The%20case%20for%20magical%20realism-%20as%20an%20approach%20to%20educational%20research%20and%20a%20significant%20element%20of%20Narrative%20inquiry

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The case for magical realism- as an approach to
educational research and a significant element of
Narrative inquiry

• Jane Speedy
• University of Bristol
• Jane.speedy_at_bristol.ac.uk
• Research centre http//www.bris.ac.uk/education/r
  esearch/centres/central

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Narrative inquiry -what is it for?

• Intimate, partial, nuanced accounts of peoples
  lives
• Generating local, situated knowledge that is not
  generalisable and may not be true but tells us
  how people construct and give meaning to
  (narrate) the stories of their lives in relation
  to a particular audience /context / time

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What ideas underpin narrative research?

• A plethora of multidisciplinary understandings
  from literary theory, creative writing,
  linguistics, socio-cultural and post structural
  theories, social psychology, sociology part of
  the blurring of genres between arts and social
  sciences (the emphasis, so far, in educational
  research has been on the social sciences)
• Crucial are notions not just of story, but of
  narration and performance(implying audience,
  place, space) and of meaning and perhaps even
  identity construction and concepts of time (such
  as mythical, cultural, autobiographical and
  historical/political time) and memory

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What established genres of literary narrative
inquiry are there?

• Biographical research and life writing
• Auto/biographical research (including memoir)
• Narrative analysis and inquiry
• Poetic and performative inquiry
• Fictionalised accounts /creative fictions

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So what about magical realism?

• magical realism the transgressive and
  subversive fictional genre , whereby the
  magical, the mythical and the impossible blend
  seamlessly and unapologetically with the actual
  and the real (Bowers, 200467)

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Two separate (oppositional?) juxtaposed narrative
modalities..

• A situation which creates disjunction within each
  of the separate discursive systems, rending them
  with gaps, absences and silences
• Two separate narrative modes never manage to
  arrange themselves into any kind of hierarchy
• (Slemon, in Zamora and Faris, pp409-410)

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Magical realist fiction and film

• Fiction
• Allende, I (1985) The House of the Spirits, New
  York, Knopf Carter, A (19840 Nights at the
  circus, London Vintage books
• Okri, B (1991) The famished road, London Vintage
  books
• Marquez, G (1970) One Hundred Years of Solitude,
  London Cape
• Morrison, T (1987) Beloved, New York Knopf
• Rushdie, S (1981) Midnights Children , London
  Cape
• Roy, A (1998) The God of Small Things, London
  Flamingo
• Walker, A (1990) The Temple of my Familiar, New
  York Pocket books
• Film and television
• Ally Mc Beal (1997-2002) David, E, Kelley,FOX TV
  series
• Pans Labyrinth (2006) Guillermo del Toro,
  Esperanto films

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• Educational research consists mainly of realist
  tales
• Truth claims are based on what really happened
  because we were really there (even if it is later
  fictionalised into symbolic equivalents)
• The implausible and downright inexplicable is
  either not happening, not noticed or smoothed
  out
• Fictionalised research is accompanied by a HUGE
  literature of justification and differentiated
  very markedly from real life research

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Consulting with Gargoyles a realist tale

• 1991-1998 The Wills memorial building ,
  University of Bristol
• Five years on the fifth floormock-gothic
  therapy education and research

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Consulting with Gargoyles a realist tale
my very own gargoyle
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Consulting with Gargoyles a realist tale

• I waited for 30 minutes, and have now gone to
  the library. My time was not wasted. I consulted
  at some length with the gargoyle at the top of
  your staircase. I found him in many ways a most
  satisfactory supervisor. He has a pleasing and
  quizzical countenance and regards me with the
  mixture of soul and oomph that I find most useful
  when reflecting on my practice. He also arrived
  on time.
• Speedy, J (2000) 10

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Innurez
Pllanka
The Gulbarrion college gargoyles re-arranging
and expanding academic tribes and territories
Djangot
Parsifnos
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Magical/marginal

• In counselling conversations people are also
  often at marginal moments in their lives
• (indeed, a disproportionate number of those
  seeking counselling live their lives fairly
  permanently at societys margins)
• What happens if we listen seamlessly-from a
  position of magical realist possibility?

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I could slide my hands inside my skin at night

• and take out the bones. I could clutch the
  bones of my ancestors tight I could hold them up
  to the window, translucent and white in the
  moonlight and then slip them back into my limbs
  in the morning and no one would know.

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My mother-in-law swallowed me whole

• fairly early on in the marriage I think
• It wasnt what I expected really, to be
  gobbled up suddenly and with such gusto. I spent
  twenty years down inside that churning stomach,
  voice muffled, nobody evennoticing I was there
  really. And then, at the hour of her death,
  she kind of rose up and spat me out. Her last
  act.

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Chat chat chat

• Pauline Yup. Well she still came and talked to
  me you know. After she died. She used to come and
  sit on the end of my bed in the home and have a
  chat. Right up until I was sixteen.
• JS ( slightly confused) So that was after she
  died, shed visit you at the home then?

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Chat chat chat

• Pauline Yes. Id wake up in the night, you know,
  and there shed be, mug of tea in one hand, fag
  in the other, chatting away Chat, chat, chat. I
  never got a word in. Never wanted to really, Id
  just lie there and listen and shed chat away and
  shed always tell me just to wait, and then
  theyd see. Id amount to something one day and
  those poor bastards d still be stuck doing shit
  work at a kids home, or most probably out of
  work. She was right.
• Funny thing is, she never ever came to see me at
  the home when she was alive. Not once. But as
  soon as she upped and died you couldnt keep her
  away. Then when I left that was it, never saw her
  again.

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Could magical realism enhance/expand our
research practice?

• In therapeutic conversations practices we move
  seamlessly between the possible the impossible
  the magical and the real
• In therapy research and we make a big fuss about
  moving between worlds fictionalised accounts
  and creative fictions exist amidst a literature
  of justification
• When we listen from a magical realist position,
  we listen seamlessly and we witness seamless
  border crossings as people make meaning of the
  worlds they inhabit

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Academic References

• Bruner, J (1987) Actual minds Impossible worlds,
  Harvard University Press
• Clough, P (2000) Narratives and Fictions in
  Educational Research, Buckingham, Open University
  Press
• Sparkes, A (2002) Telling tales in sport and
  physical activity a qualitative journey, Human
  Kinetics, Champaign, Ill.
• Speedy, J (2000) Consulting with Gargoyles
  applying narrative ideas and practices in
  counselling supervision,in European Journal of
  Psychotherapy, Counselling and health, 3 (3) 1-13
• Speedy, J (2005) Consorting with gargoyles a
  magical realist tale, in Trahar.S (Ed) Narrative
  research on learning International and
  comparative perspectives Oxford symposium
• Speedy. J (2008) Narrative inquiry and
  psychotherapy, Houndmills Palgrave/ Macmillan
• Van Maanen, J (1988) Tales from the field, UCP,
  Chicago
• Yalom, I (1991) Loves executioner, Penguin,
  Harmondsworth
• On magical realism
• Bowers, M (2004) Magic(al) realism, Routledge,
  London
• Faris, W (2004) Ordinary Enchantments Magical
  Realism and the Remystification of Narrative ,
  Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, TN
• Zamora, l and Faris, W (Eds) (1995) Magical
  realism, theory, histpry and community, London
  Duke University Press