Narratives of challenging research: Stirring tales of politics and practice

This paper addresses the challenge of sustaining critical and committed research within individualist academic research practices by highlighting key features of the storied character of research accounts. Three issues that are negotiated within any research project are explored: firstly, received understandings of the possibilities of theory as a tool of intervention as well as an academic requirement for, and outcome of, research. Secondly, issues of commitment, whether political or disciplinary, and the interplay (and tensions) between the two are considered. Thirdly, issues of textuality are addressed, as expressing political and disciplinary questions of genre and audience, including the variety of forms of accountability researchers are both subject to and those we (should) institute to elaborate more than academic criteria for evaluation of research practice. By framing the commentary according to adaptations of accounts of the socially situated and encultured character of narration by Walter Benjamin and Donna Haraway, some theoretical resources for analysing and countering the individualist ethos of academic research are put forward. These then give rise to further practical questions around joint action and intervention.