Co-Composing Relational Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

As shown in their earlier stories, while at differing times and places Janice and Mary searched for a research methodology that felt congruent with who they were each becoming and the inquiries they imagined, they both became drawn toward the relational aspects of narrative inquiry. As Clandinin and Connelly wrote: “Relationship is key to what it is that narrative inquirers do” (2000, p. 189). Key in negotiating relationships as narrative inquirers is our collective sharing of stories of experience. This relational storytelling shapes both shared vulnerability among storytellers as each person awakens to the complexity of lives being composed and recomposed and, too, a growing sense of working from, and with, stories as a way to shape personal, social, and institutional change (Clandinin & Connelly, 1998, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Clandinin and Connelly (1998) describe this kind of narrative change as taking shape in the following ways:For us, the promise of storytelling emerges when we move beyond regarding a story as a fixed entity and engage in conversations with our stories. The mere telling of a story leaves it as a fixed entity. It is in the inquiry, in our conversations with each other, with texts, with situations, and with other stories that we can come to retelling our stories and to reliving them. (p. 251)Furthermore, Maenette Benham (2007) writes thatthe power of narrative is that, because it deeply explores the tensions of power by illuminating its collisions (e.g., differences of knowledge and practices), it reveals interesting questions that mobilize processes and resources that benefit native people and their communities. Indeed, the political impact of narrative cannot be dismissed. (pp. 513–514)

Citation

Isabelle Young, M., Joe, L., Lamoureux, J., Marshall, L., Dorothy Moore, S., Orr, J.-L., Mary Parisian, B., Paul, K., Paynter, F. and Huber, J. (2012), "Co-Composing Relational Narrative Inquiry", Isabelle Young, M., Joe, L., Lamoureux, J., Marshall, L., Dorothy Moore, S., Orr, J.-L., Mary Parisian, B., Paul, K., Paynter, F. and Huber, J. (Ed.) Warrior Women: Remaking Postsecondary Places through Relational Narrative Inquiry (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 17), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 39-57. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3687(2012)0000017009