May 22nd-Full-on conference life

Okay so it hasn't all been hard work! Here we are at 'the Bread Store' in Urbana, our favourite cafe


As for the conference...There are a lot of likeminded people here from all over the world , a lot of sessions and conversations and it is hard to take in....
I went to a panel on ageing led by Carolyn Ellis , including Art Bochner, Mary Gergen, Ken Gergen, Laurel Richardson and Norman Denzin. It was really good to hear these founding figures from the congress looking both backwards and forwards over their interconnecting academic lives and some of their presentations were superb, yet I found myself hoping that we would get such a panel in years to come, not too many years, that included people from elsewhere in the geographical, cultural, intellectual and social mix (they are all white North Americans and know each other well).

This conference is a great mix. Ying Lin has met Katherina, a doctoral scholar from the Czech republic, studying in Australia who is doing similar work to her own .
Ying Lin and Katherina are both interested in working with collective biography in their different cultural settings (Taiwan and the Czech republic) and how this kind of work can/cannot be adapted, translated and taken up in these contexts
Johnny Saldana
Ying Lin was also literally bouncing with excitement after going to Johnny Saldana's auto/ethno/theatrical performance this afternoon, as were we all in the early evening after going as a group to see Elyse Lamm Pineau's performance of 'Nursing mother'. This led to a whole series of discussions about overlaps and differences between performativity, performance, writing for performance and performative writing and about the performative element that is central to the narrative inquiry doctoral programme that remains central to our work, but theoretically underdeveloped (by us). We (I) could do with some help with developing the conceptual frameworks for this work.

There was also an excellent session on writing as witnessing....which included another very powerful contribution from Antjie Krog exploring Ubuntu- the spritual philosopy behind truth and reconciliation and the ways in which black South Africans used forgiveness as an instrument for change and as an invitation to white South Africans to take up their humanity and work together.

Desmond Tutu explained Ubuntu as:

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu - the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality - Ubuntu - you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

Antjie also positted events in post apartheid South Africa as an ethically and philosophically different conceptualisation of exploring and acknowledging issues of social justice. Critiques of the truth and reconciliation process, she argued, have been routinely presented as critiques of ubuntu as unworkable, rather than critiques of white South African's refusal to take up the invitation to humanity they have been offered. This gives us a huge amount of food for thought, it seems to me, if we are working in collective and collaborative ways, to consdier what kinds of relational and ethical frameworks ubuntu might invite us into with each other.


It was a good day but a long day and we went off to supper with our colleagues from Western Sydney, and then early to bed. Ken gave his presentation today ' an inquiry into the ethical nature of a Deleuzian creative educational practice', which was very well received, but most of us have at least two presentations of our own to give tomorrow. Yikes!!

Artemi, Bronwyn, Viv, Ying Lin and Suzanne - off to supper and an early night.


Jane Speedy, May 22nd, 2009, Urbana Champaign