We do not live stories ... we give our lives meaning by retrospectively casting them in the form of stories

Yet it is useful for readers to examine how researchers foreground particular kinds of assumptions concerning their use of interviews. Locating these assumptions in research reports is helpful in clarifying the different theoretical positions that researchers take in their use of interview research

me up with is more or less a copy of the question we have heard before. Even if the statement is original, it sounds familiar, worn, threadbare. By choosing the most direct and spontaneous form of voicing and documenting, I find myself closer to fiction

In contrast to an authentic self produced in an interview with the skilful interviewer as in the neo-positivist and romantic models, this interview subject has no essential self, but provides -in relationship with a particular interviewer -various non-unitary performances of selves (Denzin, 2001: 28-9). Indeed, Jim Scheurich writes that '[t]he indeterminate totality of the interview always exceeds and transgresses our attempts to capture

orient to one another's talk, a postmodernist view argues that 'there is no sta-ble "reality" or "meaning" that can be represented

initial inability to draw on knowledge and experience of what a 'good day' could be

for example, clarifying, justifying, informing, arguing, dis-agreeing, praising, excusing, insulting, complaining, complimenting, and so forth

Analytic approaches such as con-versation analysis and some forms of discourse and narrative analysis rely on detailed transcriptions to capture the complexity of the ongoing construction of interview data. In this kind of work, pauses, silences, laughter, and even inhalations and exhalations provide rich detail for analysis concerning how interviewers and interviewees co-construct possible ways of talking about research topics

and makes no claim to being objective.

In contrast, the object of the romantic interview is to ensure the development of a particular kind of researcher-researched relationship or rapport that will result in gaining data of an in-depth nature that is revelatory and reveal-ing for both parties

Embodied in Hermanowicz's approach to the interview is the notion of the skilled interviewer who, when able to successfully seduce his or her participant, will come away from the interview with descriptions of a person's 'essence or inner core

oses of social research, the interviewer-interviewee relationship in the romantic interview is one in which genuine rapport and trust2 is established by the interviewer in order to generate the kind of conversation that is intimate and self-revealing

worried

Much of the advice literature on qualitative interviewing assumes that the inter-view subject has an 'inner' or 'authentic' self, not necessarily publicly visible, which may be revealed through careful questioning by an attentive and sensitive interviewer who contributes minimally to the talk.

This paper is not meant to provide a procedure for better transcription. In this project, I have teased transcription—played around with it, stretched it this way and that, re-turned it. I have worked to unthink what it is and think its possibilities.

In considering how to make a better representation, or whether to make one at all, and seeking some other kinds of truth or ways of know-ing, I fear I lost the participant completely. Perhaps this is the point, since she could never be represented fully. She is always already lost to me. And the representations have always already failed

Then we wondered together, what does a conversation sound like in music?

but always the wrong thingson back roads betweenSmithfield andRichmond

Be a good researcher. Write it down word for word. Get the thick descrip-tion. Don’t stray from the interview guide, don’t talk too much, don’t give it away. Capture it, and bring it home, a trophy from another era.

The failure of representation is built in

So, what do we do? Do we stop representing, stop using traditional methods completely, stop transcribing?

t happened upon me and wouldn’t let go

In this paper, I intend to produce knowledge that is partial and prismatic

Knowledge is thus metaphored and experienced as prismatic, partial, and positional, rather than singular, total and univocal

She also encouraged more attention to how qualitative researchers conform to conventions and directly address and acknowledge transcription as a crucial part of data analysis and interpretation.

“interpretation of a recording cannot be neutral; it always has a point of view”

I hope that you will consider them as objects at “a sensory threshold” that perhaps will elicit a response. Perhaps, you will move through them in a linear fashion, perhaps you will skip some or many of them if they do not move you. Perhaps they will remake you in some way. I hope that you will linger on some, a “minor form of doing”

Lingering in the infinite betweenness allows for entangled and exciting and anxiety producing relations

Through technological, material, poetic, and artistic shifts, I considered what it might mean to transform an interview from conversation, to sound bite, to various versions of 0000s and 1111s, and perhaps back agai

Just as conversations can jointlyproduce collective memories, so, too, theycan accomplish denials and projections, asspeakers combine to move talk away fromtabooed topics, jointly protecting what can-not be uttered. In this way, the unsayablewill be present, even if marked by its ab-senc

I’ve come to a very open-minded under-standing as far as my friends, as far as peo-ple who I go out on dates with . . . and itsvery, veryconflicting with my parents.[How?] You know, I want to do thingswith the person that I’m going out withright now and it’s wrong [Why?] and I’mthinking, you know what’s the differenceif I get along with somebody or if myfriend is Hispanic, or you know [no, wedon’t know, tell us], what’s the big deal

To cultivate this method, I began by lis-tening to the tapes while reading along withthe transcripts. Listening to the tapes servedto retard the pace of reading, thus encour-aging further thoughts and reflections anda greater intimacy with the narrative. WhenI had initially read the transcripts withoutlistening, my tendency had been to readquickly as one has to do to “get through”a massive amount of material. When readin this manner, nuance was often elided asI was being attentive only to the wordsthat were spoken, not to howthey werespoken. When listening to the tapes whilereading along with the transcripts, I thenpaid greater attention to the conversationin context, noting its ebb and flow andthus beginning to “analyze” the stories incontext. I paid attention to the voice mod-ulations of the speakers, as well as to thepauses and sighs, and I began to attemptto ascertain the significance of each. Forexample, what might nervous laughter in-stead of a spoken response signify in an-swer to a question about how you chooseto describe yourself

he project, and reread the transcripts ofthe most recent group meeting in prepara-tion for the next session, but this was stillinadequate. I considered listening to thetapes one more time as a way to markwords that were stressed and note pausesin speaking

For example, on more than one occa-sion when I asked the group to describetheir own racial identity, individuals wouldcouch their responses in how they sawthemselves in relation to a non-WhiteOther

I put aside the printed transcripts and re-turned to the oral record. In other words,I returned to listening to the tapes.

because I focused on what each per-son was saying and how it was being said, Iwas not cognizant at the time of what wasbeing left out

respon-dent, interviewer, social roles of those par-ticipating, and their social situation.

“self-revising, self-questioningmode of openness to the ‘other’” (p. 73).It further encourages a playful and healthyskepticism toward the current paradigms,whatever they may be. A deconstructivemethodology advances the “sneaking sus-picions that something may be wrong withwhat we currently believe, while keeping awatchful eye . . . that something else,something other, still to come is beingmissed”

In otherwords, a shifting of the gaze from Otherto Self might enable us to catch a glimpseof our Whiteness, rather than the non-Whiteness of others, and to ascertain howthis shifting of gaze might change our re-lationship to and with our students andcolleagues.

for nor-malcy does not allow for differenc

n the early stages of sifting throughconversations with these teachers, whatemerged was their reticence to engage ques-tions of race and culture in education, es-pecially when these questions shifted theattention to them as “White.” I found thatthis group of teachers did not see them-selves as having a racial identity, or at leastnot one that they were comfortable articu-lating. In recounting her work with Whitepreservice teachers, Pearl Rosenberg (1997)observed, “For some, their identity as whitepeople only takes shape in relationto oth-ers” (p. 80).

My intent was to examine the affect ofthe racial positioning of White teachers in anon-White environment on their percep-tion of themselves in relation to their stu-dents and concurrently how this affectedtheir curricular and pedagogical decisions.Specifically, how did a stated racial posi-tioning inform their experience as teachersin settings in which they were in the mi-nority–where Whiteness was made visibleonly by its absence in the surroundings

Specifically, Ipresent a methodological approach for listen-ing to the “silences” revealed in my conver-sations with White teachers regarding theirracial identity. Those silences, present both inthe absence of speech and in speech acts,were “heard” through the use of a decon-structive practice for listening to the conver-sations.