Returning to Autoethnography As a Doctoral Nomad Karyn Mcelroy National Louis University
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National Louis University Digital Commons@NLU Dissertations 9-2016 Vagabond: Returning To Autoethnography As A Doctoral Nomad Karyn McElroy National Louis University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/diss Part of the Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons Recommended Citation McElroy, Karyn, "Vagabond: Returning To Autoethnography As A Doctoral Nomad" (2016). Dissertations. 184. https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/diss/184 This Dissertation - Public Access is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons@NLU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@NLU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VAGABOND: RETURNING TO AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS A DOCTORAL NOMAD Karyn McElroy Curriculum and Social Inquiry/Curriculum Advocacy and Policy Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Doctor of Education National College of Education National Louis University August 2016 (signature page) Copyright by Karyn McElroy, 2016 All rights reserved Abstract Vagabond: Returning to Autoethnography as a Doctoral Nomad is a journey into what is described as a purposeful and rhizomatic inquiry of spaces and places in knowing. It prompts questioning within the author such as, “What has this doctoral journey come to mean, and where do I go now as I step outside the roots which have planted in me this need to wander? How do I navigate this struggle?” The work is a coming-to-terms piece. It is a hopeful wandering and documented artifact capturing an organic process of unlearning, relearning, and examining locations of being, while recognizing the emergent need to embrace fracture, fiction, and multiple conflicting positions. By returning to ethnographies or artifacts constructed throughout the doctoral journey as a “doctoral neophyte,” the stage is set for an interpretative performance in poststructural fashion. Positioning and contrasting interviews, poems, and essays written during the coursework as a doctoral student begins to capture the intersecting positions of walking as a mother, teacher, and woman. These narratives are offered as data and then juxtaposed with cultural artifacts authored by some of the Riot Grrrl “zinesters” of the 1990s. Through the folding and positioning of such work, the readers are invited to participate in a poststructural journey as a nomadic inquirer, walking with the author in the hopes to become-other. In documenting this journey or doctoral-audit-trail of deconstruction, the middle ground is worked between the spaces of academic curriculum and lived experiences. This Deleuzian line of flight takes the reader through stories of vulnerability, challenges commonsense assumptions, defines metanarratives, and questions certainty. In regards to curriculum studies, this work is a coming to: a i becoming. It celebrates and embraces curriculum as a life event that can be used as a tool for transformation. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Antonina Lukenchuk, Dr. Patrick Roberts, Dr. Eleanor Binstock, and Dr. Virginia Jagla for becoming nomads with me as I walked myself into a new location as a woman, mother, and teacher. Your dedication, support, and investment in my work was graciously embraced as you entertained and embraced my wandering mind, helping me move to a place where I could work this middle ground. Your words are what gave me the strength and courage to write from a place of vulnerability. Without you walking with me, making meaning in becoming-other, I would not have arrived home. I deeply thank you for this. I feel each of you is a part of me and I am a part of you. Without the support of my family, this journey would not have been possible. I will forever be indebted to you. You have given me more than I can ever give you. You are my inspiration and have brought me to life. You are my strength, my rock, my everything. To my husband Luke, “love you more.” To my mother and “Nana,” “que sera sera.” And to my father, I hope that I have made you proud. I will forever be here to listen and walk with each of you in your stories as we travel the spaces and places in this thing we call life. iii Dedication Finn and Briella, this work is for you. You have taught me more than I will ever be able teach you. Each day that I walk this earth, I look to you to guide me. I want you to know that deep within you, you hold everything you will ever need. Remember that. Hang onto it. Cherish it. Cradle it. My hope for you is to always speak your story. Never be afraid to be vulnerable in your words and your actions. I hope you always walk into life with the spirit of adventure that you hold now. Keep discovering, running, dancing, creating, and building your greatest dreams. Write your own story, your own way, and simmer on it. I can’t wait to walk this life beside you and watch you discover what it is in life that moves you. You are my inspiration. I love you. Always and forever, Mom. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Doctoral Wanderlust 1 Purposeful, Hopeful Wandering: A Coming to Terms 1 Theoretical Positioning of the Study: Locating the Nomad Within a 6 Poststructuralist’s Rhizome Writing Rhizomatically: Folding and Layering Positions 9 Significance of Wanderlust 10 On Wanderlust 12 The demarcations of being: Blurring lines 14 The Art of Methodological Techniques: Ethnographies, Artifacts, and the Bricoleur 17 Eclectic Travels: Ethnography in my Blood 18 Being a Bricoleur 22 Artifacts as a Neophyte: Issues of Doctoral Power 24 CHAPTER TWO: CONCEPTUAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE 31 Inlet to Review of Literature 31 The Currency of Intellectuals 32 A Patriarchal Visa: The Permission to Wander 33 An Eye to the Terrain 37 Intellect Beyond What is Seen 44 Poststructuralism: A Tool for Dismantling Bricks 47 Subjectification 61 Education Ideology and the Exclusion of Subjectivities 64 Feminisms and Poststructuralism 68 A Father’s Tongue and Epistemic Authority 68 No “We”? Femocrats, Post-Posts, and Whiteness 74 Challenges to Address in Research: Just a Middle Class White Woman 79 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 88 Layering Methodological Techniques: Constructing a Topography of Self 89 Vulnerability in Traveling Alone 90 Vulnerability captured: Essays, excerpts, poems, and interview 92 v Poststructuralist Art Forms as a Methodological Technique for Journeying 95 The Art of Deconstruction and Criticism with Ethnography 96 Assessing this poststructuralist work 104 Cultural ARTifacts: Zines 108 CHAPTER FOUR: PERFORMING THE DATA 114 The Journey Into Feminist ARTifacts and Topography of Self 114 Artifact 1: “My Son, I Cannot Let Go of Your Hand (Spring, 2013) 117 Artifact 2: “Shifting Power to the Children: Ideological Pluralism, the 122 Standardistos, and the Call for Narratives” (Exerpt) (Spring, 2014) Artifact 3: “Know Thyself” (Spring, 2014) 141 Artifact 4: “Awakening” (Spring, 2013) 147 Artifact 5: “Yoga as Discourse” (Spring, 2013) Entwined with Artifact 6: “Death” 155 (Fall, 2013) Artifact 7: “This Sucks, I Should Have Written a Quantitative Dissertation 176 (June, 2016) CHAPTER FIVE: COMING TO TERMS 179 An Interpretative Performance 179 Walking Myself into a New Woman: On Experiences, Epiphanies, and Becoming- 179 Other Writing for epiphanies 180 On the “findings”: Finding and locating the reader’s experience 183 Versions upon versions: Difference and deferral 183 Journeying the Open-Ended Terrain as an Autoethnographer: The Gaze 186 Stories and becoming-other 186 A Final Performance 191 There Must Be Reason 202 Future Research 211 References 215 vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Image derived from http://vk.com/club52333627 I was running and deliberately lost my way. The world far off and nothing but my breath and the very next step and it’s like hypnosis. The feeling of conquering my own aliveness with no task but to keep going, making every way the right way and that’s a metaphor for everything. Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving and Arriving (2015) Doctoral Wanderlust Purposeful, Hopeful Wandering: A Coming to Terms Like Eriksson’s quote, I am deliberately losing my way, attempting to capture my aliveness, using metaphor for all around me. Boundaries are crackling, borders are breaking, my world is shaking. The quake, which I am myself creating, is a hopeful wandering to unlearn, relearn, and question. I am losing my way to find my way. There is no set path. The lostness I inhabit embraces the steps I must take; it is an attempt to push the boundaries of knowing. 1 I am in a temporal space. Temporary, always moving, evolving, and unfolding. In this space I occupy, I face a most challenging quest. I am in the age of exploration—self- exploration, more specifically. I am in need of returning to my primordial self to gain a second look. I am also morphing into a space where I am readying my mind and body for the isolated and daunting task of what I hope will be an electrifying journey into my dissertation. As I write this reflection, I realize the pieces I have constructed in this space are much different than the presentation of a traditional academic review. It is more the playful wandering of a nomad. For I am a “nomadic inquirer” and this is my journey (Richardson, 1994; St. Pierre, 1997). On this zine-like production, processing and touring my reflection through my current doctoral space of wanderlust, I hope to stop in some places along the way for you, my reader, with the purpose of providing what I see as shards—broken pieces fallen from this glass house known as curriculum and life—to possibly see an alternative view. My quest is to deconstruct this journey in an attempt to arrive at some point, a seed, perhaps I should say, which may lead me to further research.