Making Ends Meet

Well, I’ve written, or at least blocked out, almost everything except for the final discussion and recommendations chapter. And I’ll admit, I’ve held off on writing this part. Not because I don’t have enough material, but because I have too much! The amount of data I've collected and organised as a result of re-reading all ten of my short listed texts is enough to construct an interesting discussion for an entire book.

The title for this post seems rather inappropriate then, doesn’t it? But for me, “making ends meet” means connecting all the individual threads which make up this thesis to create a unified whole; the ends must meet. And it’s just a little bit scary trying to imagine how the finished product will/should look as I’m working with so many ideas and texts and themes. I think the scale I’m aiming for might exceed what is possible in a 30,000 word Masters thesis (in fact, I’ve already written 30,000 words without the discussion and recommendations. And these blog entries together are also over 30,000 words! That’s 60,000 words I’ve written in just over 10 months. Eek!). Saying that, I’m very pleased with my Methodology and Choosing Stories chapters, even though I did have to remove the segment on Derrida’s deconstruction (always another time though, right?).

The difficulty lies in capturing the depth and potential of my ten shortlisted texts in the very limited word count available. Subsequently, I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about how to format the discussion. I want it to work for me, not against me like it did in my research project (I’ve written about that here and part of my apprehension is tied in to the fact that I didn’t quite achieve what I set out to do in that project). And since qualitative/textual content analysis is a highly interpretive and mutable method for data collection and analysis, there are quite a few possible options:

• Pick only three stories to analyse in detail as standalone essay-length discussions.

-      Advantages: Reasonably fast to do, considers the entire story, significant depth to analysis

-       Limitations: Implies there is only one way to read each text in terms of leadership theory, lack of breadth and scope to analysis, difficulty in walking the line between literary theorist and leadership practitioner, lack of focus over entire discussion

• Analyse all 10 short listed stories individually in light of one key theme/idea/question on women’s leadership (similar format to Badaracco)

-        Advantages: Plenty of scope to analysis, clearly highlights a wide range of relevant key points found in each text

-        Limitations: Time-consuming, difficult to stay within word limit, lack of depth, potentially repetitive

• Treat segments of the books like interviews and pick and choose relevant excerpts for protracted discussion

-        Advantages: Similar to a normal qualitative interpretive discussion, reasonably quick to put together, plenty of scope to analysis

-        Limitations: Lack of depth to analysis, disjointed discussion, bad practice in terms of using literature (it makes the literary theorist in me shudder!)

• Create an integrated analysis using key examples from a range of texts and that uses a conceptual theoretical framework to logically structure the discussion (similar to Knights & Willmott)

-        Advantages: Balance between scope and depth, clear structure, opportunities for integration between theory and examples, productive

-        Limitations: Easy to get lost following rabbit trails, possibly quite time consuming to form a unified discussion which builds on each part to create a comprehensive whole

At various points in my research I’ve considered all these possibilities, but I’m tentatively choosing to go with the final option. Based on my literature reviews of leadership and women’s leadership, along with what I’ve identified as the key themes women’s literature raises, I’ve already developed a sound and closely interlinked conceptual framework (each concept progressively builds on the other). This is so that if/when I take this research further I already have a workable framework by which to organise a women’s leadership development programme or book club. 

So, what will this look like? I have my five key concepts and ten short listed novels/short stories/plays. And roughly 6,000 words to work with, maybe 6,500 at a stretch. I imagine at this point that I will organise my discussion into five separate sections and devote 700-800 words to examining and discussing examples from one primary text for each concept, with an additional 200 words to make additional comments on how other stories are also concerned with that 'theme.'

What I hope to achieve in each segment of close analysis:

1. Briefly define aim (key concept/issue) and explain why it’s important (linking back to discussion points in lit. reviews).
2. Clearly demonstrate how the texts provide opportunities for critical theorising and illustrative analysis by using an example/s (doesn’t have to be overly long but must clearly communicate the potential for the ‘theory to illuminate the work, and the work to illuminate the theory’).
3. Provide a few possible critical reflective points/questions/ideas (for the purpose of problematizing issues and inspiring transformative insight).

If I can successfully do this then the textual analysis is productive as well as being interpretive as it opens up “peripheral spaces for new understandings and embodied ways of thinking” (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014, p. 51) about women's leadership.

Dancing on the Edge...

Reflecting on everything I’ve done so far, I like to think of my thesis, and especially the methods, as ‘dancing on the edge of inquiry.’ That is, my research is experimental, fun and playful. And while it may seem to some that reading and analysing novels is an affront to traditional management scholarship, as leadership and humanities scholar J. Thomas Wren (2009) observes, “the creation and study of art yield a bountiful harvest of skills and deep insights that are inescapably linked to the human interactions we call leadership” (p. 29). When it is phrased as beautifully as that, how can you dare to disagree?!

And because I couldn’t help myself, here’s my latest haul of novels newly arrived from Book Depository:

Not that I’m going to be using any for this study, but now that I’m on such a roll with reading women’s literature, how can I stop?!

References:

Savin-Baden, M., & Wimpenny, K. (2014). A practical guide to arts-related research. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Wren, J. T., Riggio, R. E., & Genovese, M. A. (Eds.). (2009). Leadership and the liberal arts. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Storytelling as the 'Other' (Part 1)

I often like to start essays with a quote or short anecdote. I see it as an act of centering oneself; a moment of mindfulness in the swirling mass of thoughts and possibilities:

One of the questions I still haven’t fully resolved in terms of my thesis outline is: How am I going to read the literature? What am I really hoping to achieve and demonstrate in my analysis of the literary texts? And I think what’s really important about this section, is that I write what I want to write. Essentially, everything I write should be authentic for and meaningful to me as well as the reader.

When I was desperately trying to finish my research project last semester (and yes, surprisingly for me, it was rather last minute!), one of the parts that frustrated me and I struggled with the most was applying the leadership theory to the short story. As I was writing that section I knew deep down that it wasn’t what I wanted to write. It didn’t really have any meaning for me, as both author and reader, and subsequently, it felt rather contrived (which showed!). One of my other key concerns was that by reading a cultural work in this way, especially since 'leadership' was a secondary concern to racial issues in the short story, I was reducing it to fit a neat model that was too reductive and subsequently, overly simplistic. 

I’ve noticed that when I am writing merely to achieve a grade, no matter how technically good the piece is, it will never be excellent. In these cases, there is always a feeling of stiltedness. 

Disconnection. Disengagement...No moment/s of epiphany. The ‘so what’ remains frustratingly elusive.

So I feel that more than anything, I want what I write about for, say, The Lifeboat or The Invention of Wings, to be engaging, persuasive, provocative and authentic/genuine/true for me as well as others. I think I’ve been getting too caught up in the idea that I have to completely divorce literary analysis from my subjective ‘interpretative’ readings of the texts. That my analysis has to be strikingly precise and wholly relevant to business leaders – raising questions which will instantly encourage reflective practice and, ultimately, ‘change' people for the better. And this isn’t a bad goal. In fact, this is what I believe good literature has the power to do. But is it the right or only objective for this thesis, at this particular point in time?

I’ve been looking back at some of my favourite English literature essays, particularly the ones concerned with thematic analysis and sociological criticism, trying to decipher what exactly made them so compelling (and why I loved writing them!!).

For example, in my essay “‘Voicing’ and ‘Identifying’ Sexual Violence in the Congo and Iraq” the problem/issue presented is political: “In patriarchal societies and cultures, the battle for domination and nation-wide control is played out on the powerless and faceless female body.”

But women’s literature has the power to speak about this issue in a different, more inclusive and expressive way than purely factual reports or non-fiction ever can. And it is through the medium of theatre that two female authors, Heather Raffo & Lynn Nottage, are able to give the previously ‘faceless female bodies’ powerful “new ‘voices’ and identities, freeing them to tell their own stories and become more than just another rape statistic.”

Similarly, in another essay titled “The Struggle for Author/ity: Interrogating the Colonising Acts of Writing and Reading in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe,” I investigated the novel’s overarching concerns with the colonising activity of writing and reading and subsequently, the ensuing power struggle for authorship and identity. The main thrust of the essay was to consider how Foe engaged with the ‘reader’ and involved him/her in the reading and writing process.

Rather than separating ideas/theory from close textual analysis, I considered the methods Coetzee used to convey his message and the affect this has on the reader. By writing in metatextual form, using opposing binaries and changing narrative patterns throughout the novel, Coetzee places the reader in a unique position, spurring him/her on to question the very nature of language and the ideologies which inform his/her own beliefs on patriarchy, colonialism, feminism and race.

I think this form of theoretical + textual analysis leads on naturally to deeper reflective practice and discussion, for example:

In the end then, Coetzee challenges the reader to demystify the writer’s art, to find within Foe traces of other sounds or voices, and to interrogate any attempt at authority (Maher 40). This small journey of discovery leads to greater questions about the struggle for authority and power in colonised nations, as well as the ideological assumptions that encode a reader’s own stories and beliefs. Like Susan, “I” must ask, “Who is speaking me? To what order do I belong? And you: who are you?” (133).

So what does this mean for me? How can I potentially harness this ‘method’ of analysis in my thesis?

In The Literary Theory Toolkit (2011), Herman Rapaport explains that in the application of a critical approach to literary analysis, ‘examples’ or selected texts/narratives should work in such a way that they help explain and develop a theory that to many people makes no sense without a ‘key’: “The theory should illuminate a work, and a work should illuminate a theory” (p. 9). Rapaport goes on to describe “art’s purpose,” noting that ‘art’ has the potential to “revolutionise our perception in such a way that we won’t see the world as we ordinarily do. In this sense, it is as if literary language itself were a sort of revolutionary hero that reforms the fallen (automatic, habitual) thinking” (p. 15).

In some ways this is very similar to what Badaracco attempts to achieve in Questions of Character, particularly with regards to what it means and requires to be/come a more ethical and moral leader in the twenty-first century. However, his analysis of classic literature tends to lack depth in terms of leadership theory, as well as focusing more on ‘great man’ constructs of leader = leadership. This is most likely because the book is geared towards mainstream audiences who want a ‘practical’ step-by-step guide as opposed to an academically rigorous approach.

However, by thoughtfully incorporating theory on women’s leadership with storytelling (or re-telling?) and textual/rhetorical analysis, I believe the novels/plays/short stories I select will be able to 'voice' something important about contemporary women’s leadership and followership. Especially since good literature can articulate alternatives to dominant worldviews by making thought as felt and feeling as thought (Williams, 1977).

Rather than being purely reflective (as I tried to do in my research project), my role (as I tread the fine line between leadership specialist/management facilitator and literary analyst) should be to eloquently summarise, illuminate, analyse, and provide questions which give female leaders and aspiring leaders a ‘key’ which will help them both understand leadership from a different perspective (the voice of the ‘Other’) and encourage meaningful reflective practice. Creating ‘space’ for the reader to engage in new ways with women’s leadership issues and “working to relate the extraordinariness of imaginative literature to the ordinariness of cultural processes” (Filmer, 2003, p. 199).

I will leave it at that for now (along with another inspiring quote, this time by Ursula K. Le Guin!) as I have a whole lot more reading to do on storytelling and narrative methods…Part 2 will follow as soon as I have completed the next stage of research! 

References:

Filmer, P. (2003). “Structures of feeling and socio-cultural formations: The significance of literature and experience to Raymond Williams's sociology of culture.” The British Journal of Sociology, 54, 199-219.

Rapaport, H. (2011). The literary theory toolkit: A compendium of concepts and methods. Chichester, UK. John Wiley & Sons Limited.

Williams, R. (1977). “Structures of Feeling.” Marxism and Literature. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP.