Re: Berkenkotter & Ravotas article

Carol Berkenkotter (cberken who-is-at mtu.edu)
Fri, 6 Feb 1998 16:13:31 -0500

Francoise, Your questions go right to the heart of the matter. Dori
Ravotas and other Narrative Therapists have found some ways to undermine
the reproductive institutional pull of the genres in which they work. I'm
going to e-mail your message to her and ask her t orespond because she is
the "insider," one who has (with a number of colleagues who are Narrative
Therapists) begun to articulate and practice alternatives.

n Friday, Feb. 6, Francoise Herrmann wrote:

>Hi Carol, Hi Doris, I had the opportunity to read your MCA article
>"Genre as tool in the transmission of Practice over time and
>across professional boundaries" which I really enjoyed and at the
>same time left me depressed. In line with Leigh's work on
>classificatory systems, but in terms of how these shape
>experience, and in the case study that you report people's
>indentity and lives, I have one question for you ( perhaps
>especially for Doris). How do you espcape the bind of
>intertextuality, the web of institutional pressures to
>"pathologize"? It is great to see it, to analyze it, to unveil
>the "dirty" secrets. but what are the alternatives? How do you
>escape being locked into a status quo of "pathology" and its
>reproduction? The therapist as researcher is a lousy one that only
>uses "etic" means of approaching the culture of his or her client.
>Where and how did you begin to change that?
>
>Francoise Francoise Herrmann fherrmann who-is-at igc.apc.org
>http://www.wenet.net/~herrmann