If feminist researchers are more profoundly implicated in their interpretations, then they also have more opportunities for exploration in terms of the multiplicity of meaning within texts and the consequences of these 'readings' in terms of politicslknowledge. Such arguments have encouraged a variety of responses amongst feminist researchers, including offering
multiple
andcontradictory
analyses of narrative accounts (see Court and Court, forthcoming) and inviting research participants to engage in processes of collaborative interpretation of their 'experiences', to enhance the 'polyvocality' of the research.This latter strategy of encouraging research participants to engage in processes of self reflection on research materials is not new (see Mies,
1983).
However, unlike Mies and other 'modernist' invitations to participate in research interpretation, a poststructuralist approach does not conceptualise this process as getting to the 'real' story, such as expressing the essence of a 'core' self or a collective women's experience, although at the time the story is told or read, people may come to "believe in it and its veridical power" (Plummer,1995: 168).
Rather, in the process of editing and reflecting on interview texts, the participants' (and researchers') accounts are positioned as constructed, that is, as the outcome of processes of telling, rereading, retelling and reclaiming 'stories'.In this research, participants were encouraged to alter the text of their original interviews as they wished; to expunge, reinscribe or extend the narrative they had created. For the twelve key participants (the teleworkers themselves), this was a process of reflecting on a narrative they had created of themselves some twelve months earlier, offering them an opportwrity for both revision and further reflection, in addition to forming the impetus for the second 'follow-up' interviews. In this sense a further utility of the politicised nature of feminist research emerged as participants created, refreshed and renewed their narratives of
'home' and 'work'. These processes also offered opportunities to open up the research text to alternatiVe/transgressive voices other than that of the researcher. In this sense research moves toward a methodology which "acknowledges the presence of the speaker in what is spoken" (Ransom,
1993: 144),
and exhibits a satisfying 'lumpiness' as the fleshy subjects of history, such as the research participants and myself, wrestle with contemporary social forms.Additionally, such engagements offer more open processes of negotiating different, sometimes
conflicting
readings ofmaterials
produced in the engagement between researcher and researched. In this sense feminist research once again "irrevocably enters the realm of politics"(Flax, 1992: 459),
because how muchspace is made
for interpretative difference within research analyses, how much opportunity participants are given to 'talk back', becomes a measure
of the abilityto hear
andgive voice to
these differences (see for examplethe conclusion to Stacey,
199 1).
In
the research at hand, a disagreement emerged between myself and a couple who had been ·engaged in the research in terms of the interpretation of the transcribed material. While the research process had encouraged participants to edit their interview transcripts as they wished, and to discuss their theorisations of their own narratives in the. follow-up interview, it did not engage in a co-analysis beyond this. This couple had agreed to this process, and consent forms had been signed. Subsequent to this agreement being reached, this teleworking man and his partner felt strongly that their interview transcripts should be analysed in apanicuiar
way, departing from the original agreement regarding the release of the material following this process of transcript editing and reflection.At this tricky juncture a number of highly politicised options were available, and in each issues of power and control were visible. I could have acquiesced to the participants' wishes and limited the analytical 'reach' of the work to analyses they approved of; looked for more sympathetic and pliable people; written the analysis anyway, asserting my authorial authority, hoping that these participants would never happen upon the work in a library and recogruse themselves; or work with their resistance and in negotiation with them allow their voice and my own to be present in the research, perhaps even simultaneously on the page in parallel columns, to indicate the interpretative conflict that was present in the research. These were but some of the strategies that I could have employed, and these two participants had a number of other options and countermoves they could and did enact, including renegotiation of their consent, official complaint and/or withdrawal from the study.
In
each case issues of '1cnowledge, desire. fantasy and power"(Flax 1992: 457)
are at play, once again evoking the spectre of power and politics within feminist research.In this
casethis
coup1e and I engaged in (intermittent) negotiation over a three year period, during which the terms of the debate shifted on both sides. The participants restated their desire not as a concern to engage in a process of co-analysis of the interpretation of theirmaterial
in the thesis, but as a desire to"comment
on any of the analysis and interpretation ofour
data prior to it being p.ublished" (correspondence, 7/7/97, original emphasis). I meanwhile became concerned about having further confrontation over the analysis of thematerial with these participants in the media once the study was released, in light of the topicality of the study and the keen interest in it the media has shown over the years. The smallness of AotearoalNew Zealand and the likelihood of possible connections between participants raised for me the spectre of other participants becoming concerned that they might