To the Other Side of Rain: Quest Narrative in Social Research

OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ, Libora. To the Other Side of Rain: Quest Narrative in Social Research (see the orig.). In Performing Biographies, Memory and the Art of Interpretation Conference, ESA, Research Network 3: „Biographical Perspectives on European Societies“, Cracow, Poland. 2008.

Basic information

Original name

To the Other Side of Rain: Quest Narrative in Social Research

Name in Czech

viz angl.

Name (in English)

see the orig.

Authors

OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ, Libora

Edition

Performing Biographies, Memory and the Art of Interpretation Conference, ESA, Research Network 3: „Biographical Perspectives on European Societies“, Cracow, Poland, 2008

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Other information

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Organization unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Keywords in English

narrative research; narratology; writing modes; research ethics

Tags

narrative research, narratology, research ethics, writing modes

Tags

International impact

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Abstract

V originále

The paper draws on the writing experience of the research project on academic censorship, self-censorship and publishing in general in the Czech Republic after the Soviet-lead invasion of 1968 and before the demise of state-socialism in 1989. The sensitive nature of the research, whose main focus were interviews with living and active academics who were also active within the official academic structures during state socialism, together with the numerous tensions and ambiguities contained within all interviews, necessitated the development of a method of research presentation that would allow for coexistence of the multiple voices and contradictions. The resulting method combines the approaches of grounded theory and narratology in the production of dramatised „imagined conversations“ structured loosely as a quest narrative that tells the story of a research „quest“ to see “to the other side of rain”: to understand the intricacies and dilemmas of individual academic lives under state socialism through the haze of memory, pain and vested interests. The conversations are „imagined“ in the sense that they never happened in a real research situation, because the interviews were conducted one-to-one, but also because the bringing together of the individual biographical narratives created a sense of a shared community around an issue (in the sense of Benedict Anderson‘s concept of „imagines communities“). Although this method of written presentation of the research material was fuelled by the effort to allow the interviewees to represent themselves to the greatest possible extent, the issues of ethics and power in a research setting are two aspects which I would like to discuss further with the other participants at the conference: Did the manipulation of the narratives achieve the levelling of hierarchies of a research situation, or did it merely introduce different manifestations of authorial power? Is it inevitable that the narrator-that is, me-takes sides in the telling of the stories of others to interpret them within her own set of preconceptions? If so, what are the ethical difficulties of such representation?

In Czech

viz angl.

In English

see the orig.