Abstract:
Text [...] is malleable in the ravages of relationship and history. --Susan Finley (2003, p. 288) The idea of palimpsests presents a compelling metaphor and method for arts-based researchers. The palimpsest literally refers to an old manuscript where an original narrative was erased, scratched away and written over with a new narrative. As the object ages and with enhanced technologies, the old and new narratives can be viewed as interwoven layers such as in the Archimedes Palimpsest. More generally, palimpsests "embody and provoke interdisciplinary encounter, both literally [...] and figuratively. [...] The palimpsest becomes a figure for interdisciplinarity-for the productive violence of the involvement, interruption and inhabitation of disciplines in and on each other" (Dillon, 2007, p. 2). This paper discusses the palimpsest as a method and metaphor for arts-based researchers to consider in their work. The discussion is based conceptually in the various facets of the palimpsest as well as in my own work using the palimpsest as a method to analyze a set of journals from US American students on their experiences of culture shock while studying abroad. As a metaphor, the palimpsest is something messy, layered, with some parts visible and others unseen, and connected to historical narratives that become written over but never completely erased. I see the palimpsest as a kind of braided narrative (Tedlock, 2011), where each narrative is its own consciousness, forming a new entity while also trying to exist simultaneously. In addition to providing a conceptual metaphor, the palimpsest offers a methodology for engaging with the interconnections between narratives on a more physical and literal level, inciting the building of an actual, layered palimpsest that represents the one already written on our bodies and the social fabric. As a methodology, the palimpsest emphasizes process. It requires us to consider issues of representation, placement of the narratives, differing approaches to creating palimpsests and how to take into account the culturally and socially situated knowledges inherent to each narrative's perspective. References Dillon, S. (2007). Introduction: The palimpsest. In S. Dillon, The palimpsest: Literature, criticism, theory (pp. 1-9), New York, NY: Continuum. Finley, S. (2003). Arts-based inquiry in QI: Seven years from crisis to guerilla warfare. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 281-296. Tedlock, B. (2011). Braiding narrative ethnography with memoir and creative nonfiction. In N., K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 331-338). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.