl’, 104.
4
Ibid., 157.
5
Ibid., 143.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., 180-181.
8
Ibid., 104.
9
Ibid., 110.
10
Ibid., 144.
11
Ibid., 180.
12
Ibid., 123.
13
Ibid., 196.
14
Spivak, Preface, xxiii.
15
16
Spivak, Preface, xxxi.
17
Ibid., xxix.
18
19
Ibid., 170.
20
Ibid., 197.
Bibliography
Devi, Mahasweta. ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’. In Imaginary Maps. New
York: Routledge, 1995.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Preface to ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’. In

Imaginary Maps, by Mahasweta Devi. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Allison Shelton is a graduate student at the City University of New York, Hunter
College. Her MA research focuses on the interdisciplinary connections between
Early American Studies and Postcolonial Studies in the context of literary
criticism, with emphasis on the Subaltern and the need for compassionate
comparison. She is currently working on a comparison between Mahasweta Devi’s
Imaginary Maps and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storytelling.
Bring on the Velvet Revolution: The Politics of Individual
Subjectivity in Tom Stoppard’s Rock’N’Roll
Madelyn Farris and Anna Morlan

Abstract
Theatrical plays, with the rare exception of the one-man-show, are by definition
stories with multiple narrators. This naturally polyvocal storytelling sets theatre
apart from other art forms and provides an excellent opportunity for the revaluation
of established historical narratives. In Rock’N’Roll, Tom Stoppard takes the
fragmented nature of his play’s narrative even further, suggesting that apolitical
individual subjectivity, external to the system and thus subversively powerful,
played the greatest role in bringing about social change in Czechoslovakia.
Stoppard’s play tells an alternative story of the Czech Velvet Revolution, one with
the potential to undermine our understanding of what propels history in general.
Rock’N’Roll shifts our focus away from economic necessity or ideology as the
primary causes of political change and asks us to reconceptualise individuality as
‘the x-factor’ in not just the telling but also the making of history. In this chapter,
we focus on the language and staging of Stoppard’s play to show how the text and
its physical manifestation depend on each other to make this point.
Key Words: Stoppard, Rock’N’Roll, politics of literary storytelling, apolitical

subjectivity, Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia, The Plastic People of the
Universe.
*****
Theatrical plays, with the rare exception of the one-man-show, are by definition
stories with multiple narrators. This naturally polyvocal storytelling sets theatre
apart from other art forms and provides an excellent opportunity for the revaluation
of established historical narratives. In Rock’N’Roll, Tom Stoppard takes the
fragmented nature of his play’s narrative even further to suggest that it was
apolitical individual subjectivity, external to the system and thus subversively
powerful, which played the greatest role in bringing about social change in
Czechoslovakia. Stoppard’s play tells an alternative story of the Czech Velvet
Revolution, one with the potential to undermine our understanding of what propels
history in general. Rock’N’Roll shifts our focus away from economic necessity or
ideology as the primary causes of political change and asks us to reconceptualise
individuality as ‘the x-factor’ in not just the telling but also the making of history.
In this chapter, we focus on the language and staging of Stoppard’s play to show
how the text and its physical manifestation depend on each other to make this
point.
244 Bring on the Velvet Revolution
__________________________________________________________________
1. The Focus on the Individual
In Rock’N’Roll, the audience is introduced to Jan, a doctoral candidate at
Cambridge, who must return home to Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Soviet
occupation. At the beginning of the play, Jan is caught up in an ideological battle
between his Cambridge Marxist mentor, Max, and his dissident friend,
Ferdinand. Initially, Jan wants nothing to do with politics, and throughout the play,
his political ambivalence is illustrated through his mannerisms and actions. On
stage, Jan demonstrates his political ambivalence physically in a number of ways.
He is jittery and unstable. He laughs at inappropriate moments and then
immediately apologises, such as during his interrogation upon returning to Prague
or when corned by Max. Most notably, Jan ends up physically backed into corners
by the more politically resolved characters, Max and Ferdinand. Both Max and
Ferdinand act as physical aggressors, towering over a cowering Jan who, when
drawn into a political discussion, puts his hands in front of his body in a ‘don’t
shoot’ position. This behaviour changes though when Jan’s record collection is
destroyed by the Soviet Police. In fact, Jan’s reaction to the destruction of his
music, the only thing he really loves, is so visceral that he runs offstage to vomit.
This bit of staging does more than just tell the audience that Jan values his records;
it also demonstrates that Jan is no longer able to suppress the emotions bubbling up
inside him. After this incident, Jan becomes much more aggressive and resolved,
physically, even pursuing characters like Ferdinand in order to gain signatures for a
petition.
Ultimately, through his love of rock music (The Plastic People of the Universe,
in particular), Jan finds himself drawn into the political discourse and action for
which he is subsequently jailed. Jan argues that The Plastic People have a greater
power to effect political change than the political activists and dissidents of the
time because The Plastics lack a political agenda. Indeed, the indifference of The
Plastics causes the government to lash out against them, which subsequently
makes ordinary citizens more aware of the scope of government control. It is one
thing to see a person jailed for acting against the government; it is another to see
someone jailed for not participating in the system.
In terms of physicality, Jan’s mentor, Max, is his direct opposite. At least in the
beginning of the play, Max is completely certain about his political beliefs and fills
the space he occupies on stage. He is strong, still, and intimidating. In fact, he is so
physically present that - although the actor who portrays Max is not exceptionally
tall - the other characters look up when speaking to him. At the end of the play,
however, Max has left the communist party, forced to abandon his core political
beliefs; his spirit is broken and so is his body. He is no longer the strong man we
knew at the beginning of the play and, as a physical sign of this, he has injured his
leg and cannot walk without assistance.
Through his focus on the personal accounts of characters who are decidedly
disengaged from the main ideological binary of the government and its official
Madelyn Farris and Anna Morlan 245
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opposition in the time leading up to the Velvet Revolution, Stoppard demonstrates
the capacity of the individual to impact his or her surroundings in a personal
struggle against a regime that suppresses the freedom to simply ‘be.’
2. The Pagans
Rock’N’Roll opens up with the character of The Piper, whom another character,
Esme, takes to be god Pan. In an earlier draft of the play, the character of The Piper
was supposed to be an archangel. The choice of Pan for the final version is telling:
while an archangel is part of Christian mythology and thus associated with
organised religion and dominant ideology, the Pan is representative of paganism.
This is particularly fitting for the period of contemporary neo-paganism which
flourished in the 1960s. The role of paganism during a time of Christian dominance
is further addressed in the play in an important conversation between Jan and his
political friend, Ferdinand. Specifically, Jan tries to explain why it is the Plastic
People of the Universe who will lead Czechoslovakia to a regime change:
Policemen love dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics.

Heretics give meaning to the defenders of the faith. Nobody
cares more than a heretic. Your friend Havel cares so much he
writes a long letter to Husak. It makes no odds whether it’s a
love letter or a protest letter. It means they’re playing on the
same board. So Husak can relax, he’s made the rules, it’s his
game. The population plays the other way, by agreeing to be
bribed by places at university, or an easy ride at work… they
care enough to keep their thoughts to themselves, their haircuts
give nothing away. But the Plastics don’t care at all. They’re
unbribable. They’re coming from somewhere else, from where
the Muses come from. They’re not heretics. They’re pagans. 1
Because the ‘pagans’ are outside the basic dichotomy of ideology and official
opposition, they are most threatening to those in power: they are outside the
perceivable paradigm; they are unpredictable and incomprehensible. The character,
Milan, a communist agent, sums up this pervasive paradigm well when he pops a
balloon carrying a Charter 77 leaflet with his party pin. The point he makes is that
when one thing opposes the other, the one that has more strength (the metal of a
pin) wins. In other words, might makes right. From this perspective, the dissidents
are always a minority, and thus always lose. As Milan tells Max, Chartists are not
normal. Normal people, according to Milan, care only about material goals - thus
implying that they would not be involved in issues as conceptual as human rights,
nor with spending time and risking the ire of the government to help the kids
whom people like Milan find ‘so unimportant, [he’d] be ashamed to notice [their]
existence.’ 2 Interestingly, the dissidents (as represented by the character,
__________________________________________________________________
Ferdinand) really do not care at first about the Plastic People of the Universe and
their fans, since the latter (the fans) - in their rebellion against the government - are
not trying to undermine the regime, but are simply interested in playing and
listening to music that they like. Their rebellion is not ideological, and does not fit
into the paradigm of the official opposition. Thus people on both sides of an
ideological structure are shown to be strangely alike in their indifference to those
who do not fit the established binary: the pagans. The Plastics don’t care about
ideology, long hair, going to jail or subverting communism; they just want to play
their music and, to use Havel’s terms, ‘to live in truth,’ 3 without having to
compromise with those in charge nor enter the political terrain. Under a regime
where this is impossible, however, they become political victims and the driving
forces behind political change.
Jan himself is another such ‘pagan’ - he returns to Czechoslovakia for personal
reasons (his mother) and because he believes in his country. He does not come to
oppose its ideological structure, but to prove the possibility of ‘socialism with a
human face.’ 4 Even when things start to go wrong for him, Jan is not eager to join
the opposition - he calls it, in Kundera’s terms, ‘moral exhibitionism.’ 5 He does
not think that joining an ideological battle of wills will bring about any change,
while it might, in fact, hurt those it is claiming to protect. What eventually changes
Jan though is when he sees ordinary people, who have chosen no fight with the
regime, being punished for the simple act of self-expression. Being a music lover
himself, Jan tells Ferdinand, who is still in doubt over signing the petition to help
The Plastics: ‘It’s not just the music, it’s the oxygen. You know what I mean.’ 6
When his act of low-level opposition (the petition) is retaliated against in a
malicious and particularly cruel way - when his entire record collection is smashed
by two communist agents and his personal freedom not even to express himself but
simply to listen to the music of his choice is harshly curtailed - then Jan is
converted and joins the official opposition.
As Max points out to Milan, Jan becomes a Chartist and enters the political
sphere not for ideological reasons but simply because the regime’s oppression has
become so far-reaching that it has affected the most private corners of its citizens’
lives; if he chose to compromise with the regime, Jan would have to stop being
himself. Thus, in Czechoslovakia, under the Soviet regime, ideology does not leave
its pagans alone: instead it pulls Jan and the Plastics into its structure by folding
their choice to ‘not participate’ into the binary of either ‘you’re with us, or you’re
against us.’ ‘Living in truth’ becomes a form of dissent.
In the 2008 Broadway production of Rock’N’Roll, the play opens with the
Piper, or Pan, as Esme christens him, crouched on the wall outside Esme’s
window, serenading her. Later, when Jan is trying to explain to Ferdinand why
the Plastics have more capacity to enact change than the official opposition
(‘they’re not Heretics, they’re Pagans’), Jan assumes the same crouching position
as the Piper at the start of the play. This physicality is mirrored again in a later
__________________________________________________________________
scene when Ferdinand has been won over to the Plastics’ cause after meeting
Jirous in prison. Ferdinand excitedly bounds onto an arm chair and recounts his
encounter with Jirous, crouching in exactly the same position on exactly the same
arm chair as Jan had during the previous scene. The repeated physicality serves
several purposes: namely, it shows us that in these moments Jan and Ferdinand are
so passionate that they cannot constrain themselves within normal seated positions
and are not hiding what they feel but rather ‘living in truth.’ It also serves as a
physical reminder tying Jan, Ferdinand, and the Plastics back to Pan, further
cementing the idea that they are the play’s pagans, existing outside the binary of
government and official opposition.
The original pagan of Stoppard’s play is, in fact, Sappho, whose poetry is read
by Lenka, another Czech character, to illustrate the distinction between the
physical, outside world and the individual’s subjectivity. Lenka’s argument in the
play is that the real revolution will not happen in the material world: ‘Politics is
over,’ she says, addressing Max, ‘You’re looking for the revolution in the wrong
place. Consciousness is where it’s at now.’ 7 Instead of the arenas of economic
relations or political ideology, Lenka implies that true change can only occur on
the level of individual consciousness, which is subversive by definition because it
defies the collective.
Max’s materialistic views make him reject the mind in favour of the brains,
which he feels - as machines - can be made to work like, and thus serve well, the
ideology and class consciousness that support regimes such as communism. Minds,
however, as Lenka points out, are unique and unpredictable, and thus cannot fit
entirely into any ideological structure. Indeed this is the heart of the problem with
ideology that Stoppard’s pagans clearly illustrate: if ideology is a way of
simplifying and bringing clarity and uniformity to life, these characters - living
outside of the basic ideological dichotomy - remind us that life is a commotion,
unpredictable and undefinable. In his introduction to the play, Stoppard quotes an
epigraph which might have been written by Havel:
There is only one way for the people - to free themselves by their
own efforts. Nothing must be used that would do it for them…
Cast away fear! Don’t be afraid of commotion. 8
In fact, these words were written by Mao Tse-tung as ‘a long stretch,’ 9

illustrating once again how the opposing sides of a political spectrum often use the
same words and propagate similar beliefs. Even more important is that the above
quote, first used as an epigraph by Jirous, the artistic director of the Plastic People,
in his ‘Report on the Third Musical Revival,’ serves to remind us that the human
factor that troubles and problematises any clear-cut way of thinking and living is
precisely also the commotion which propels the course of history, in a messy and
often unpredictable way.
__________________________________________________________________
In order to reconcile this mess with an ideological structure, Jan points out to
Max first that ‘words change meaning to make the theory fit the practice’ and,
later, after the Velvet Revolution, that ‘we have to begin again with the ordinary
meaning of words. Giving new meanings to words is how systems lie to
themselves.’ 10 Stoppard illustrates the continuous change in the meaning of words
throughout the play by making the confusion it creates ironic. For example, when
Jan is being interrogated upon his return to Czechoslovakia early in the play, the
word ‘occupation’ is used to mean the Nazi occupation by the interrogator but the
current Soviet occupation by Jan. Later, in the 1990 segment of the play, this
confusion is expanded when ‘occupation’ is used again to refer to something very
different: this time, the 1968 student protests against Vietnam. Stoppard could not
have predicted the latest use of the term, which has, today, become synonymous (at
least in the U.S.) with the Occupy Wall Street movement. All of these uses show
the ability of ideology to co-opt words and cause them to lose their meaning. In a
world where words no longer have a set meaning, the ground is shaky - and, again,
the above saying by Mao Tse-tung may as well have been said by Havel.
By the end of the play, Jan tells us that ‘all systems are blood brothers.
Changing one system for another is not what the Velvet Revolution was for,’ 11
echoing Havel’s ‘Politics and Conscience’ speech which reminds us ‘to put
morality above politics…to return life to its human scale, and language to its
human meaning; to recognize that socialism and capitalism in their selfish forms
are different routes to global totalitarianism.’ 12 Both texts, Stoppard’s and Havel’s,
imply that ideology - any ideology - in an attempt to fit the messy commotion of
life into the constraints of its own rigid clarity, takes meaning away from words
and subjectivity away from individuals. By the end of the play, even Max, the
staunch Marxist philosopher, is questioning his own ideological certainty, saying
that ‘between theory and practice there’s a decent fit - not perfect, but decent.’ 13
The deliberate use of the term ‘decent’ brings a whole new set of definitions and
questions into the play.
3. Conclusions
In the end, through the polyvocality of his characters, Stoppard raises more
questions than he answers. On one hand, he echoes Havel is his suggestion that
true political change is not caused by ideology or political opposition but by simple
people living lives true to themselves outside of the political arena. On the other
hand, he questions whether it is ever possible to remain outside of the ideological
structure. As Max points out about the cultural revolution in the UK, ‘it left the
system in place…because…altering the psyche has no effect on the social
structure. You drop out or you fit in.’ 14 As if to illustrate those words, the play
does not end with the Velvet Revolution. In fact, Stoppard skips over the main
events of the period he is describing (just as he kept the main protagonists - Havel,
Jirous, and the Plastic People - off the stage); he chooses instead to show us the
__________________________________________________________________
aftermath of that political change. In this world, the Rolling Stones are invited to
play in the main hall of free Czechoslovakia while the Plastics, the symbol of that
freedom and uncompromising subjectivity, immigrate to the West. This leaves Jan
to ponder: ‘These are new times. Who will be rich? Who will be famous?’ 15 His
comment may imply both that the Plastics are free to move and go wherever they
want to, pursuing their desire to create music, no longer burdened from politics, but
also that they are now free to be tempted by the materialism of the West, thus
possibly selling their soul to a different ideological god. Read in this way, the play
can be seen as a challenge to the notion of apolitical subjectivity in itself.
By presenting all of his main characters in an equally sympathetic, but also
critical way, Stoppard does not allow us to reduce the multitude of voices and
views into a single message. While the audience might recognise echoes of
political or literary figures in certain roles, and even see connections with Stoppard
himself, there is no one character who ends up speaking for the playwright.
Instead, we are left to question the validity of all the arguments that we hear, as
well as the legitimacy of the historical account of the Velvet Revolution that
Stoppard offers. What or who was really the driving force behind the regime
change: the Czech intelligentsia? The failing Soviet economy? The Western human
rights movement? The Plastic People of the Universe? And who gets to tell the
official story? Rock’N’Roll is not an academic paper with a precise and clear thesis,
and a theory to prove. Instead, with its sarcasm and witticisms, its sympathy for its
characters and their flawed humanity, its subtle yet constant word play,
Rock’N’Roll tries to keep us from joining the ideologues and simplifying the
history of a complicated event into a lesson we can take away from it. The play
leaves us instead with a private and very physical moment: four music lovers, a
little outdated and a little ridiculous, dancing on stage in the spotlight to the blaring
sounds of the Rolling Stones.
Notes
1
Tom Stoppard, Rock’N’Roll (New York: Grove Press, 2007), 36.
2
Ibid., 56.
3
Vaclav Havel, ‘Politics and Conscience’, in Open Letters: Selected Writings,
1965-1990, ed. Paul Wilson (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 249-271.
4
Stoppard, Rock’N’Roll, 18.
5
Ibid., xi.
6
Ibid., 33.
7
Ibid., 47.
8
Ibid., xix.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid., 101.
__________________________________________________________________
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., xv.
13
Ibid., 8.
14
Ibid., 98.
15
Ibid., 110.
Bibliography
Havel, Vaclav. ‘Politics and Conscience’. In Open Letters: Selected Writings,
1965-1990. Selected and edited by Paul Wilson, 249–271. New York: Vintage
Books, 1992.
Stoppard, Tom. Rock’N’Roll. New York: Grove Press, 2007.
Madelyn Farris is currently pursuing a degree in Drama from the Pforzheimer

Honors College at Pace University. In her acting, Madelyn specialises in the
exploration of gender and cultural identities through classical texts and dialects.
Anna Morlan is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the English Department of Pace

University. Her current work focuses on the female masochist subjectivity and its
subversive socio-political potential. This presentation is part of the research the
two are conducting funded by a grant from Pace University’s Research Initiative,
which pairs students with faculty members to further their shared academic
interests.

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The Many Facets of Storytelling:

Probing the Boundaries

James Arvanitakis Simon Bacon

A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project.

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