Thinking about thinking

 

Much is written and said in sociology about ‘reflecting’ and ‘being reflexive’. It is something I am told I do instinctively and habitually. However it is not something I recognise in myself.

I observe. I’ve always observed. I went on training about ‘Most Significant Change method of process evaluation.

In English, the Most Significant Change method of process evaluation is a way to working out, while a new policy or public service is being tried out, what people affected think is the most significant change that they personally would attribute to the new policy or service. The significance for me is that you get an early warning of unintended consequences. You also get the information needed to fine-tune the policy or public service while it is still in process rather than waiting until it’s all over and looking back to see what worked and what didn’t.

During the training, we were asked to test out one part of the method. I asked if I could observe and make notes of my observations because I was uncomfortable about my ability to learn what I wanted to learn about the method by being immersed.

I have two things I always do after observing.

I consciously relax my face and body and shut my eyes. I slow my breathing and when I feel relaxed I start to gently probe and feel whether anything seems to have fallen into a pattern.  Sometimes I begin to write or draw and as I do, my brain catches up and I look at what I’ve produced and realise that I am putting what I was feeling into thoughts on paper.

And I puzzle. Sometimes I puzzle before relaxing. Sometimes I puzzle immediately after as I look at what I have put on paper. Sometimes it is a completely different time. I puzzle away with a furrowed brow, usually leaning forward, elbows on table, hands together and index fingers tapping each other and gliding against my lips. Or elbows on table, hands in a loose fist, base of thumbs against chin, tips of thumbs by lips, rhythmically and rapidly rocking from my elbows so I get gentle repeated pressure on my chin. Then the deep breath out, pause in movement, deeper furrow, and either repeat the rocking process or start to draw or write. Or I decide I have tried the puzzling route and it isn’t working. I make coffee. I go for a sauna. I lift heavy weights. An answer that satisfies me or at least moves my thinking forward may come – or it may not.

I can recognise what I do when I relax as the process other people describe when they say they are being reflexive. And I guess that the outputs of my relaxing are similar to the outputs of people who have talked about being reflexive.

But my dominant method of thinking is puzzling. I can be quite the dog with a juicy bone as I puzzle. I am unsocial, impatient, demanding and cannot bear to be interrupted. There is none of the gentle, dare I say hippy, connotation I have of ‘reflecting’. And there is none of the feelings that I associate with ‘being reflexive’ which for me at least is a far more consciously cerebral activity. When I puzzle, I am rooted in trying to make sense of what I am observing. The closest representation I have ever seen of what I do is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FSKTndbwVo, down to Sherlock’s shaking the rapid stream of thoughts out of his head as he finds them lacking. If you watch the clip, you will see why I describe myself as unsocial etc when I am in puzzling mode.

So what of this piece of writing? It is not me relaxing. It is not me puzzling. It is me typing out something that doesn’t need puzzling but did need me to put into words so I can see it at a glance rather than keep it in my head. Sometimes it’s easier to think when it is in words on a screen – or on paper. Maybe this is my bit of reflecting and being reflexive. Who knows? I really can’t work out how non-autistic people think, so I find it hard to connect with their words for thinking. 

Feedback, as always, most welcome.

This and this and this

I have a very bad habit of saying 'this or that'. I have that habit with humans, particularly myself. It is a habit that makes it difficult for me to accept everything about me all at the same time. It is the habit at the heart of my categorising things and people until I feel I have made sufficient sense of life.

So I am either good or bad. I am reliable or unreliable. I am on a diet or off a diet. 

The irony is that I know intellectually that binaries suck. Life is not binary. Humans cannot be reduced to being this or that. And yet I still use binaries as a stick to beat myself. When I make a mistake, I'm not competent and incompetent, I must switch my mental image of myself to being fundamentally incompetent. It is exhausting, damaging and unnecessary.

Enter Deleuze. Life is a series of 'and'. I am this and this and this and this. As my beloved Buzz Lightyear might say, I can continue those ands 'to infinity and beyond'. 

How different might my life and self-identity - and my ability to complete a doctoral thesis (!) - be if I allowed myself to be competent and incompetent and clever and inadequate and resistant to being self-categorised into binary boxes and making use of binary boxes in everyday life and ...

Even thinking about is is freeing. And scary. It feels as if the space I inhabit in this social world is increasing with each and that I add. As a woman who was been taught from early childhood not to take up too much space - psychologically, audibly, physically, relationally - that is powerfully liberating. 

If I do not try to constrict myself and make myself small by squeezing me into boxes, I fear I will become like the giant Alice of Lewis Carroll's creation, and trample and break all that is in my path. I also smile inwardly at the thought of seeing what shape and size I become when I allow myself to be and and and and and. 

And I remember the words of Marianne Williamson...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

And I wonder what the next few years will hold.

The Wife of Bath, authority and the autoethnographer

Prologue

I did S level English. Yep, it really did exist once upon a time but was already dying out by the time I sat it in 1983. I think the S stood for 'Special', but it might have been 'Scholarship' or 'Supplementary' or - who knows? It was an extra and different type of paper you could sit if you were doing the A level. It was a chance to do something more like the old-style university-style intellectualising. 

And the fact I did S level, learned Latin and went to an independent school probably explains why studying Canterbury Tales for A-level led to my taking part in a philosophical debate about the authority of experience versus the authority of books. To my intense frustration, I can't remember the Latin terms used for the two ways of arguing - the argument from real life, and the argument settled by quoting 'an authority'. 

The Wife of Bath and authority

Canterbury Tales is a mischievous book, with the fictitious accounts of a number of pilgrims heading together to Canterbury. To keep themselves amused along the way, each tells a story. And before the story, each pilgrim got to say something about themselves and the reason for their choice of tale. I think it's only know that I'm realising quite how subversive Chaucer was. His subversion and mischief is no-where more evident than in the Wife of Bath's prologue. 

She begins:

"Experience, though noon auctoritee

were in this world, is right ynogh for me"

or - "experience, though there were no authorities in this world, is quite enough for me"

or- "What I know from what I've lived through is enough (evidence) for me. I don't need established authorities or texts." - but she does then proceed to use authorities to back up her lived experience of sex and marriage. A lived experience that runs counter to anything sanctioned by the accepted authorities on sex and marriage. 

I have sympathy with the Wife of Bath, particularly given the authorities that were currently in vogue. I think I too reject authorities written by and for a repressive patriarchal system having any authority over my experience. But experience without authorities is not quite enough for me. I may not need established authorities as a starting point, but I do need them as mirrors to show my experience in different lights.  

Autoethnography and authority

I think of ethnography as the study of people's social interactions in their natural habitat.  Auto is about the self. So, to me, autoethnography is studying your own social interactions in your natural habitat. 

There is a tendancy in social science to begin with the authorities, and use them to examine experience. The authorities frame what can be seen and what can be asked of experience. Even ethnography, which looks as if it should start with people and their lives can become less a study of people's social interactions and more a study of what the ethnographer notices. What the ethnographer notices is a product of what they expect to see, and what they expect depends on which authorities they favour. 

Autoethnography makes it easier to begin with experience. Experience is allowed to frame what authorities you see as relevant and how you interact with those authorities. 

How one then uses those authorities is central. As a baby autoethnographer, it would be very easy for me to do a 'Wife of Bath' and simply look for authorities that I can argue agree with how I interpret my own experiences. As she continues her prologue, she draws on authorities to bolster her argument from experience. She is highly selective, and doesn't always use an authority in a way that it is intended to be used. I could use authorities with the intention of bolstering an argument that I would argue even if "noon authorities were in this world". But I believe that does my experience and autoethnography a dis-service. 

So. I don't want to begin with book-authority or theory. I want to begin with experience. But I do then want to use book-authorities as mirrors on my experience. And I want to use what I see to help me reflect on what I experience. I think this gives appropriate respect to both ways of knowing - knowing from living through something, and knowing from theorising.

I have noticed that autoethnography tends to go hand-in-hand with inability to sit within an academic discipline or school of thought. I guess that is an unsurprising consequence of starting with experience and moving out to see what light academic authorities can shed on that experience. 

And I guess that my starting with experience and wanting support to reflect on and find ways of framing my experience in a way that would make me more effective at changing the world is what led me both to autoethnography and inability to sit within an academic discipline.

Who'd have thought Middle Ages poetry is still be relevant?