A Posthumanist Unsmoothing of Narrative Smoothing

Abstract

Researchers assert that narratives do political work. Yet, in this article, we trouble the nature of this political work to account for narrative inquiry’s smoothing over of polyvocality for univocal coherence. Our posthumanist unsmoothing builds an analytical example around three successive Latourian tasks to bring to the fore competing voices and truths often obscured in conventional narrative. Drawing from ethnographic data of one low-income rural family, we seek to complicate the human-centered deficit perspective. In teasing out various voices and sociotechnical systems, this posthuman analytic exposes the hidden ways in which human lives are conditioned by political forces, which order the human conscious. As ethical beings, we take responsibility for promoting analytical tools as a means of addressing advocacy as well as social justice concerns. Ultimately, we expose implications for a narrative unsmoothing that rethinks democracy and political efforts to reclaim the voice of the marginalized, such that it can dismantle deficit perspectives, inform greater sociopolitical understandings, and mobilize more just democracies. Our task as critical scholars is to carve provocative methodological spaces for new lines of inquiry that expand our horizon of hope.

Beyond voice: An onto-epistemological analysis of maternal transition inquiry

“…However, these studies remain heavily focused on thematic interpretation and still produce performative and generalizing notions of nuanced events and experiences in mothering, likely feeding a linear understanding of maternal transitions. Cirell and Sweet (2020) refer to such an effect as narrative smoothing , a process of rendering “messy, complex, and disjointed anecdotal material/artefacts into a relatively logical, coherent, and engaging account” (p. 1185). Posthuman, polyvocal approaches to narrative maternal transition inquiries could seek to trouble taken-for-granted linearities, dismantle deficit-based ways of understanding, and open up new sociopolitical justices (Rosiek & Snyder, 2020).…”

Posthumous Autoethnography?

“…Autoethnographies are human accounts of human experiences and so it is difficult to conceive of posthumanist (or even posthumous) versions that reject previous humanist approaches. However, any posthumanist attempt at “a narrative unsmoothing that rethinks democracy and political efforts to reclaim the voice of the marginalized” (Cirell & Sweet, 2020, p. 2) does not seem too different from the traditional humanist concern to promote more effective democratic equality, freedom, justice, and solidarity . Indeed I don’t consider humanism is as moribund or monolithic or inflexible or exclusive as some posthumanists appear to think.…”

Full issue Vol. 12, No. 3 (2022)

“…The reality is actually the opposite, and narrative inquiry's frequent smoothing over of polyvocality in favour of univocal coherence has recently been criticised as one-eyed and undemocratic (Cirell & Sweet, 2020). Indeed, narrative research in general is a multilevel, interdisciplinary field with a wide range of approaches and theoretical understandings (Squire et al, 2017).…”