The way of the s/word: storytelling as emerging liminal

Source: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume 21 Issue 3 ,2008, p. 251-267.

Publisher: Routledge (Tylor & Francis)

The paper focuses on oral storytelling and transformation through the significance of the liminal zone as thresholding. Involving the reader-listener in an experiential and performative approach, the article draws on all of the senses, using a wide range of data such as dreams, drawing, writing, as well as the act of (sacred) oral storytelling and feedback, reflection, conceptualising, as well as other theorists and writers. The work makes a unique contribution to educational research by highlighting wisdom in the knowledge spectrum, and the ways in which we get to know, through oral storytelling.

The work is inter-disciplinary, multi-media, and process-oriented - an emergent methodology. One particular story is used to exemplify the process. The author offers moment by moment insight into a process that weaves together memory, intellect, the emerging-at-each-instant, and the dying-to-each-moment that must occur for the storyteller, and hence for the story-listeners, as the story is enacted and embodied.