Abstract:In this autoethnographic essay, the author argues for the use of poetic inquiry as a feminist methodology by showing her use of poetry as research method during the past 13 years. Through examples of her poetic inquiry work, the author details how poetry as research offers Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies scholars a means of doing, showing, and teaching embodiment and reflexivity, a way to refuse the mind-body dialectic, a form of feminist ethnography, and a catalyst for social agitation and change. The … Show more
“…It expands our understanding of what constitutes CFIC research through the use of poetic inquiry ( Moore & Manning, 2019 ). Using poetic inquiry as a form of qualitative inquiry allowed me to tell an evocative story and critique larger cultural issues around political divides, gender and caregiving, and family values and identities ( Faulkner, 2016 , 2018 ). For me, poetry is the language of emotion, which is what made reflective narrative poetry a good tool for showing the emotional labor of caring.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…CFIC focuses on issues of power, resistance, critique, and transformation of the status quo, collapsing the false binary of public/private, and highlighting author reflexivity ( Suter, 2018 ). I used poetic inquiry as a CFIC method because of its ability to show dialectics and tensions in family life, and its potential as feminist embodied inquiry ( Faulkner, 2016 , 2018 ). Poetic inquiry is a form of Arts-Based Research that highlights the aesthetics of personal experience, focuses on embodiment and participatory measures, and uses artistic forms to meld scientific and humanistic understandings of relationships.…”
The author uses poetic inquiry as CFIC (critical family and interpersonal communication) methodology to tell a story of cooking, cleaning, and caring for her elderly parents in the house she grew up in during the COVID-19 pandemic for 11 days in March 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns began in the US. The piece is organized as a series of daily menus, lyric reflections, and narrative poems about family stories, family values, and the enactment of supportive behaviors that detail how a family deals with political differences, identity negotiation, and crisis. The author asks: (1) What does it mean to be a good daughter, and how is this complicated by discourses about the meaning of marriage?; (2) How does one reconcile family differences in political views and hold true to family and personal values?; and (3) How does one decide what obligations to focus on during a moment of personal and international crisis? The use of poetic inquiry shows how public cultural discourses influence private experience.
“…It expands our understanding of what constitutes CFIC research through the use of poetic inquiry ( Moore & Manning, 2019 ). Using poetic inquiry as a form of qualitative inquiry allowed me to tell an evocative story and critique larger cultural issues around political divides, gender and caregiving, and family values and identities ( Faulkner, 2016 , 2018 ). For me, poetry is the language of emotion, which is what made reflective narrative poetry a good tool for showing the emotional labor of caring.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…CFIC focuses on issues of power, resistance, critique, and transformation of the status quo, collapsing the false binary of public/private, and highlighting author reflexivity ( Suter, 2018 ). I used poetic inquiry as a CFIC method because of its ability to show dialectics and tensions in family life, and its potential as feminist embodied inquiry ( Faulkner, 2016 , 2018 ). Poetic inquiry is a form of Arts-Based Research that highlights the aesthetics of personal experience, focuses on embodiment and participatory measures, and uses artistic forms to meld scientific and humanistic understandings of relationships.…”
The author uses poetic inquiry as CFIC (critical family and interpersonal communication) methodology to tell a story of cooking, cleaning, and caring for her elderly parents in the house she grew up in during the COVID-19 pandemic for 11 days in March 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns began in the US. The piece is organized as a series of daily menus, lyric reflections, and narrative poems about family stories, family values, and the enactment of supportive behaviors that detail how a family deals with political differences, identity negotiation, and crisis. The author asks: (1) What does it mean to be a good daughter, and how is this complicated by discourses about the meaning of marriage?; (2) How does one reconcile family differences in political views and hold true to family and personal values?; and (3) How does one decide what obligations to focus on during a moment of personal and international crisis? The use of poetic inquiry shows how public cultural discourses influence private experience.
“…This methodology is “the use of poetry crafted from research endeavours, either before project analysis, as a project analysis, and/or poetry that is part of or that constitutes an entire research project” (Faulkner, 2017, p. 210). For my purposes, this poetic inquiry represents the use of poetry before project analysis and I engage with it as part of a larger feminist project; as Faulkner (2018) argues, poetic inquiry can be used in feminist research as a means “to agitate for social change” and “as a feminist ethical practice” (p. 4). In addition, poetic research that tackles difficult knowledge is a growing area of scholarship (see, for example, Breckenridge, 2016; P.…”
Section: Methodology: Poetic Inquiry and Pulping To “Upcycle” Upsetmentioning
This article explores an experience of “pulping,” a rejected poetry inquiry; that is, the author describes revisiting and rewriting a micro poetry cluster about rape culture and teaching trauma texts nixed by reviewers for being too “upsetting.” This project aims to (a) demonstrate the potential of poetic inquiry for “pulping” refused art, (b) resist silencing of sexual violence, and to (c) call for creative “upcycling” of upset. The author returns to her rejected poems and engages in a new poetic inquiry which she conceptualizes as a kind of feminist “pulping” process where she “upcycles” her troubling writing in search of newfound fecundity. As such, by reworking the refusal, reckoning with unpublished refuse, and staying with the trouble in re/fusing new art, she engages in poetic inquiry as a pulping process to (re)make meaning from an experience of academic silencing of art that addresses sexual assault and rape culture.
“…We have used writing differently as a way to affectively connect—to the literature, to our research participants, to reviewers, and to each other. We see our poetry as a feminist methodology that, as Faulkner (2018, p. 86) writes, “... can be a means of demonstrating embodiment and reflexivity, a way to refuse the mind‐body dialectic, a form of feminist ethnography, and a catalyst for social agitation and change.” We acknowledge, however, that our writing is not anywhere near enough to undo the inequalities we touch upon in this text, but it is a start. We, therefore, end with a call to scholars to foster an ethic of care by filling the silences present in academic knowledge production with other kinds of words.academic writing is full ofsilences (Armitage, 2014)silences induced by fearof not knowingnot understandingnot‐yet (Manning, 2016)how do we relate?do justice topainfulmarginalizedembodiedexperiences (Thanem & Knights, 2019, p. 34)how do we flesh out/our lived realities?…”
Section: Postlude: Towards An Ethic Of Carementioning
Using examples from an ethnographic study of aircraft cleaning, we discuss and illustrate how “writing differently” can be performed throughout the research process—in the literature review, data collection, data analysis, and writing up. We argue that writing differently is an ongoing methodological tool in order to rethink/refeel research practices in ways that generate affective, embodied and caring accounts of empirical organizational contexts, particularly when marginalization is key such as in cleaning work. We turn to poetry to better understand and portray the affective and embodied intensities in different phases in the research project. Furthermore, instead of presenting a sanitized authoritative account of writing so that it becomes recognizable as academic knowledge, we leave in the messiness, struggles, and insecurities in “doing” writing differently.
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