Whats there and what isnt Thinking about Texts, Truths, and Analysis

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Whats there and what isnt? Thinking about
Texts, Truths, and Analysis

• Pamela Moss
• Studies in Policy and Practice
• University of Victoria

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Whos interested methodologically?

• Ethnography
• Standpoint epistemology
• Critical discourse analysis
• Genealogical analysis
• Feminist critical discourse analysis
• Feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis
• Transversal Discourse Analysis
• Anything dialectical
• Anything deconstructive

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Whose interested methods-wise?

• Perhaps more so in
• Ethnography (in the doing and the analysis)
• Active listening (in the doing)
• Empowerment (in the planning and the doing)
• Participatory Research (in the planning, not in
  the analysis)
• Oral histories (in the planning, the doing and
  the analysis)
• Perhaps less so in
• Institutional ethnography
• Grounded theory
• Autoethnography (?) Autobiography (?)

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Why look at silence?

• Insight into phenomenon
• Anomaly in the information/data
• Truth
• Access to the world of taken for grantedness
• Something doesnt sit right

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Types of silence

• Lack of information
• Result of marginalization
• Absence of something expected
• The hegemony
• Evasions, diversions ratio

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Thinking about Texts, Truths, and Analysis
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Texts
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Truths

• 1 Title of journal article
• 2 Ding Lings short stories
• 3 Bree from Desperate Housewives
• 4 Absence of queer subjects
• 5 Enlightened disciple

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Analysis

• Small life-history project on mothers and
  daughters
• Interview-based project with Irish women
  diagnosed with Myalgic encephalopathy
• Textual investigation of two categories of
  illness over time

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What do you do when you know something is true
but it isnt there?
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What if her narrative is vague?
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Áisling

• Mid 20s
• Teacher prior to onset of ME
• Housebound for about 18 months
• Lives with her parents in a farmhouse in a
  central county
• Spends extended periods of time with other
  supportive family members and friends
• Focused more on space but in a slightly different
  way she tried to control what comes into her
  immediate social and physical spaces so that she
  can attend to her body.

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Mary

• Early 40s
• Physical labourer prior to onset of ME
• Housebound for 11 years
• Lives with her father in a farmhouse in the west
• Has a personal assistant for two hours a day to
  help her with her meal preparation, bathing, and
  tidying
• Told me about the extensive measures put into
  place around the house so that being housebound
  became less problematic, especially in times of
  crisis.

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Mary

• Altered the water supply system to ensure a more
  reliable supply
• Installed stop cocks for shutting off water pipes
  in living area of the house
• Fitted indicator light so that water pump can be
  monitored from indoors
• Packed rations of food, soft drinks and fresh
  water upstairs alongside overnight bag for
  emergencies
• Mounted an on/off switch and extension cord near
  the bed so that TV, computer, electric kettle and
  toaster can be turned on and off from the bed
• Learned computer to make research possible
  through internet and email
• Keeps phone and touch sensitive light at bed side
  
• Has front door key always upstairs in a basket in
  the sill in her room

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What can we say with what weve got when we know
theres so much more?
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• What do you do when you know something is true
  but it isnt there?
• What if her narrative is lopsided, lacking focus?
• What can we say with what weve got when we know
  theres so much more?