Communication Sensei's Storytelling: Projecting Identity into Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

Identity politics in culturally diverse U.S.-American higher education is so complex that it is difficult to completely account for all of its elements. As a communication sensei, I enter this arena taking an approach informed by critical pedagogy and employing performative and/or autoethnographic writing as a mode of critical interrogation. Via storytelling, I investigate my becoming and the role of a critical pedagogue as a sociotemporal actor in today's culturally diverse U.S.-American education. Critical pedagogues should enter education as an intersubjective identity project where educational participants' stories meet, and their “hoped-for future” emerges from their storytelling.

Narrative storytelling as mental health support for women experiencing gender-based violence in Afghanistan

“…The storytelling process helps to reframe stories around a positive narrative of one's life history and social identity (Somers, 1994). One of the ways in which storytelling accomplishes this is through offering a space for the storyteller to imagine a 'hoped for' future and providing a space for healing from trauma through this process of imagining (Toyosaki, 2007). However, imaging a potential future within a therapeutic encounter requires not only a reconstruction of the traumatic event itself, but also a process of situating the trauma in a wider life narrative.…”

Complete-member Ethnography

“…In CCME, both the researchers and their participants' communicative practices are critically interrogated. Toyosaki (2011) recognizes that, although as ethnic minorities in the United States, he and his Japanese participants both perpetuate and perform the ideology of White supremacy (see also Toyosaki, 2007). By incorporating praxis and selfreflexivity, the potential of CME is situated at both personal and cultural levels in critical communication research.…”

“…(p. 20, emphasis added). Moreover, Toyosaki (2007) highlights that identities are intersubjectively constructed; he states, ''My identity-everyday performativity-escapes from the private and frees itself and travels into the public sphere, where everyone's identities are socially, culturally, historically, and politically co-constructing and coemerging [sic] from each other'' (p. 65).…”

“…Past history epistemologically informs how one's identity may be a complete and intimate member of a society and/or cultural group. Additionally, the futurity constituent of identity historicity crosses boundaries of space and time, and it continuously lingers and affects people's identities even if they may have left their country/community of origin (see Toyosaki, 2007, for examples of the historicity of his Japanese identity).…”

“…Touchingly, Smith (2005) even writes, ''autoethnography freed me to write reflectively, thoughtfully, and introspectively about a very personal subjective close to my heart'' (p. 6). This genre of autobiographical writing is related to more labels, including local (personal) narratives (Bochner & Ellis, 1995), my story (Bowman & Bowman, 2002), personal writing (DeVault, 1997), praxis-oriented autoethnography (Toyosaki, 2012), one of the methods in automethodology (Pensoneau-Conway & Toyosaki, 2011), and storytelling (Toyosaki, 2007).…”