Seeking a New Methodology
Participatory Action Research (PAR) may provide us with a malleable model for the intelligent navigation towards new paradigms of inclusivity. Over the past nine months, I have been attempting to implement this methodology in my internship at Gender Justice LA Theatre of the Oppressed. To engage in this form of research, however, means to be met with constant resistance from existing academic systems. The notions inherent in PAR are ethically based in an uprooting of oppressive verticality and expert-based hierarchies. To suggest these methodologies is thus to suggest the toppling of pedestals, threatening those who have consistently benefitted from positions of privilege. Moreover, our own individual internalization of the philosophies we have inherited means that we will not only be met with an external pushback, but also with a fight from within. As we begin to actualize this new orientation towards knowing, we will subsequently find ourselves straddling contrary paradigms. Watkins and Shulman refer to Freire’s notion of a ““limit situation”: where we are met both as though with an impassable limitation and at the same time given the possibility of finding a new voice, understanding, and way of being in the world […] an improvisational edge that is sometimes uncomfortable and even frightening.” (289)
The role of the researcher in inherited academic paradigms has been one of expert outside observer, a cold automaton expertly gathering data to later be expertly interpreted by only the expert, and only for the purpose of review by other experts. A PAR approach begins to question the subjectivity of the researcher and their inherent ideological bias. In Brown and Gilligan’s The Listening Guide outlined by Watkins and Shulman (289), they explore a new orientation towards listening that places power in the hands of the speaker. In order to accomplish this, the listener has to ensure that her own position is intricately interrogated for its location within the dialogue. ““An awareness of the power to name and control meaning is critical; and to avoid abuses of this power, we name and think about the meanings of our own feelings and thoughts about the narrator and about her story” (p27.)” (289) It thus becomes imperative that a starting block for any Critical PAR engagement on the part of an external researcher is to engage in a process of critical self-reflection that should be repeated continually throughout.
Orientating the position of the researcher in this regard becomes liberating not only for the community in question, but also for the researcher herself. Vicky Funari, reflecting on the collaborative film-making process of Maquilapolis: City of Factories, articulates “I couldn’t help but be inspired by seeing the fact that someone who’s putting up with more than I could ever imagine myself putting up with is doing it, and then doing more. Seeing that gives me hope and makes me feel that there might be a way through this.” (qtd. in Watkins and Shulman 268). In this way, we slowly see a whittling away of the neoliberal narrative that dictates a debilitation of individual agency, not just in disenfranchised communities but also in those who have chosen to tear down barriers by providing witness. In this move away from the empirical, we transmute distant observation into engaged dialogue. In striving for consistent reflection, our goal thus tends towards an explosive opening up of narrative possibility, rather than a narrowing down towards an essential universal truth. As researchers, we are not purposed towards “discovering facts about a pre-existent static reality.” (Watkins and Schulman 281) Rather, we traverse towards the destabilization of that reality into a shaky malleability that will allow for us to re-envision the possibility of a polyvalent future.
The role of the researcher in inherited academic paradigms has been one of expert outside observer, a cold automaton expertly gathering data to later be expertly interpreted by only the expert, and only for the purpose of review by other experts. A PAR approach begins to question the subjectivity of the researcher and their inherent ideological bias. In Brown and Gilligan’s The Listening Guide outlined by Watkins and Shulman (289), they explore a new orientation towards listening that places power in the hands of the speaker. In order to accomplish this, the listener has to ensure that her own position is intricately interrogated for its location within the dialogue. ““An awareness of the power to name and control meaning is critical; and to avoid abuses of this power, we name and think about the meanings of our own feelings and thoughts about the narrator and about her story” (p27.)” (289) It thus becomes imperative that a starting block for any Critical PAR engagement on the part of an external researcher is to engage in a process of critical self-reflection that should be repeated continually throughout.
Orientating the position of the researcher in this regard becomes liberating not only for the community in question, but also for the researcher herself. Vicky Funari, reflecting on the collaborative film-making process of Maquilapolis: City of Factories, articulates “I couldn’t help but be inspired by seeing the fact that someone who’s putting up with more than I could ever imagine myself putting up with is doing it, and then doing more. Seeing that gives me hope and makes me feel that there might be a way through this.” (qtd. in Watkins and Shulman 268). In this way, we slowly see a whittling away of the neoliberal narrative that dictates a debilitation of individual agency, not just in disenfranchised communities but also in those who have chosen to tear down barriers by providing witness. In this move away from the empirical, we transmute distant observation into engaged dialogue. In striving for consistent reflection, our goal thus tends towards an explosive opening up of narrative possibility, rather than a narrowing down towards an essential universal truth. As researchers, we are not purposed towards “discovering facts about a pre-existent static reality.” (Watkins and Schulman 281) Rather, we traverse towards the destabilization of that reality into a shaky malleability that will allow for us to re-envision the possibility of a polyvalent future.
Begin this path: Seeking a New Methodology
- "Maquilapolis: City of Factories" as an Example of Participatory Action Research in Action
- When PAR arrests the gestures it wants to unarrest...
- The Arborescent Structure of Theatre of the Oppressed
- Forum Theatre: Arrested Gesture?
- Time and the Open Sourcing of the Theatrical in a Neoliberal order
- The Complicated Intersections of Gender and Forum Theatre
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