"Thoroughly Post-Modern Mary"

In 2004, the editors of the online qualitative journal, FQS (http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm), were creating a special issue devoted to interviews with prominent researchers in the field of qualitative research and asked me to interview the feminist, scholar and writer, Mary Gergen. I felt that an opportunity presented itself to make use of the open-ended, unstructured interview technique that I use in my primary research, the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method. I mailed Mary Gergen a cassette tape, blank except for the opening life story question. Mary took up the challenge and recorded her life story.

Asking a person to tell us about her/his life is just a beginning. By doing this, in a less than perfect way, we are at least starting by participating in the storytelling of the person in her/his world, her/his expectations, successes, failures and dreams. By presenting a visual interpretation of Mary Gergen’s story, I was able to emphasise the performative nature of her storytelling and her biography in general. It pays tribute to Denzin’s postmodern narrative collage, the shattering of the traditional narrative line, a montage or pentimento—like jazz, which is improvisation—creating the sense that images, sounds and understandings blend together, overlapping, forming a composite, a new creation. The images seem to shape and define one another and an emotional gestalt effect is produced. The images are seen as combined and running in swift sequence, producing a dizzily revolving collection of images around a central, or focused sequence, thus signifying the passage of time. It is documentary in style, creating an illusion that the viewer/reader has direct access to reality. Words become a means or method for evoking the character of the person and the time.

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Entertainment

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