This article examines the interrelated concepts of self-representation in personal narratives and the production of nonunitary subjectivity as a site of interpretation in qualitative research. Through close interpretations of narrative data, I analyze how subjectivity is manifested in narratives. I conclude both that nonunitary self-representation subverts humanist and patriarchal modes of discourse and that the act of narrating a nonunitary self allows forgreater self-knowledge to begained by respondents.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anzaldua, G. . (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco : Spinsters/ Aunt Lute.
2.
Barone, T. (1992). On the demise of subjectivity in educational inquiry . Curriculum Inquiry, 22, 25-38.
3.
Barry, K. (1990). The new historical syntheses: Women's biography . Journal of Women's History, 1, 75-105.
4.
Bloom, L.R. (1993). "Shot through with streams of songs": Explorations of interpretive research methodology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University,Bloomington .
5.
Bloom, L.R. (in press). "Locked in uneasy sisterhood": Reflections on feminist research. Anthropology and Education Quarterly .
6.
Bloom, L.R., & Munro, P. (1995). Conflicts of selves: Non-unitary subjectivity in women administrators' life history narratives In A. Hatch & R. Wisniewski (Eds.), Life history and narrative (pp. 99-112). London: Falmer.
7.
Braidotti, R. (1991). Patterns of dissonance: A study of women in contemporary philosophy (E. Guild, Trans.). New York: Routledge.
8.
Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces (2nded.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
9.
Christian, B. (1985). Trajectories of self-definition: Placing contemporary Afro-American women's fiction. In M. Pryse & H. J. Spillers (Eds.), Conjuring: Black women, fiction, and literary tradition . Bloomington:Indiana University Press .
10.
Cixous, H. (1976, Summer). The laugh of the Medusa (K. Cohen & P. Cohen, Trans). Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 1, 875-899. (Original work published 1975)
11.
Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly, F.M. (1994). Personal experience methods . In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 413-427). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
12.
Collins, P.H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowermentNew York: Routledge.
13.
Davies, B. (1992). Women's subjectivity and feminist stories In C. Ellis & M. G. Flaherty (Eds.), Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience (pp. 53-76). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
14.
de Lauretis, T. (1987). Technologies of gender: Essays on theory, film, and fictionBloomington : Indiana University Press.
15.
Denzin, N.K. (1989). Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
16.
Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (1994). Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
17.
DuPlessis, R.B. (1985). Writing beyond the ending: Narrative strategies of twentieth-century women writersBloomington: Indiana University Press.
18.
Eisner, E.W. (1992). Objectivity and educational researchCurriculum Inquiry, 22, 9-15.
19.
Ellsworth, E., & Miller, J.L. (in press). "Working difference in education."Curriculum Inquiry.
20.
Feagin, J.R., & Vera, H. (1995). White racism: The basicsNew York: Routledge.
21.
Ferguson, K.E. (1993). The man question: Visions of subjectivity in feminist theoryBerkeley: University of California Press.
22.
Fine, M. (1994). Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 70-82). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
23.
Flax, J. (1993). Multiples: On the contemporary politics of subjectivity . Human Studies, 16, 33-49.
24.
Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of WhitenessMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
25.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive methodologyNew York: Basic Books .
26.
Guba, E.G. (1990). Subjectivity and objectivity. In E. W. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: The continuing debate (pp. 74-91). New York: Teachers College Press.
27.
Harding, S. (1987). Feminism and methodologyBloomington : Indiana University Press.
28.
Heilbrun, C. (1988). Writing a woman's lifeNew York: Norton.
29.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., & Walkerdine, V. (1984). Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulations and subjectivity. New York: Methuen.
30.
Heshusius, L. (1994). Freeing ourselves from objectivity: Managing subjectivity or turning toward a participatory mode of consciousness?Educational Researcher, 23(3), 15-22.
31.
Hollway, W. (1989). Subjectivity and method in psychology: Gender, meaning and scienceNewbury Park, CA: Sage.
32.
Jackson, M. (1989). Paths toward a clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
33.
Jacobs, M., Munro, P., & Adams, N. (1995). Palimpsest: (Re)reading women's lives. Qualitative Inquiry, 1, 327-345.
34.
Jameson, F. (1981). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic actIthaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
35.
Jansen, G., & Peshkin, A. (1992). Subjectivity in qualitative research. In M. D. LeCompte, W. K. Millroy, & J. Preissle (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 681-725). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
36.
Le Guin, U.K. (1985). The left hand of darkness. In Ursula K. Le Guin: Five complete novels (pp. 311-491). New York: Avenel.
37.
Marcus, G. (1994). What comes (just) after "post"? The case of ethnography In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 563-574). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
38.
Moi, T. ( 1985). Textual/sexual politics: Feminist literary theory . London: Routledge.
39.
Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imaginationCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
40.
Peshkin, A. (1988). In search of subjectivity—One's ownEducational Researcher, 17(8), 17-22.
41.
Phillips, D.C. (1990). Subjectivity and objectivity: An objective inquiry . In E. W. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: The continuing debate (pp. 19-37). New York: Teachers College Press.
42.
Pinar, W. (1974). Currere: Toward reconceptualization In J. Jelinek (Ed.), Basic problems in modern education (pp. 147-171). Tempe: Arizona State University.
43.
Probyn, E. (1993). Sexing the self: Gendered positions in cultural studiesNew York: Routledge.
44.
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 516-529). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
45.
Robinson, S. (1991). Engendering the subject: Gender and self-representation in contemporary women's fictionNew York: State University of New York Press.
46.
Roman, L.G. (1993). Double exposure: The politics of feminist materialist ethnography. Educational Theory, 43, 279-308.
47.
Roman, L.G., & Apple, M.W. (1990). Is naturalism a move away from positivism? Materialist and feminist approaches to subjectivity in ethnographic research. In E. W. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: The continuing debate (pp. 38-73). New York: Teachers College Press.
48.
Sartre, J.P. (1963). Search for a method (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1960)
49.
Schwandt, T.A. (1994). Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 118-137). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
50.
Smith, J.K. (1993). After the demise of empiricism: The problem of judging social and educational inquiry. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
51.
Smith, S. (1987). A poetics of women's autobiography: Marginality and the fictions of self-representationBloomington: Indiana University Press.
52.
Smith, S. (1993). Subjectivity, identity, and the body: Women's autobiographical practices in the twentieth centuryBloomington : Indiana University Press.
53.
Visweswaran, K. (1994). Fictions of femmist ethnographyMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
54.
Walkerdine, V. (1990). Schoolgirl fictionsLondon : Verso.
55.
Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theoryOxford: Basil Blackwell.
