Enacting subjectivities in educational history: methodological reflections on the use of qualitative interviews for history writing

Abstract

Two studies of the formation of pupils’ subjectivities within the Danish school and educational system in the period 1945–2005 create the framework for a methodological discussion of how subjectivities in educational history can be studied. Both studies use qualitative interviews as a way of studying subject formations in educational history. This methodological approach, however, exposes inherent methodological problems stemming from the use of sources produced in the present for studying the past. To address these problems the article will draw on poststructural ideas of subjectification and performativity developed by Judith Butler and suggest two analytical moves: A notion of time as temporality is put forward to rethink the problem of past/present in the work with memories as source material. Furthermore, the concepts of performativity and enactment are introduced to deal with the displacement of narrated subjectivities in the interviews. By this the interviewees are said to perform as memorising subjects while enacting different (memorised) subjectivities.

Keywords:

• subjectification
• qualitative method
• performativity/enactment
• temporality
• school memories
• 1945–2005

Notes

¹ The joint research project is headed by Associate Professor, Dr.phil. Ning De Coninck‐Smith at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, and funded by the Danish Research Council (for more information see http://www.dpu.dk/skolenforlivet).

² Despite the clear parallels between the notions of identities and subjectivities, we mainly use the notion of subjectivities. By using “subjectivities” we stress our theoretical position within poststructuralism and the aspect of process in the continuous formation of identity.

³ The working title of Helle Bjerg’s project is “Schooling, competence and gender across three generations”, whereas Lisa Rosén Rasmussen’s project is called “Stories of school and education across three generations, 1945–2007”.

⁴ Collective biography is a poststructuralist reworking of “memory work”, a similar method developed and used by Frigga Haug. Doing Collective Biography: Investigating the Production of Subjectivity, Conducting Educational Research, Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon, eds, (Berkshire: Open University Press, 2006), Frigga Haug, Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory (London: Verso, 1999).

⁵ The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science, Social Research Today, Prue Chamberlayne, Joanna Bornat and Tom Wengraf, eds, (London: Routledge, 2000), Ken Plummer, Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism, 2nd ed. (London: Sage Publications, 2005 [2001]).

⁶ Bronwyn Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler’s Analysis for Education,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27, no. 4 (2006); Doing Collective Biography: Investigating the Production of Subjectivity, Davies and Gannon, eds; Dorthe Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet Og Skoleliv [Gender, Ethnicity and Life at School] (Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur, 2004); Dorte Marie Søndergaard, Tegnet På Kroppen: Køn: Koder Og Konstruktioner Blandt Unge Voksne I Akademia [The Sign on the Body: Gender, Codes and Constructions amongst young adults in Academia] (København: Museum Tusculanum, 1996).

⁷ Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harré, “Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves,” in A Body of Writing 1990–1999, ed. Bronwyn Davies (Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2000 [1990]); Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet, Og Skoleliv.

⁹ Butler, 1995, 45–45. op cit. in Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler’s Analysis for Education,” 426.

⁸ Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler’s Analysis for Education”; Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet, Og Skoleliv.

¹⁰ Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 45.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² We have chosen to follow Davies’s usage of the concept of “subjectification” instead of Butler’s “subjection”. Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler’s Analysis for Education,” because we find that the concept of “subjectification” draws on a more process oriented understanding of how the subject comes into existence within subjectification instead of “subjection” which connotes something more punctual. This is also the term used in the empirically oriented analyses we are inspired by.

¹³ Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).

¹⁶ Doing Collective Biography: Investigating the Production of Subjectivity, 91 Davies and Gannon, eds,.

¹⁴ Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 12ff; Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet, Og Skoleliv [Gender, Ethnicity and Life at School]; Søndergaard, Tegnet På Kroppen: Køn: Koder Og Konstruktioner Blandt Unge Voksne I Akademia [The Sign on the Body: Gender, Codes and Constructions amongst young adults in Academia].

¹⁵ Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet, Og Skoleliv [Gender, Ethnicity and Life at School].

¹⁷ Lis Højgaard and Dorthe Staunæs, “Forandring, Handling Og Subjektivitet,” [Change, Agency and Subjectivity] in Feministiske Tænkere, ed. Dorte Marie Søndergaard (København: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2007), 132.

¹⁸ Davies and Harré, “Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.”

¹⁹ Staunæs, Køn, Etnicitet, Og Skoleliv [Gender, Ethnicity and Life at School], 57.

²⁰ On ambivalence and opposition within subjectification processes in school see also: Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler’s Analysis for Education”; Davies and Gannon, eds, Doing Collective Biography: Investigating the Production of Subjectivity.

²¹ Anna Johansson, Narrativ Teori Och Metod. Med Livsberättelsen I Fokus [Narrative Theory and Method. The life‐story narrative in Focus] (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2005), 113; Plummer, Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism, 185–186; Catherine Kohler Riessman, “Analysis of Personal Narratives,” in Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns, ed. James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003), 332.

²² Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 123.

²³ Søndergaard, Tegnet På Kroppen: Køn: Koder Og Konstruktioner Blandt Unge Voksne I Akademia [The Sign on the Body: Gender, Codes and Constructions amongst young adults in Academia], 54.

²⁴ Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns. James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium, eds, (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2003), 14.

²⁵ The tendencies we try to describe can be seen within diverse fields of research, e.g. oral history, feminism, narrative studies and life‐story research. Still we find that there is a general pattern across these fields which can be encapsulated by pointing to these three positions.

²⁶ Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

²⁷ Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s History Review (1994), Joan Scott, “‘Experience’,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992).

²⁸ Liz Stanley, “On Auto/Biography in Sociology,” Sociology 27, no. 1 (1993).

³² Ibid., 12–13.

²⁹ Kristin M. Langellier, “‘You’re Marked’. Breast Cancer, Tattoo, and the Narrative Performance of Identity,” in Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture, ed. Jens Brockmeier (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001); Riessman, “Analysis of Personal Narratives.”

³⁰ E. Goffmann, The Social Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1971 [1959]); Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002).

³¹ Butler, Bodies That Matter, 15.

³³ Højgaard and Staunæs, “Forandring, Handling Og Subjektivitet,” [Change, Agency and Subjectivity] 129; Lois McNay, “Subjekt, Psyke Og Handling,” [Subject, Psyche and Agency] in Feministiske Tænkere [Feminist Thinkers], ed. Dorte Marie Søndergaard (København: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2007), 139.

³⁴ Dorthe Gert Simonsen, Kønnets Grænser. Poststrukturalistiske Strategier – Historieteoretiske Perspektiver, [Gender Boundaries. Poststructuralist Strategies–History theoretical perspectives] Varia (København: Center for Kvinde‐ og Kønsforskning, 1996), 137ff.

³⁵ Ibid., 138. Our translation, and emphasis added.

³⁶ Ibid., 139.

³⁷ Langellier, “‘You’re Marked’. Breast Cancer, Tattoo, and the Narrative Performance of Identity.”

³⁸ MacLean, 1998, 72. Op cit. in ibid., 150.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Baumann 1986, 2–6. Op. cit in ibid.