Letting the blood in

Today this arrived in the post:

Carolyn Ellis, or 'the mother of auto-ethnography' as I recently heard her called, is the reason I ended up accepting that my thesis had changed and actually embraced the change. I read her book 'The Ethnographic I' cover to cover over a weekend. Here was a piece of academic writing that was accessible, engaging and educational. I loved it and selfishly devoured it. 

This book is the follow up book; an auto-ethnographic story of why Ellis uses the form. Some of her topics are heart wrenching including the death of her beloved brother and her choice to terminate a pregnancy. It is, as Jess Moriaty says, 'letting the blood in'. Ellis' use of herself as object of her own research goes deeply into every corner of her life. 

However not everything she writes happens in the way she describes; this is no factual recount or historical record. Instead auto-ethnography in the way Ellis uses it is about writing stories of what happened to try and capture the essence of the event; a version of the 'truth'. It is this single element that has meant the most to my research for it has enabled me to discuss challenging issues without compromising my ethical responsibility. I have tried to create a world in which my characters live that can be analysed and studied in depth whilst protecting them. This 'world' is full of truth, it is certainly real. Yet it is not the exact world that events happened in. 

A comparison could be the world of Thomas Cromwell in 'Wolf Hall' by Mantel as opposed to the historical account of the same events by Tracy Borman in 'Thomas Cromwell: the Untold Story'. I didn't come away from reading Mantel learning nothing about the events of Cromwell's life; it wasn't untrue but neither was it true. It was factual but it wasn't fact. 

This notion of story and truth will be at the heart of what I will have to defend in a viva. I had better get reading about it then....

2nd British Auto-ethnography Conference, Aberdeen

"

A glorious autumn and I found myself driving five hours north to the grey coastal city of Aberdeen. Whilst much of the surrounding later developments are slightly drab, the university area is like a time warp that reminded me of Durham. 

The university is the fifth oldest in the UK and was stunning in places.

My reason for such a solo road trip was to attend a conference on auto-ethnography. When I first set out on my doctoral journey, I had never heard of it and would have been horrified at the thought of such a seemingly self indulgent approach. Yet, when I hit a place where my thesis had evolved and I was struggling to find out where it fitted, auto-ethnography stood out as being the answer. I had never wanted or tried to write in such a way it simply happened. 

Yet for the past three years of writing as an auto-ethnographer, I had never met another one. Did they really exist in flesh and blood or were they merely a construction of the matrix? Finally I got the chance to meet the small but emerging number of those who would lay claim to the form as their own. 

What struck me was the sheer diversity of people present. When I first walked into the room I noticed a group of middle aged women wearing black with bright scarves and either DMs or converse trainers on. I looked down at my own outfit of a black dress, pink scarf and black DMs boots and saw myself in those women gathered around the table, coffees in hand. Yet as more people arrived, the mix grew to include a broader spectrum of faces.

Some stances on auto-ethnography I struggled with. I personally find feminism a tough pill to swallow. I appreciate the origins of such a movement and their desire in wanting women to be valued and appreciated yet I feel the movement has largely remained stuck and could be seen as being oppressive  towards men and, in some cases, women too. The key note speaker, Professor Don Kulick, made the same point in his address with relation to the fate of Brazillian transgender prostitutes.  However not everyone was from a feminist back ground as other participants were writing about ethnic minority issues or wanting to express the voices of the disabled or oppressed. 

Gradually a sense of unease spread into my heart. My thesis, whilst seeking to make the voices of excluded young people heard, was also about my own feelings of being voiceless. Yet I am not oppressed. I am not from an ethnic minority. I am not poor. I fact I am a white middle class woman. A woman who attended a good school, went to a good university, has a mortgage and has a disposable income. I suddenly felt that my voice was one that people didn't want to hear, that I almost had no right to push my voice forward; I felt that people would assume that they knew what my voice was and had been over nearly drowned in a sea of people like me before.  

As I walked around the city, I kept dwelling on that feeling: where had it come from? Was it my anxiety of my identify as a researcher raising its head again? Was it self doubt? I found myself here:

I stood for some time watching the water flow by. The river was full of autumnal leaves gently rolling along on the surface jockeying for position in a giant game of Pooh sticks. Then I realised that I was wrong. The point of auto-ethnography is to hear the voice of the writer, to connect with the reader in a transient relationship. My voice, that of a teacher working where I do and experiencing what I have, is valid and is unheard. Added to that, if my white middle class female voice is the means to opening up the voices of the pupils in my class, then so be it.

I haven't posted a blog in a year. That fact saddened me a lot as I realised that I had silenced my own voice without knowing. This post ends that silence. 

On telling a 'truth' through a world of imagination

Today I have struggled with how to write a personal 'truth' in a respectful and ethical way. At the very start of writing up my thesis I only wrote in full story mode; all of my case studies had a fairytale version of their lives and their referring schools had the same. Although none of these fairytales made it into the thesis plan, they served a purpose in giving me a chance to understand what narrative I was trying to put across. 

A while ago I attempted to make sense of an issue in my reality by expressing my experiences in story form. I like the fairytale form and, as a child, adored the Ladybird book version of 'The Elves and the Shoemaker'. These early literary experiences shape us and I love the fact that my 6 year old prefers Ladybird books (with dates ranging from 1950-1985) to the brighter and bolder modern books he has. His choice of reading materials on our holiday this year was dominated by Ladybird books: 'The Shipbuilders' (1969), 'Baby Jesus' 1969) ,and 'A Trap for He-Man' (1983). So influenced by classic Ladybird books I attempted to tell a truth through a story.

The Snowglobe

In a northern town there was a little toy shop that time had forgotten. It had once been a success and had been a vibrant and dynamic place to be. Yet time had moved on around it leaving it isolated and gradually falling into a slow but inevitable decay. Inside the little shop there were a multitude of dusty shelves decorated with delicate filigree tinsel cobwebs and a layer of gentle dust. The air rarely moved due to the lack of visitors opening the door so the sweet smell of decay hung in the air. The shop was run by a wizened shrunken man who had inherited the shop from his father and grandfather before him. He did not mind that the shop had lost its appeal as he was close to the end of his allotted days and was happy with his memories. He was looking forward to the calm sleep of death and so had left the shop to the passing of time. On one shelf in a darkened corner of the shop was a large snow globe with a glass dome. The scene inside was of a small village in the midst of delicate winter snow. The village was a collection of tiny red brick houses and businesses on a wide main road surrounded by a hint of fields. A pub with its proud sign 'The Three Tuns' hanging above its tiny wooden door stood at the end of the road. The road led up to a church with a Christmas tree by the main door decorated with miniature baubles. Next to the church was a school with the carved stones indicating the entrances for boys and girls. The snow globe had been made by hand although even the old shop owner would not have been able to say when. In the past it had been gently handled by small children who would shake the orb and watch the snow flakes fall. Yet it had sat in splendid isolation for many years leaving the snow to lie in a permanent covering on the village. 

Yet this isolation was not all to be viewed with pity or regret for in the village there lived a whole world full of minuscule creatures resembling tiny human beings.  If you had managed to catch one in your hands you would have fleetingly seen a tiny human although human they were not. Yet as you had tried to focus on their impish face you would have suddenly realised that you were staring at an empty space for the creatures were masters at the art of being elusive. At some point in the history of the globe they had evolved but from where and when was unclear and although they had only lived in the globe for a few decades of human time they had lived there for generations of their own. These creatures had only every known the joy of living in a constant Christmas Eve and life for them was familiar and purposeful living their daily lives following routines and patterns which they knew inside out. To an outsider they might have been seen as bizarre yet the villagers knew they were successful at what they did. Of course they were aware of the world beyond their glass heaven. They had seen the passing of time in the shop and noticed the changes that periodically occurred. Yet they were happy with their place in the order of the world and did not question their fortunes (or misfortunes) instead accepting them as part of the natural order.     

However events were to transpire that would change the world of the snow dome forever. In the distant world outside the shop, far removed from the snow dome village, the world was changing. The town long left in decline had been slowly having a revival of its fortunes. Money had begun to pour into the streets with new estates popping up like mushrooms in September fields. New businesses had taken over decrepit buildings and the wave of renewal was banging on the shutters of the toy shop itself. The old man heard the clamour and, with surprising dexterity, he moved to open the door and let the modernity in. The offer he was made for the shop would allow him to end his days well so he handed over the keys leaving all of the unsold toys as future stock for the new owner. So the snow globe sat on the dusty shelf while all of the external world shifted and changed. It barely noticed the changes at first as they happened too far away in the distant outside world. Yet gradually the changes moved closer and closer and the inhabitants of the snow globe felt the first tremors. It was on one sunny winter morning that the fallen snow in the globe moved for the first time. The tiny people were used to moving the snow themselves as the powdery dust was often in the way of doors and gates. Yet the snow has never moved itself nor had the ground shifted under their feet. The disturbance caused a few rumbles of contention and murmurings but little else. The cause, unbeknown to the villagers, was the arrival of the shop fitters who had torn down the old sign and replaced it with a modern shiny one at the request of the new owner. 

After a few days the shop fitters returned but this time to do the inside of the building. Three bullish men arrived in their large white van crammed full of equipment and empty food wrappers. Although it was early in the morning they cared little for the needs of any local residents living in the flats above the shops as their radio blared out music and they loudly shared their stories about last night. One would have assumed that the noise alone would have given the tiny inhabitants of the globe an advanced warning but whilst this was all going on they were huddled in the school hall debating the shifting of the snow with raised voices. The first day came and went with little further upheaval. On the second day the noise was even worse and the villagers could not escape the shouts and bangs. The tiny humans felt that this must surely be a sign of the end of the world. A few members had started to raise their heads as leaders of one faction or another and were gathering their respective flocks and banding around their own propaganda. Yet it was not until the third day that the shop fitters started to clear out the existing stock in the shop. They had been told to salvage any toy that was complete to make a display for the shop window; a retro look at toys which was so current in the era of obsession with anything vintage. It was then that the snow dome was seen hiding in its unspoilt corner of the toy shop kingdom. One of the workmen, a man in the middle of his years, walked over to the world and picked it up. His mind was flooded with images of his own past, a holiday to Blackpool and the purchasing of a snow globe complete with tiny Blackpool tower. As he picked it up and shook it, the villages screamed and clung to the furniture as best they could. Cries rang out begging the earthquake and snow storm to stop and finally it did. The villagers caught their breath and started  to come to terms with how their world had changed. At the same time the shop fitters colleague questioned what the first man was doing so he showed him his find. He too marvelled at the dome recalling one similar that had sat on his grandmother's shelf. He reached out and took hold of the globe and instinctively shook it. Again the villagers grabbed onto each other and the remnants of their lives. Again they stumbled and fell. The workmen, clearly proud of their find, moved the globe to sit on the desk next to the till and carried on with their labours.

The residents caught their collective breath and stumbled outside into the village. They saw their world literally turned upside down. Where as previously the snow had lain in an even layer, a gentle dusting, it now stood piled up against doors blocking access to houses and shops. The snow had formed drifts that covered gardens and gravestones wrapping them in a blanket of pure white. They huddled in small groups and tried to support each other as best they could although the sound of crying crossed the generations. Some listened to the advice of the main ringleaders seeking solace in their confidence whilst others listened to rumour mongers and gossips apportioning blame to community leaders who should had acted quicker, faster, more decisively. All in all there was a feeling of chaos and a hint of revolution in the air. One voice rose louder than the others, that of the priest. He realised that people needed to rally together instead of unravelling like a jumper caught on a hidden nail. Order. The village needed order. With patience he heard the varying opinions yet suggested that the time could wait for such discussions as there were more pressing actions such as the shovelling of snow and checking for damage to property. So the villagers, heeding the priest's call, formed working groups and set about rebuilding their world.

Meanwhile in the outer lands the new owner moved in. Boxes of toys arrived wrapped in a nest of bubbles and styrofoam peanuts and soon the floor of the shop mimicked the interior of the globe.  The new owner stacked the shelves with the latest toys but as the day was drawing in he abandoned the task half done not even noticing the globe sat next to the till and card reader. Before he turned the light off he surveyed his world with pride. He was in the process of turning the crumbling shop into a modern flourishing business. The old world was being swept away. He left and pressed the switch plunging the room into darkness. The following morning he arrived ready to finish the project as opening day was fast approaching. Most of the main shelving was in place and the front window display was tantalising with its collection of vintage toys set in front of a back drop of cartoon style words such as 'kapow', and 'zoom'. Tiny windows, about the same size as a paperback novel,  gave glimpses of the delights to be found inside and as they were arranged at a variety of heights both children and those with a childish spirit could see into the cavernous interior.   The owner viewed his world and felt a deep peace. At that moment he noticed the snow dome by the till. Although he liked snow domes he pondered if they really counted as toys. It was certainly out of place surrounded by the modernity of electronic gadgets soon to be on sale. Something had to be done and he decided that this was his next task. 

Inside the dome the villagers had created some sort of order. The priest had organised working groups each with a specific job to complete. A steering group had been formed to act like a primitive town council and the people felt that they had ridden out the worst of it. Their lives were full of hope. Yet it was one of the youngest members of the community who pointed out that the view of the outer world had changed dramatically. Until then they had all been so distracted by their  own basic needs that they had not considered looking beyond. Yet the child, bored by the adults and their conversation, had wandered to the edge of the glass and starred into the great void. His shouts had alerted the adults and now the whole village was staring at the glass and saw the approaching figure looming over them. They ran for cover where ever they could and screamed in terror as again their world shifted around them. Nothing had prepared them for this, to again be unable to control a world previously so safe and secure. When the violence eventually stopped the villagers again gathered in the school but this time all sense of hope was gone. 

The owner placed the dome back down and looked at it again with a frown. He could not bare to throw it away so he decided to incorporate it into his toy shop plan. He turned the computer on and quickly made a sign and printed it out. Sticking it above the globe, he returned to more pressing tasks. As a temporary peace returned to the village, the tiny people wandered outside to take in the new changes. They were beginning to accept that the insular ordered world they had known had gone forever. No longer would they be in control of their small piece of the universe. No longer would they live an autonomous existence. They lived at the whim and wish of others and would never be able to predict the future with any of the certainty they had in the past. As the priest again tried to restore order to the village, and the varying factions split to discuss and ponder their future, the little boy slowly plodded to peer through the expanse of glass. Looking up he saw the sign the owner had printed out and stuck on the wall: 'The past is another country. They do things differently there'.

Utopia in education

Today I was once again made aware of a huge issue in our current system: relationships. My stepdaughter was excited about her visit to 'big school' and all the possible opportunities she would have. But as we drove home her excitement gave way to concerns, "they just won't know me" she said. I offered words of advice largely based around explaining that her friends would all feel the same. Yet I struggled to imagine her as one of nearly 2000 pupils wandering around the campus. In the years I had known her I had learnt to read her moods and expressions; I knew when her voice became bright that she was probably fibbing and I knew that she adored peanut butter but only the smooth variety. On a deeper level I had a good idea about her views on spirituality and her sensitivity around her self concept. I know the issues she has had and am mindful of the issues they may cause in the future. Who would truly know her when she becomes one out of a crowd of equally needy people?

The conversation moved on to her asking me what my first and last schools were like. I thought back to my first school with pleasure. It was a small school with two classes: infant and junior. I can recall only two teachers and the head, Mr Wood, who appeared to be the tallest man my tiny self had ever met.

There was an outdoor pool which I learnt to swim in amongst the slimy yellow leaves; it was not heated and was possibly a health and safety minefield. The school had a small copse of trees which I can remember containing a ring of toadstools; it was here we left biscuit crumbs for the fairies. I acted in 'Peter and the Wolf' and recall the girl playing the bird sitting on top of a PE table as a nest and the boy playing the duck swimming in a large blue hoop on the floor. I was know by all and the children I was with were the children I saw around the village. 

My last school was no different. Despite being a secondary school it was tiny in comparison with other local schools. In the 90s, when I went, we numbered less than 700. 

People knew each other. The whole school could fit in the hall for Friday assembly. Despite the fact I hated Year 9 I generally enjoyed myself. I was part of a fantastic group of original and quirky folk whom I loved (and miss) dearly. Yes there were the normal issues that one expects from teenagers in a school: some people were nasty, some people were down right rude and others needed a reality check. The staff knew us which, at times, worked against me as being 'Woodley's sister' was not a coverted prize and the decade since he had left had clearly not dampened his reputation. Yet on the whole it was not a large or scary place to be instead veering towards being slightly archaic and quaint. By and large I felt safe and I had fun. I think of it fondly and keep promising to return to Founder's Day. Who knows, one day I will.

My innocent preteen will not have the same experience and this greatly saddens me. Small schools offer a greater chance of developing positive relationships with staff and peers alike. I accept it is not always the case but I hold to the notion that it is more possible than in a larger school (I equally accept that it is possible in a large setting although). Relationships are central to my thesis. My research showed how developing positive relationships over a sustained period of time led to greater understanding of pupil needs and voice. I see it in action every time I go to work. On a daily basis I witness the power of such positive relationships in a small school setting. I see staff who know and understand their pupils. They 'get' them. They are aware of the complexity of the pupils they see. They know where they have journed from. They have found ways to communicate with and support. They know that Jonny works best between 9 and 10:30 and that Billy prefers closed questions at the start of the lesson but will answer open ended ones from ten minutes in. It works. 

Yet the drive seems to be for bigger and better. In some cases schools amalgamate for financial reasons: it is cheaper to pay one leadership team and run one building. Yet in other cases there seems to be a desire to create technological palaces of learning with jargonistic room names and a clinical overtone. 

So I am left with several questions to think about:

Do small schools exclude less?

How can pupils be supported best within a larger school?

What is more important: a large amazingly well equipped school or a smaller school that has less?

Will the current thinking be proved wrong?

Is pupil voice more authentic in a small setting?

Do relationships in school matter as much as curriculum and achievements?

In a utopian education system, what type of schools would we have and is there enough political and social drive to radically rethink how we educate future generations? Churning out an end product like a business seems so distant from my experiences. 

Farewell Student Loan Company

As I write I am sat at a party with screaming children and poor music. Shoes have been flung at my feet in an eager fit to bounce and run. Today I also received confirmation that my student loan and I have parted company. We have divorced and gone our separate ways. Over a decade after I left, I have finally finished paying for St Mary's college breakfasts and crabstick stir frys. It made me a tad thoughtful about the 'me' that had travelled through that academic world and the version of me that is travelling through this one. We are very different yet are undoubtedly the same person. I picked Durham University when I was 12. I found a brochure in my Latin teacher's office and I instantly fell in love with the picture of the cathedral on the front. That was where I wanted to go and I never though about going anywhere else. I had no idea where Durham was or what I would study yet I would go to university and I would go to Durham.

Those brief three years had a huge impact on my life. I discovered direct action and social justice, I tested my beliefs and challenged established thought, I moved hundreds of miles away from home to a place where it was truly cold in the winter. Yet, academically, it was really playing. It was not until I became a post graduate that I appreciated how insignificant my under graduate thoughts were. I thought I could change the world view on something but no peer reviewed journal came seeking out my assignment on 'The identity of the Teacher in the Qumran Community'. Fundamentally, I was saying little that was new. Instead I was learning how to craft an argument, how to navigate a library, how to write without plagiarising someone else's work. I learnt then that I loved writing. I discovered how I preferred to do it, the various states of mind I would pass through and how I could judge the standard of my own work. 

Then, in a matter of moments, I graduated and left. 

Yet I chose to live close to the cobbled streets I loved and would often see the 90's styled Scouse man wandering near to King's Gate. I love the fact that I have developed a new relationship with Durham and that it was the city I wanted to get married in. Yet the end of my SLC relationship is the final tie to a way of life that was. I am never going to climb onto the theatre roof and throw water bombs at Hatfield students again. Never again will I sit in 25 Church Street. Never will I find ingenious ways to keep contraband items, such as a kettle, from Susan my cleaner. I won't watch friends in plays or drink in subterranean college bars. That world exists only in my mind. We all grew up.

I grew up to be sitting in a sports hall hearing children scream. I grew up to be frantically wrapping presents after debating the ethics of how many cards to buy twin boys (I plumped on two cards and two presents somehow managing to over rule my miserly normal self), I grew up to have a mortgage and a job. This growing up has been mirrored in my academic writing too. I re-read assignments I was proud of from the Durham years and cringed at their simplicity and length. I saw them as lacking in personality; lacking in experience. At 18 I hadn't lived. I had grown up comfortably off, attended a good school and lived a safe and sheltered life. University was the start of an education that continues to this very day. I write differently now because I have lived differently. I have witnessed pain and suffering. I have experienced intense joy. I have been scarred and I have inflicted wounds on others. I have realised that academia changes the world less than it should; that people with life changing ideas are only read by a Holy Huddle of those who subscribe to that specific journal. The chances of those ideas breaking loose into the wider world are slim although it is possible. I am different. Yet I am the same.  Back in Durham I had a multitude of possible roads to travel and a multitude of possible versions of myself. Maybe, somewhere, I did stay on to do the MA in early Judaism I was offered. 

So, thank you Durham. I am glad we are more than friends on social media. Fancy a coffee soon?

Post Panel Pause

So it has been two weeks since my Progress Panel which, due to fantastic timing, fell on my birthday. The chicken is in the oven, the Archers is on the radio, coffee is poured and the small people are settled and calm. Therefore it seems like a good time to reflect upon all that had gone on. 

Last year, my first PP, I felt totally under prepared but I was not worried. It was an unknown situation, I had no preconceptions. I had not written a word of my thesis and was, instead, coming to the end of a years worth of ethnographic research. My lasting memory from that hour was 'methodology'. So, for this year, I felt confident. Methodology. Tick. Presentation. Tick. Submission of chapter. Tick.

I ended up arriving early and sat on a rather sad looking chair in a corridor where the previous incarnation of my department as a hospital could clearly be seen. Growing bored I had pondered what had gone on in these offices in the past, the gurneys and the porters, life and death. My supervisor had spoken with me earlier in the week and I had boldly asked, "do people fail?" Her resounding answer was: yes. A PP is an exam, a verbal examination of what your research is, how you envisage it progressing and who you are as a researcher. Although they approached then with the 'critical friend' hat on, people do fail. I wasn't worried about failing. My supervisor was happy with me, I had a plan, I was able to speak about my research. Yet I had one concern: quotes.

As a teenager growing up split between Anglo Catholicism and an evangelical youth church, quoting the bible became something of a minefield. My Anglo Catholic roots had not drummed verses into me. Rather I was very good at knowing which Saint was associated with which areas and could tell you the correct colours, candels and vestments for the occassion. But I could not argue the bible with you. I knew that it 'roughly' said or 'some where' in a book something happened, but I could not dig out book, chaper and verse nor offer you a quote in both King James or the NIV. This used to frustrate me a lot for any argument I had to offer, no matter how well thought out, was doomed as I could not back it up.

This fear returned before my PP. I know that Vygotsky said 'something' about kinaesthetic activities during play but I cannot recall in which book it was; I am aware that Anderson 'roughly' said that autoethnography can be analytical in 2006 but what made up his five stages I do not know. So as I sat outside waiting in the bland corridor I felt slightly anxious as if I was 15 again standing my ground on beliefs I held which were verging on heretical to some of my bible quoting peers.

 I was the final candidate. This was fortuitous as it meant my hour slot became an hour and a half. At the end I felt like I had run a race, the pain and growing tears that I begged to stay hidden, were forgotten to a degree. Was it hard? Yes. Sitting with two people, one a stranger, who have read your work and have formed questions that you are not prepared for, is hard. When the stranger specialises in Action Research when your thesis is about the limitations of it, when the familiar face is a specialist in quantitative research when you are as qualitative as they come, when you know by the glint in his eye that he is prepared to enjoy this hour. That is hard. 

So the questions came thick and fast after my presentation and they all focused on one area: ontology and epistemology. How I view the world and therefore how I believe I can gain knowledge of it. At the end, after the inquisition had ended, the debrief began. The points were:

- you know what you believe but you are not specific enough

- feeling that you need to have a person to quote held you back from just saying what you felt

- your quotes were in your text, there would have been no shame in pointing out a page

- you survived and are on track 

In the past few weeks I have thought a lot about what happened. Firstly, I was expecting a debate over my methodology and writing style ( I mean, I write stories and I was facing a positivist who likes numerical data) but there was not one. Secondly, to survive a PP run as a viva and get through was a very positive out come. If I can defend and stick to my argument with the subtle sways and pulls to drag you of course and expose your weakness, that is good. What has been harder is trying to write exactly how I see the world. How I view reality and consciousness. Where I place humanity in the spectrum of life. How we learn. What we learn. And the PP staff were right. I knew that I was a social constructivist where we draw meaning from the world around us but to relate that to my whole world view and the choices I have made or not made was powerful. I realised I had come about things in an unnatural order, I had written about my world view without stating it. Back tracking and filling that in has been a lot of fun. 

If nothing else comes from a thesis, the chance to spend time looking at who you are, understanding your actions and reactions, how you relate to people you know and do not know, is worth it. I may never be good at quoting text. I may always struggle to see my research as being valid. Yet I hope that, at the end, I am a different version of me. One with more self awareness.

Who owns a story?

This past fortnight I have been pondering what stories are ours to tell and if there are ever any that can be said to belong to someone else entirely. On Friday I sat in my garden talking with a friend about everything under the sun. Some of my stories were mine to tell as they had happened to me; they were part of my life and I could pick and choose when I would share them. Yet other stories I told were not from my own experience but ones that had been told to me and I was now sharing. These stories were  nothing secret or private instead they were examples of innocuous topics such as the tale of the Smurf tattoo or the story of the abandoned holiday. 

Did I have any right to tell someone else's story? Would it have been immoral for me to have passed them off as my own? Could I fully recall if any part of them had been confidential? Who had originally told them? What would they think of the version I had heard? To whom did my story now belong? Could my friend retell it to someone else? Would she?

Our stories are only truly our own when they exist in our minds. The moment we share them we have to give up certain ownership rights to them. I certainly cannot police my friend and control if and when she decides to share 'my' story. I cannot control how she tells it, the tone of voice she will use, the details she will omit or expand upon. In one sense, she will make my story her own. It will be added to her repertoire and dragged out when the occassion suits. 

Narratives are a central part of our lives, both positive and negative. Stories influence all of our actions from morals to beliefs; from how we learn to bake a cake to what career we take. We learn through stories and we impart our knowledge and life through stories. I recently helped a 9 year old bake a cake. As we were working through the method we both told stories linked to cooking and cakes. One of my stories to her was about eating banana cake on holiday as a child whilst watching my brother's ship sail of to the Gulf War on the Spanish news; every time I eat a banana cake I recall that moment of panic and the frantic call home to find out if it was really true. I cannot think of when I would ever have felt the need to tell her that story but our joint action of baking allowed for associated stories to arise. 

If we live in a narrative world, can stories be protected and kept safely controlled? One cannot fully retract a story once it is told even, I would suggest, if we are conducting research and the story is requested to be removed. The physical words of the story may leave the page but that does not remove the influence of the story from the person who has heard it. Some stories are so powerful that the soft tendrils of their telling can last a life time and can influence even in their apparent absence. Even confidential stories do not remain so. One can be told and then retell a story so that any obvious facts are protected; names and settings are easy to change. So they can be retold in such a way that their essence is passed on even if the specifics are not. It is important to look at why we pass on stories that are not freely given but the ethics of this is for another day and something I am still grappling with in my research (for how can a child give consent to share a story if the story grows away from their control and becomes a faded image of their original telling? In fact, is there a point when it stops being their story? Is it truly their story if the subsequent retelling bears little relationship to the original?).

Trying to claim ownership of a story is like trying to own the wind: you may try but your chances of success are likely to be slim. Instead we need to accept that, once told, a story takes on a life of its own and will travel beyond our single telling. I do not believe we can judge the rightness or wrongness of this but must try and accept that this is just the nature of narrative.