The Theory of the Science of Narrative
Research
Research plan by Rauno Huttunen
2. Problem
setting
2. A)
Narrative research in the light of truth theories
2. B) The
hermeneutics of narrative research and the problem of power and ideology
2. C)
Narrative research and the problem of scientific rationality
2. D)
Narrative research and the hermeneutics of selfhood
3.
National and international contacts
4. Schedule
References
1. Background
Over the past years I have been
working intensely within the problems of narrative research and the
narrative-biographical approach. My colleague Hannu Heikkinen and I have
lectured at various universities and international conferences on the subject,
and we have also made a couple
articles (Heikkinen, Huttunen & Kakkori 1999; Heikkinen,
Huttunen & Kakkori 2001). My research plan is associated with the
interdisciplinary research project "Teachers in Change: A
Narrative-Biographical Approach to Teachers' Life and Work", co-ordinated
by professor Leena Syrjälä and funded by the Academy of Finland. I am currently in the middle of six month
period as a full-time researcher in the project, spanning from August 2000 to
January 2001. My main task in this period is to edit a scientific anthology on narrative
research. I will also write
articles on narrative research to be published in international referee
journals and organize international symposion (Narratives in Action,
International Symposium on Narrative-Biographical Research, February 8th 2001,
University of Jyväskylä).
2. Problem setting objectives
Narrative research has already been widely utilised in educational
and social research (research projects, international publications,
doctoral thesis etc.) without any specific requirements of scientific research
or knowledge of the hermeneutical
philosophy of the narrative.
One might say that there is narrative or biographical turn going on in social
and educational sciences (see example Rustin 2000, 41-45). I claim that there
is demand for professional
philosophical research, which could serve to improve the practice of narrative
research. It is for this
reason that I consider this kind of international project as crucial and unique.
The main research problem in my
study is: What are the requirements of scientific research in the context of
narrative research? I have divided
this main problem into the following sub-problems:
a) What kind of truth does narrative research aim for?
b) What should we consider to be the roles of power and ideology in
narrative research?
c) What do the ideals of scientific
action and scientific rationality mean in the context of narrative research?
I also dealwith questions concerning d) the narrative hermeneutics of
selfhood, because that is the
precise subject matter in the majority of narrative-biographical research, and it
is in this area that researchers most need support from philosophical
hermeneutics.
2. A) Narrative research in the
light of truth theories
Within the empirical-analytical
research tradition, the quality of the research is usually evaluated by using
the concepts of validity and reliability. These concepts basically rely on the
correspondence theory of truth. Research findings are considered
"valid" if they correspond with the state of affairs in the "reality".
Similarly, the concept of reliability is also based on the correspondence theory. It implies how
well the findings remain the same if the research is repeated. The research
results should remain the same regardless of the "interventive
variables" - who the researcher is or what research instrument is used
etc. Otherwise research findings are disturbed.
Another problem that arises when we
apply the correspondence
theory to narrative research is verification problem of psychological sentences
of the first person. For example, how can sentences like “I am in pain,” “I feel happy,” or “I feel blue” be
verified in the manner demanded by the correspondence theory? Any
autobiographical narrative is full of such sentences. The problem is what
reality are we comparing the
sentences to? It is absurd to compare the sentence "I am
happy" to any physical reality. This way of thinking is called
“physicalism”, which is applied in brain studies but it is quite useless
in narrative research.
Another possibility is to construct some kind of “inner reality,” or, in other
words, a reality constructed out of inner experiences -- a notion which is
referred to as “phenomenalism”. The only way to accomplish this, however, is
through the formation of psychological sentences, which we thus use to illustrate our inner reality.
So we are in the starting point, where we seek the way validating
psychological sentences. These kinds of dilemmas could explain why Ludwig
Wittgenstein abandoned, or at least lost interest in, the correspondence theory of
truth (see Wittgenstein 1975, 90-91). I do not, however, want to abandon the aspect of correspondence
altogether. When studying historical narratives, it is valid to ask
”what really happened,” or what
the so-called “historical facts” were. Nevertheless, the correspondence theory does
not give instructions as to the
means of verifying proposed historical facts; that is the responsibility of the
coherence theory.
Both the coherence theory and the
pragmatist theory of truth have an
important role in narrative research. According to the coherence
theory, the truth is regarded as the compatibility between sentences (see
Heikkinen, Huttunen & Kakkori 2000). The relationship between language and
the world remains irrelevant. Only a connection between theories, stories and
statements is involved. According to this view, a story is true when it does
not contradict with other stories, but instead forms coherent and compatible metanarrative with
other stories. Problems occur when several competing metanarratives appear
simultaneously, which presents an incompatible picture of things. For example,
the story of Creation contradicts with the metanarrative of Darwin’s theory of
evolution. In cases such as this one must choose which metanarrative should be
used as the criteria of truth of a single narrative.
Narrative
coherence plays a significant role in the autobiographical writing process. When I write "the story of my
life," I pursue a coherent narrative out of the fragmented experiences of
my past life (Ricouer calls this mimesis2; Ricouer 1984). I arrange these
pieces of my life in accordance with a certain kind of “puzzle form,” a
particular paradigm. I write my autobiography in a way in which particular
stories, usually arranged chronologically, are related to one another without
any remarkable breaks or contradictions. A break occurring within a story
actually implies some kind of crisis (anomaly), which forces me to arrange
sub-stories (sometimes I simply intentionally forget the disturbing story) in a
new way or change the puzzle form. The latter case means that I encounter a
paradigm change, or a revolution on a personal level.
Thus, the
coherence theory is not a quality criterion of research but rather a
meta-theoretical presupposition made by the researcher either implicitly or
explicitly. The explicit reflection of a meta-theoretical
presupposition improves the quality of the research.
In pragmatism, the concept of truth
is replaced with the concepts of workbleness and practicality. To simplify,
according to pragmatism, good stories are beneficial and profitable, whereas bad stories are not. Perhaps
one of the best examples of the practical use of narratives is narrative
psychotherapy. In family therapy, for example, the narrative viewpoint has
become one of the main theoretical approaches. In psychological crises, the
patient’s self-narrative can be so incoherent or collapsed that nothing more
than mere fragments
of the self-narrative can be identified.
As the dominant self-narrative predicts the future, the collapsed or
incoherent story makes the future seem chaotic as well. In situations such as
these, the therapist aims at helping the person or the group in question to
create a more coherent self-narrative, which opens up new, more positive views
for the future. (Holma & Aaltonen 1995, 308 - 309; Holma 1999,
12 - 19.)
There are also some applications of
the narrative approach within in
the sphere of teacher education, in which the narratives serve as a practical
means of achieving an identity as a teacher (Cole & Knowles 1995). In these
approaches, the purpose of the teachers’ self-narratives is to promote their
personal and professional growth, and to achieve an appropriate professional
identity as a teacher.
As I
mentioned above, the traditional correspondence theory (demands of validity and reliability) can be misleading when research
is carried out using the narrative-biographical approach. In narrative
research, Martin Heidegger's notion
of truth as Aletheia proves to be surprisingly topical (Heidegger
1992, §43-44). The narrative-biographical approach cannot rely only on realism -
despite Rom Harre's tenacious endeavours to prove otherwise - and traditional
scientific rationality. In autobiographical text there is no factual
relationship between the researcher's theory and the outer state of affairs.
What the theory of the science of narrative research really needs is a theory
of knowledge that actually goes
beyond the boundaries of the correspondence theory (example Gadamer 1975;
Heidegger 1992; Guba & Lincoln 1994).
In both art work and autobiography,
the proper concept of truth is not the correspondence theory of truth; the
truth as adaequatio between the thing and its representation. It is more fruitful here to consider
the truth as a happening and a disclosure, as Martin Heidegger phrases it in
his essay The Origin of the Work of Art (Heidegger 1971, 36):
What is at work in the work? Van
Gogh's painting is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant
shoes, is in truth. This entity emerges into the unconcealedness of its being.
The Greeks called the unconcealedness of beings aletheia. We say 'truth' and
think little enough in using this word. If there occurs in the work a disclosure
of a particular being, disclosing what and how it is, then there is here an
occurring, a happening of truth at work.
The work of art surely is not a copy
or pure reproduction of the original (the representation of the state of
affairs, or, as in the autobiography, of “life itself”). Heidegger strongly
objects to the conviction that, for example, Hölderlin’s hymn “The Rhine” is in
a copy-relationship with the actual Rhine River. Yet the truth is put in the
work, not as a correspondence but as an uncovering - as Aletheia. Alethetical
truth is neither a relation nor a
correspondence or coherence, but rather is a way in which a being
(Seiende) uncovers itself (Heidegger 1992, 261).
Heidegger's pupil Gadamer interprets
Alethetical truth in the following way. Gadamer considers the experience
of the work of art as a
hermeneutic experience. For
example, he sees a good story as widening our worldview. This kind of
experience broadens our horizon and enables us to see something differently
than we had in the past. This is why experience is essentially negative in
nature –it breaks down typical or restricted ways of seeing things. Hans-Georg
Gadamer calls this “an experience in a genuine sense” (Gadamer 1998, 353).
After a hermeneutic experience, nothing ever looks the same again. We see
ordinary things ("ordinary things" in the former horizon, world view
or paradigm) in a different light, and, moreover, we also become able to
perceive of totally new entities. Our "world" undergoes a change, and
we change as people along with it.
The aim of narrative research itself is to promote a
kind of hermeneutic experience, although narrative research also studies how the narrative
and writing of autobiographical narrative work as a source of a hermeneutic experience.
2. B) The hermeneutics of narrative
research and the problem of power and ideology
The narrative-biographical
approach can be used in
social and educational research both as a research method and in documentation.
When the issue is, for example, a teacher's professional growth, the point is
not to locate objective facts or to manipulate natural objects for the sake of
successful practice. That is why there cannot be any self-evident criteria for
the quality of research. However, this does not imply that the narrative-biographical
approach is not a legitimate way of
practising science.
In attempting to comprehend
narrative research, we must look toward the rich tradition of art and the
humanities as opposed to the traditional natural sciences. The goal of research
is not truth as correspondence, but truth as Aletheia, or disclosure. If we look, for example, at Peter Hoeg’s partly
biographical novel Border Cases (1996), the issue is not what really happens, whether or not the
story really corresponds with the facts. In the school that Hoeg writes about
many different things happen simultaneously. There is no single truth regarding the state of affairs, and
this state of affairs is actually most
likely a state of mind(s). Traditional educational research cannot bring
into light those aspects that Hoeg reveals in his novel. Hoeg does not tell
"the true story," but rather reveals another world; an aspect
of a life-world
(Lebenswelt) unseen before. I would like to view the aim of narrative research
in this way.
The choice of a researcher to use
the narrative-biographical approach in the documentation of research does not
necessarily render research good or bad as such. A story can be told in many ways - it can be told well or poorly,
productively or conventionally, from a narrow or wider perspective. Of
course, when this approach is chosen, the aim is not the representation of
crude facts. How then do we evaluate this narrative mode of knowledge, which
Jerome Bruner refers to as contrary to the paradigmatic mode of knowledge
(Bruner 1987)? How do we raise the question of the quality of research in this
approach? How do we ensure that we do not "tell the story" in such
way that we unintentionally reproduce existing power relations? These questions are elementary in the
theory of narrative research.
If we take Heideggerian (letting-be)
and Gadamerian (openness to tradition and dialogue) hermeneutics as the ontology of narrative
research as such, there exists the
danger that we loose sight of the point of critique, the possibility of having
a critical attitude towards knowledge and narratives. This was the issue
in the so-called “Gadamer-Habermas debate.” An elementary aspect of Gadamer’s hermeneutic attitude is
unconditional openness to tradition. Gadamer considers tradition as a Feuerbahtian “Thou”; like another
person that has something to say to me. Habermas argues that in his linguistic idealism Gadamer forgets
that tradition is not always the crystallisation of free and open
dialogue (Habermas 1988, 173-174). Habermas’s colleague Albrecht Wellmer
has made the same point in the
following way (Wellmer 1974, 47):
The Enlightenment knew what
hermeneutics forgets - that the dialogue which, according to Gadamer, we “are”
is also a context of power and precisely for this reason no dialogue (...) The
universal claim of hermeneutic approach can only be sustained if one assumes
that the context of tradition as the locus of possible truth and factual
agreement is, at the same time, the locus of factual untruth and continuing
force.
Unfortunately both Hans-Georg Gadamer
and Jürgen Habermas really did not
aim at a common view. I claim that there is a distinct possibility of combining
the Gadamerian style of hermeneutic attitude and the Habermasian style of
critiquing ideology. This
is an example of the kind of of synthesis I want to further
develop in my study.
I also want to apply Michel Foucault‘s genealogy of power, which is far
more radical than Habermas’s critique of ideology (nowadays Habermas speaks
about the critique
of instrumental reason). From a
Habermasian perspective one could claim for example, that autobiographical narrative is
simultaneously aplace of
free selfexpression and coercion, while
Foucault claimed that autobiography (confession) is pure power, the
production of power-truth (see Foucault 1980, 59). I do confession in order to
find out the truth about myself and in order to modify my personality in the
manner required by hegemonic discourse. Finding out the truth about myself is
actually the precise moment of the production of the truth of myself. Without
hegemonic discourse (paradigmatic discourse, ideology, world view etc.), I
could not produce the truth about myself. The mechanisms of power are with me from the beginning; from the
moment that I discover or produce my selfhood. Foucault encapsulated this
by stating that western man
has become a confessing animal. The need to practice confession is anchored so
deeply in us that we cannot view it as being caused by power and power
relations. On the contrary, we feel that the truth as confession is an attempt
to attain freedom from the depth of our soul (Foucault 1980, 59-60).
Again, we
face serious problems
if we apply Foucault’s concept of power and truth as such to the theory of
narrative research. I find Axel Honneth‘s
way of interpreting Foucault from the perspective of critical theory very
useful in the context of narrative research (Honneth 1997).
2. C) Narrative research and the
problem of scientific rationality
What, then, do the ideals of
scientific action and scientific rationality mean in the context of narrative
research? The discussion about the rational nature of science culminates in the
debate concerning Thomas Kuhn's opus magnificus, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1970). Kuhn draws a basic distinction between normal science
and an abnormal crisis situation. In normal science, one paradigm directs the
practises of science. Science is in crisis if there is no dominant paradigm.
When science falls into deep crisis,
several candidates for new paradigms emerge. According to Kuhn, there is no
rational way to choose a new paradigm. "Like the choice between
competing political institutions, that between competing paradigm’s proves to
be a choice between incompatible modes of community life (...) Each group uses
its own paradigm to argue in that paradigms defence" (Kuhn 1970, 94).
The paradigm choice can never be settled by logic and experiment alone. In the
light of Kuhn's theory it seems that the "rational" practise of
science is like any other form of human activity in society; politics,
rhetoric, persuasion, manipulation and the struggle for power.
Karl Popper claims that Kuhn's
"normal science" is in a very miserable state and that the
"normal scientist" is far from the ideal scientist. "'Normal'
science, in Kuhn's sense, exists. It is the activity of the non-revolutionary,
or more precisely, the not?too?critical professional: of the science student
who accepts the ruling dogma of the day (...) The 'normal' scientist, as
described by Kuhn, has been badly taught. He has been taught in a dogmatic
spirit: he is a victim of indoctrination. He has learned a technique which can
be applied without asking for the reason why" (1974, 52?53). Normal
science is dangerous not only for the scientific field, but for civilisation as
a whole.
We must also acknowledge that
English literature on the philosophy of science is not the only source infor the theory of science. French philosophers, such as Gaston
Bachelard (1980 and 1984), Georges Ganguilhelm (1988), Louis Althusser and
Michel Foucault, have made important contributions in the field of the
philosophy of science.
2. D) Narrative research and the
hermeneutics of selfhood
One feature of mimesis, then, is
that it is directed more at the coherence of the muthos (the plot) than at its
particular story. Its making is immediately a universalizing
"making". The whole problem of narrative Verstehen (understanding) is
contained here in principle. To make up a plot is already to make the
intelligible sprong from the accidental, the universal from the singular, the
necessary or the probable from episodic.
But the narrative process does not
stop here. The story is told and adopted, and so it becomes part of the
identity. The author begins to apply this new understanding to his or
her own life. There is, of course, no “simple” application of a story or
self-understanding, because the story becomes altered over the course of the
process of application. This application is mimesis3 and is also the
starting point of a new pre-understanding of life, etc..
Here, Ricouer presents his own
version of the Heideggerian "happening of truth in the work of art".
Something new emerges (the truth as happening and uncovering; the ontological
enrichment) when the author tells the story of his or her own life, and this
something “new” begins to affect the author’s life. The written autobiography
works as a Gadamerian picture (Bild) by which the author gets the sense of
becoming more him or herself. The autobiography is not a copy of life (Abbild).
It does not re-present anything, but rather discloses and reveals the truth of
being, the truth of the dynamic of oneself. The selfhood is always dynamic, and
the very process of composing an autobiography alters it. In the process of
mimesis1-mimesis2-mimesis3, a person’s self becomes another; not another
person altogether but something different than what he or she had been. The
autobiography and the self are involved in a recursive relationship, which is
why the process of autobiography is never-ending.
Writing an autobiography is an
indication of the need to "plot" fragmented self-representations into
a coherent "outer speech". The plot determines which memories we
include and which memories we emphasise. The plot also determines how we
consider the change in ourselves; which parts of us have changed and which have
not. It is in this way that we
create the narrative identity. Religious and ideological confessions are
typical forms of narrative identities. According to David Carr, the selective
nature of the process of mimesis2 is a sign of the presence of power (Carr
1986). Thus, Foucault’s concept of self only as "an ideological
particle" is partially confirmed by Carr (see Foucault 1992, 194).
3 National and international contacts
I have introduced my research plan
to the following
internationally acknowledged scholars, who have made several publications on
narrative research:
- Professor David Bridges,
from The University
of East Anglia, England
- Professor Sigrun Gudmundsdottir ( from The University of Trondheim, Norway
- Professor Kelchtermans, from The University of Leuven,
Belgium
- Professor Leena Syrjälä,
from The University
of Oulu
VIII Schedule
|
year |
Research vacancies |
Progress of the project |
Congresses and co-operative efforts |
|
I |
Rauno Huttunen |
-
preparation of anarticle on narrative-biographical research; Gadamer’s and Ricouer’s
possible contribution to the theory of narrative research (possible
chapter in my study) - preparation of co-article on
the concept of deconstruction and its significance and or insignificance to the narrative research
(possible chapter in my study) - collection ofreading material for my study - sending of my detailed disposition to several international publishers - writing of monograph initiated |
- co-editing of an English anthology on narrative research with
Hannu Heikkinen and Leena Syrjälä - participation in international collaborative seminar on
narrative-biographical research (held in Jyväskylä) - participation in montly meetings of Syrjälä’s project - 2-3 months working in
foreign university - supervision of postgraduate students who are writing their thesis on narrative
research - presentation of paper on my study in ECER2001 in France |
|
II |
Rauno Huttunen |
- completion of thewriting of monograph -
publication of the monograph - writing of articles that promote the published monograph - lectures and conference
presentations based on monograph |
- presentation ofconclusions of study in ECER2002 - presentation ofconclusions of study in STHL’s (The Society for
Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) international conferencein
Canada - supervision of postgraduate students who are writing their thesis on narrative
research |
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