Of course I can't think that we *want* to produce mirror images, given that
mirror images are the reversed image, the opposite reflection...
there is something buried here which presumes an "actual" image of something,
and the desire to "capture" it - no coincidence that anthropologists use
White Hunter language to describe their work?
diane
End Note Anecdote: In a graduate seminar last year, during a discussion of
the "validity" of qualitative methods, I found myself repeating an oft-used
phrase, "Everything is fiction,"and colleague took offense: "If, as Diane
says, everything is merely fiction..."
at which point I interrupted and said,
"...not 'merely' fiction, but fiction in the best sense of the word: open
to interpetation."
What worries me about this perspective, however, is the indignity is offers
to the people who inspire my writing. How dare I reduce such lived material
realities to something malleable; and really, for whose purposes do I need
this malleable artifact?
In other words, ask not for whom the narrative speaks: it speaks for thee.
diane
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca