appendix B

This paper has used several terms and concepts to highlight the underlying structures of the narrative form. By and large I have left the main body of this project free of direct citations and elaborations. In this appendix, I will say a bit more about these terms.

Phenomenology of Practice

To borrow the words of educator and phenomenologist, Max van Manen, this Master’s Capstone project as a phenomenological practice is,

… a sober reflection on the lived experience of human existence – sober in the sense that reflecting upon experience must be thoughtful, and as much as possible, free from theoretical … intoxications….and driven by fascination: being swept up in a spell of wonder, a fascination with meaning … moments of ‘in-seeing’ into ‘the heart of things’. (2007, p. 12)

The creative chronicling that I have used in the paper, as well as other narrative genres, such as autobiography, fiction, and phenomenological reflections draw upon the collective stories of our people to arrive at a better and larger understanding of myself. In this sense when I use the term “phenomenology”, it is being presented here as an inquiry into lived experience within our people’s living history, and not as a philosophical study of consciousness as an abstract concept.

It is my hope that in reading these pieces as parts and as a whole, the reader will grasp its pathic and phenomenological orientation of practice of life, i.e., my own and of my people in time and history. van Manen calls this effort a “practice of living” where “pragmatic and ethical” concerns are brought to bear and grasped in everyday living and everyday situations as a pathic experience (p. 13). By pathic, he means using the narratives and descriptions of the experiences in such a way, that meaning is grasped through the sensitive dimensions of engaging with the stories rather than just rationally.

In this sense every story in my paper has been curated to draw out from the reader a pathic response, as well as a thoughtful reflection. I am expecting that every reader will bring their own unique response to the pieces. It must be noted that oral traditions, of which I am an heir, impart the ethos of their living history through pathic and often rhetorical processes of story-telling.

Creative Chronicling

While the word “chronicle” means a record of events in history and time, the paper applies a creative use of the chronicling processes. It attempts to tease out the meanings of the various events not just from the perspective of the actors who lived those events in some past time, but also from the perspective of actors who live now and are imagining and interpreting those events and experiences for their own everyday pragmatic and ethical concerns. 

As such a blend of historical facts have been used along with imaginative and fictionalized forms of narrating, while ensuring that the work remains true to the “practice of living” that has inspired the lives of the people. The process brings to bear a descriptive, persuasive, creative and rhetorical style in order to render the events phenomenologically and emotionally meaningful and moving.

Narrative Inquiry as Practice

One of the foundational wagers of the paper, summarized in the Abstract, is that the tradition of story-telling offers us a “transitional space” as a means of transcending the inherited and inter-generational contexts that often bind us. As such, narratives become devices through which a conscious process of “unbinding” may occur. There is great responsibility in this process for the actors of a living history – both writers and readers. How does one stand vis-à-vis these narrative texts while bringing into the fold one’s own prefigured and often “starchy” understanding of life, of cultural meanings, motivations, value structures, etc.? How does one respectfully, sensitively and reflectively locate in front of such a living history and tradition, while also bringing an independent and ever-growing agency of the self in relation to a historical or communal other?

It is in the midst of such an encounter with various narrative genres that an inquiry of the self, vis-à-vis the horizon of the living history that gave birth to its identity is possible. The mediation and interpretation of meanings that ensue is akin to an embrace with a series of events and experiences in time, whether in autobiographical, fictional or chronicled forms. This embrace harbours a symbolic process, where the actions, agents, motivations, circumstances, etc. in the narrative world extend their associations “as if” speaking to our own actions and motivations in our lived worlds, and vice versa.

The narrative practice that is embodied in this project invites a pedagogy by which to acquire competencies to understand our actions; reflect upon the various narrative sinews that bind us; loosen or strengthen aspects of our identities that have acquired an imprint from the living history and move forward with defining our life purpose.

Epigenesis as a Contributing Factor to Awareness 

The term “epigenesis” is a theory of DNA that is gaining recent scientific traction, in brief, it holds that heredity can be affected by the trauma of our forefathers. It explores how proteins are added to our genes by powerful environmental influences, whether in contemporary situations or as having been lived historically and which have a direct biological impact upon our genetic structure. Such environmental influences may have been brought about by various stresses and trauma upon our forebears, or upon our parents, resulting in a trans-generational “inheritance” of genetic codes that drive current conditions of health and various coping mechanisms we bring to disease, aging and environment.

This paper loosely references the theory of epigenetic coding primarily as a mechanism to explore the flowing impact of the living history of a people, including myself, and the generational impact upon the lives of the progeny. As such it also proposes that a renewed narrative, physical and emotional effort is required to review and reflect upon our historical agency not in terms of fixed or developmentally rigid identities borne of certain marked experiences, but as a continuous and flexible (elastic) self-agency capable of defining new and evolving identities. 

In this sense, the project’s narrative, phenomenological and pedagogical effort is to bring a generational self-awareness to the processes of “a living history”, and to “free”, if speculatively possible, or at the least, to understand the environmental influences of genetic inheritance upon a people and make appropriate adjustments.