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Authors’ Note: We thank Charlotte for sharing her story with us. We also thank Norman K.

Denzin and the reviewers of Qualitative Inquiry for their usefull comments.

The Narrative Constructionof the Self

Selfhood as a Rhizomatic Story

Jasmina SermijnFree University Brussels, Belgium

Patrick DevliegerKatholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

University of Illinois, Chicago

Gerrit LootsFree University Brussels, Belgium

University of Ghent, Belgium

In this article, the authors use the metaphor of the rhizome of the French philoso-

phers Deleuze and Guattari as an experimental methodological concept to

study the narrative construction of the self. By considering the self as a

rhizomatic story, the authors create a story structure that not only offers a

useful view on the way in which people narratively construct their selfhood but

also stimulates an experiment with alternative, nontraditional presentation

forms. The researcher is no longer listening from a distance to the stories of

the participant and subsequently represents these stories. She or he becomes

a part of the rhizome. The authors illustrate this rhizomatic approach and its

research possibilities by presenting story fragments from their research.

Keywords: narrative construction; self; rhizome; nontraditional presentation

forms

Researcher: As I already mentioned by e-mail and phone, I’m interested in

the way people who have received a medical–psychiatric diagnosis tell

about themselves. So the idea is that you tell me more about yourself and

your life today. I don’t have any prepared questions, so it’s really the idea

that you tell about what’s important to you. Every once in a while I’ll ask

a question if I haven’t understood something.

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Charlotte: OK. [laughs] OK, so where can I start. . . .

Researcher:You really can start where you want to, tell about what’s important

to you.Charlotte: Yeah, . . . let’s see, yeah, that’s hard. [laughs] Yeah, I just say,

that’s tricky, it’s so hard to start from nothing, . . . Yeah, maybe I’ll just

tell what I’m thinking right now. . . . So last year, or was it two years

ago in the summer, I wasn’t happy with myself. I didn’t feel fat, but

I didn’t feel good about myself and I started to eat less and less, I didn’t

think I was pretty, but I still ate. But I ate less and less and then I noticed

that that made me feel good and that I was so strict and imposed these rules

on myself. So I did that for a year and it got worse and worse, eating less,

eating nothing. It got worse and worse and then I really started to think that I was fat. I think about something else: actually I was already inter-

ested in anorexia earlier. I remember that I used to read books, novels

about girls who thought they were fat, and once I gave a presentation

about it. Maybe that’s the reason, what made me actually get it. I don’t

know. . . . The psychologist says it’s other stuff, that it has to do with

my relationship with my parents . . . but I don’t believe that. I think

that maybe it comes from those books. . . . What would my parents

have to do with it? . . . Yeah, I knew it wasn’t good, but I didn’t want

to admit that something was wrong because I felt perfect, still not good,but I felt better and better if I ate less and so and when I went to the hos-

pital I had to go to the psychologist every week for an hour and I really

liked that. In the beginning it was so hard there . . . then my eating

schedule was adjusted. I had to eat more, that was really hard, all these

things I never wanted to eat. Now I don’t have problems anymore with

it. Now I’m completely better. . . . I don’t know if I’m really completely

better but I feel completely better, but I don’t know if I’m completely

better. I feel completely better. This period’s kind of in the past. Yeah, it’s

still . . . if I see other girls eating an apple for lunch, then I think, “Uhoh, they have anorexia.” I don’t want to talk with anyone about it, espe-

cially not with girls, it’s kind of being scared that others can do what I

couldn’t. Now I can just . . . if I went out to eat, “Oh no, then I have to

eat something again, oh no, not a school trip because then I have to eat

again. Oh no,” the whole time with food and now school trips aren’t a

problem and I can go on vacation again with others. There are still some

of those things in my head, there are still some of those things, I want to

eat healthy: no fries, I never want to eat that, no cake, that kind of thing

and still with other girls I notice what they eat. Watch what I eat. I usedto think about it all the time when I came home: “Oh, she ate an apple,

maybe she’ll get skinnier than me.” Now it’s not like that anymore, now

I think “Stupid girl.” I still notice that stuff, for instance yesterday there

was a girl at school who only ate an apple for lunch. Yeah, just an apple!

So now it’s all much easier, life’s a lot easier. Yeah, and otherwise . . .

2 Qualitative Inquiry



I have a lot of hobbies, especially sports, tennis and hockey, I really enjoy

that and I want to do it well, just like at school. I’m in my last year and

get good grades, I expect a lot from myself. . . . Wait a minute, look,this is a photo of my dog who ran away a while ago. When I was six he

showed up and my dad wanted a dog and me and the others, my mom

and my sisters liked the idea too.

The above story fragment is an excerpt of the first conversation I had

with Charlotte1—the very first participant whom I met in the context of a

research project about the way narrative selfhood is constructed.2 When

I asked her to tell about herself and her life experiences, I noticed that the

manner in which she was telling was different from what I implicitly had

expected. I expected a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

This implicit expectation originates from the (Western) dominant traditional

discourse of how a self-story should look. The traditional notion considers

a story as “a linear and complete whole which is characterized by a plot, a

unity which is—just like an embroidered quilt—spatially and temporally

structured” (e.g., Bruner, 1986, 2002; Connelly & Clandinin, 1986, 1990;

Polkinghorne, 1995; Ricoeur, 1983, 1985, 1990).3 From this viewpoint, the

narrative self of a person can be seen as a traditional story which, althoughit is temporally variable, is characterized by the presence of a plot that turns

the story (and the self) into a linear, structured whole.4 However, the story

fragment that Charlotte told me (just like the rest of her tellings) about

herself is neither completely coherent nor completely linearly structured

around one plot. On the contrary, Charlotte rather told an amalgam of

separate—sometimes contradictory—fragments of memories, feelings, events,

and ideas. Although some parts of her story do share some traditional story

properties, there are just as many contradictory and discontinuous storyelements present as well.

This experience formed the starting point for us to search for an alterna-

tive story notion, an alternative view on narrative selfhood that can offer

researchers a supporting framework when listening to, interpreting, and

presenting the stories that research participants tell about themselves.

Untamed Stories: Selfhood as a Postmodern Story

The gap that we experienced between the traditional story notion and

the manner in which Charlotte told us about herself automatically raised the

following question: Are the narrative characteristics—as described in the

traditional story notion—actually typical for human nature? The postmodern

Sermijn et al. / Narrative Construction of the Self 3



perspective that everything is a story (Currie, 1998) stems from the idea that

traditional story characteristics are not inherent in stories, nor in people, but

rather must be viewed as sociocultural constructs (see Butler, 1990; Linde,1993; Maan, 1999). Numerous inter- and intracultural research projects

(e.g., Carrithers, Collins, & Lukes, 1985; Foucault, 1975, 1976, 1988; Geertz,

1973; Schneebaum, 1969; Shorter, 1977) have shown that the way people

view themselves and tell about themselves is not universal and that the tradi-

tional story characteristics and also the traditional story itself are no more

than effects of discourse, creations that are used within certain subcultures.

Postmodern narratologists hence assume that as narrative characteristics are

not inherent in human nature, a universal definition of the essence of a storyis impossible. Although the vagueness and lack of boundaries that are typical

for the postmodern story notion make it impossible to clearly define what a

story is or is not, we do find several characteristics in postmodern narrative

theory (see Currie, 1998; Gibson, 2004; Herman & Vervaeck, 2005) that are

considered as “typical” for postmodern stories:

• No synthesis of heterogeneity (the story elements are not synthesized

around a plot)

• No hierarchy but rather narrative laterality (a story is a compilation of

horizontal story elements)

• Acceptance of the “monster” (of the entirety of elements that do not fit in

a traditional story structure):5

• Monstrous time (nonlinearly organized time; e.g., story elements that

are difficult to date or that conflict with the separation among past–

present–future)

• Monstrous causality (a lack of clear, linear cause and effect relationships)

• Monstrous space (space that is constantly in motion and that lacks a fixed

central point)

These characteristics clarify that the postmodern notion looks at stories

through a completely different lens than does the traditional notion.

Although the traditional notion emphasizes the necessity of streamlining all

story elements into one complete, organized whole (like the motif of the

embroidered quilt), the postmodern notion emphasizes everything that is

excluded from the traditional story notion. The postmodern notion values

the acceptance of everything that does not fit in a streamlined story, of thestory elements that do not find a place in a traditional story structure. Just

like the motif of a patchwork quilt,6 a postmodern story is characterized not

by an embroidered, continuous pattern but by the juxtaposition of more or

less disjunctive elements. Consequently, postmodern stories are also referred




gaze and the means by which the object/subject is being constituted” (the

co-constructed character of the self-story and the position of the researcher

herein; Davies et al., 2004, p. 361). Furthermore, we argue that the metaphorof the self as a rhizomatic story contributes to dealing with the tensions in

the ambivalent practices of reflexivity that risk to slip inadvertently into

constituting the very real self that transcends the constitutive power of

discourse (Davies et al., 2004).

Before describing the metaphor of the rhizome, its characteristics, and

its usefulness to reflect on narrative selfhood, we would like to emphasize

that applying this metaphor does not necessarily mean that we will remain

entirely consistent with the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Adoptingthe words of Deleuze and Guattari (1976), “Thinking is experimenting!”

and our application of rhizomatic thinking to narrative selfhood must be

viewed as a thought experiment and not as a closed methodological or theo-

retical vision. This is in line with Deleuze and Guattari’s resistance to every

form of totalitarian thinking and to primarily try to stimulate new forms of

thinking. We are therefore looking not for the answer, the methodology, or

the theory to explore narrative selfhood but rather for a new and possible

perspective that can be a supporting framework in the labyrinth of narrativeresearch practices.

The Rhizome as a Metaphor for the NarrativeConstruction of Selfhood

A rhizome is an underground root system, a dynamic, open, decentralized

network that branches out to all sides unpredictably and horizontally. A view

of the whole is therefore impossible. A rhizome can take the most diverse

forms: from splitting and spreading in all directions on the surface to the

form of bulbs and tubers. The most important characteristic of a rhizome is

that it has multiple entryways. From whichever side one enters, as soon as

one is in, one is connected. There is no main entryway or starting point

that leads to “the truth.” “The truth” or “the reality” does not exist within

rhizomatic thinking. There are always many possible truths and realities that

can all be viewed as social constructs. The existence of multiple entryways

automatically implies multiplicity. With the principle of multiplicity, Deleuzeand Guattari refer to the existence of a multiplicity that does not get reduced

to a whole on subject or object level but rather only consists of definitions

or dimensions. The notion of unity only appears when a particular dimension

(e.g., a particular discourse) takes over. But such a takeover can only be




viewed as an artificial unity in the multiplicity. Within the multiplicity, there

is no clear hierarchy, structure, or order. This implies that each point of a

rhizome can be connected with any other point in the rhizome (the principleof connection), and at whatever point a rhizome is ruptured or destroyed, it

will always grow further according to different lines or connections (the

principle of asignifying rupture). Deleuze and Guattari compare the rhizome

with a map (the principle of cartography) and not with a blueprint or a tracing.

Just like a map, a rhizome is open, receptive to include changes constantly.

Here, we encounter the characteristic of multiple entryways: A map always

has multiple entryways, all of which are equally good or equally important.

With a map, one can start where one wants; no single entryway is privileged.The only thing that changes as one chooses a different entryway is the map

of the rhizome itself (Deleuze & Guattari, 1976).

How can this metaphor of the rhizome help researchers to reflect on the

narrative construction of selfhood and their own positions in this process of

construction? To explore this question, we take each of the characteristics or

principles of the rhizome and apply them to narrative selfhood. We illustrate

these principles using story fragments of Charlotte.

Multiple Entryways

When we view selfhood as a rhizomatic story, we assume that there is

no single correct point of entry that can lead the researcher to “ the truth”

about the selfhood of the participant. We completely let go of the illusion

of “the so-called objective all-seeing eye/I” (Davies et al., 2004, p. 363) that

can capture the reality, the real narrative self of someone. In contrast to the

traditional story, which has only one entry and exit point (the beginning and

the end), selfhood as a rhizomatic story has many possible entryways, and

each entryway will lead to a temporary rendering of selfhood. This implies

that there is no such thing as a fixed authentic, prediscursive self that exists

independent of the speaking. To use Barthes’s words, “We give birth to our-

selves in our writing” and speaking (in Davies et al., 2004, p. 365). This

means that the birth of selves is coincidental with the speaking and that we

speak ourselves as multiple in the multiple stories we create of ourselves.

The self as a noun (stable and relatively fixed) is moved to the self as a verb,

always in process, taking its shape in and through the speaking (Davieset al., 2004). Each time we speak, at the same time a new self is born, embod-

ied in the story constructions—able to be spoken and read in multiple ways

(Davies et al., 2004). So each time the researcher asks a participant to tell

about herself or himself, only one or a few possible and temporal entryways




into the rhizomatic network are taken. Which entries are taken can depend

on many factors, but will, among other things, be codetermined by the audience

to whom the participant is speaking (in the first place, to the researcher), thecontext within which the speaking takes place (the social and cultural dis-

course context, the research context), the research question (the way the

researcher presents the research and asks questions), the positions of partici-

pant and researcher (e.g., age, gender, objectives, ideas and ideologies, etc.),

and the “gaze”—both the reflecting or critical gaze of the other (in the first

place, the researcher) and the controlling self-disciplining gaze (Davies

et al., 2004) of the speaking participant herself or himself. Along with this,

the researcher becomes part of the rhizome: “ As soon as you’re in, you’reconnected .” As researchers, we cannot possibly remain outside the rhizomatic

story as “objective observers”: We are within the rhizomatic story as a part

of the dynamic construction process.

Suppose we view the narrative selfhood of Charlotte as a rhizomatic story

with multiple entries. What exactly does this mean?

To begin with, the principle of multiple entries implies that we assume

that something like the right entry, the right question to discover Charlotte’s

selfhood doesn’t exist. What would the right entryway be anyway? Whensomething like a “true core self” doesn’t exist and when the selves of Charlotte

are born and reborn each time she speaks, there cannot be only one correct

entryway to selfhood.

Just as the other research participants, Charlotte indicates that she doesn’t

know where to start her story,

Where can I start? . . . It’s so hard to start from nothing.

After a while she simply says that she’ll tell what she’s thinking at that

moment, after which she enters her story with the period when she first

started to eat less:

So last year, or was it two years ago in the summer, I wasn’t happy with

myself. I didn’t feel fat, but I didn’t feel good about myself and I started to

eat less and less, I didn’t think I was pretty, but I still ate.

Why does she—or is it we?—take(s) this entry? Would she take the sameentry if, in another context, she would tell someone else about herself?

A bit later in the conversation, I asked her this question:

Researcher: When I told you in the beginning of our conversation that you

could tell about yourself, that you could tell about what’s important to




Multiplicity

Working with the principle of multiplicity, we can view narrative self-hood as a multitude of stories that cannot get reduced to one whole by either

the participant or the researcher of the story. In contrast to those working

within the traditional story notion, who emphasize the need for the creation

of unity within the heterogeneity or multiplicity, here the assumption is that

there is not one all-inclusive, traditional story within which a subject can

place all her or his self-experiences and recognize herself or himself. To the

contrary, there are a multitude of possible stories, each of which, depending

on the entry that is taken, leads to different and new constructions of self-

hood. The “self-as-a-story” can always be told by different “I’s” with the

result that the concepts of a long-term plot or necessary continuity in time

and space are no longer relevant. The stories that participant and researcher

co-construct thus offer no more than a fleeting glimpse of the multitude of

possible stories that could be constructed. At the moment when the partici-

pant speaks about herself or himself, she or he creates a momentary, context-

bounded self. Although the speaking “I” is multivoiced and always shifting,

usually it will—from a human urge for structure—try to create a continuity

and unity in the telling. As a consequence there exists a continual ambiguitybetween the multiple/always shifting I that is an effect of speaking and the

I that (proceeding from the dominant traditional discourse of selfhood as an

essential fixed entity that has substance independent of speaking) seeks for

unity and fixity. Rhizome thinking views this unity and fixity as an illusion,

as each telling is always local and temporary. Within the rhizome, “unities”

can be viewed as temporary takeovers by one story construction with the

result that other possible constructions at that moment (for whatever reason)

are excluded. This implies that at a specific moment and in a specific contexta certain construction can dominate and create the illusion for the partici-

pant and/or the researcher that this construction forms a whole and that it is

the only possible, true story. But rhizome thinking always keeps at the back

of the mind that this is merely an illusion because many other stories can

exist alongside this one that don’t get illuminated at that moment.

Viewing selfhood as a multitude does not mean that we lapse into complete

chaos or fragmentation. People sometimes need structure and the idea that

they are individuals who are capable of giving a coherent meaning to theirown and others’ lives. This need gets satisfied by the (co-)construction of

temporal, context-bound self-stories that can create the illusion of “whole-

ness,” “coherency,” and “clarity.” At the same time, thinking in terms of a

multiplicity of story constructions makes it possible for selfhood to not be




bound within one coherent meta-story and to see itself in all its shifting, con-

tradictory multiplicity and fragility (Davies et al., 2004). Each entry of the

rhizomatic story leads to other, sometimes contradictory, story fragments.The “self-as-story” need no longer be viewed as an embroidered quilt (a com-

plete, organized whole) but rather as a patchwork of infinite, never-ending

narrative constructions about oneself. Through time, the stitching of the

patchwork quilt takes on a course that connects certain elements, providing

a time-limited embroidered piece that, however, could never account for the

entire self (see also Saukko, 2000). In this stitching, there is always a contin-

ual ambiguity between the multiple or always shifting I and the traditional

I, that seeks for unity and continuity in its telling. The result of that is anever ending quilt of which certain parts have an embroidered motif, while

other parts are patched without following an organized pattern.

When we link the principle of multiplicity back to the example of

Charlotte, this means first of all that we assume that Charlotte’s narrative

selfhood is composed of a multitude of stories which cannot be reduced to

one whole and of which we—as researchers only get a glimpse of. Even when

we only look at the story fragments we used as an example, we notice that

these do not form one unity but consist of a multitude of story elements, amultitude of different voices, some of which are coherent and linearly struc-

tured, while others are contradictory.

Now I’m completely better

I don’t know if I’m really completely better

I feel completely better

It’s the past for me, that period

There’s still things some of those things in my head . . .

How could we reduce such shifting and contradictory elements to a whole?

And imagine that one as a researcher would one way or another forcefully

create a coherent whole (by imposing an hypothetical linear causality, for

instance), wouldn’t this be a disservice to what Charlotte tells about herself?

The fact that rhizome thinking views ‘unity’ as an illusion, doesn’t mean

that Charlotte experiences the ‘unity’and ‘coherence’ which she tries to create

between certain story elements as artificial. When she tells, for instance, that

she thinks that the reason or cause for ‘her anorexia’ stems from the fact thatshe read many books about anorexia when she was young,

I remember that I used to read books, novels about girls who thought they

were fat, and once I gave a presentation about it. Maybe that’s the reason,

what made me actually get it. . . . I think that it comes from those books.




She views this story construction at the moment she tells it as the truth. At

that moment, there is a temporary take-over by this story construction with

the result that other possible constructions are excluded. But the fact thatshe says a little bit later that her psychologist thinks that it could be other

things, other possible connections already shows that other entryways and

stories can exist which are not taken at that moment:

The psychologist says it’s other stuff, that it has to do with my relationship

with my parents . . . but I don’t believe that

Connection and Asignifying Rupture

The principle of connection refers to the fact that the stories which people

co-construct about themselves are not always structured according to logical,

linear connections. The traditional ‘embroidered quilt’ (linear, ‘cause—

effect’) thinking lapses and is replaced by a ‘patchwork thinking’: a thinking

in terms of infinite possible connections (every line has the potential to be

connected with every other line), some of which (depending on the entryways

which one takes) are linked during the speaking, while many others remain

unlinked. Here too we can see the ambiguity between the multiple/always

shifting I and the I that seeks for coherence. However, the speaking I is always

in motion; it tries to make those necessarily situated connections (temporary

stitches in the quilt ) that can help her or him to survive (Braidotti, 1994).

When Charlotte makes the causal connection between “her anorexia” and the

reading of books about girls who thought they were fat or the way her parents

treat her, she makes a situated connection that can help her—however

temporary—to grasp the origin of “her anorexia.”

However, this creation of “coherent” connections is not always possible.When, for instance, we look back at the contradictory voices that emerge in

Charlotte’s story (“now I’m completely better,” “I don’t know if I’m really

completely better,” “I feel completely better,” etc.), we notice that at the

moment when she speaks these voices, she is not able to connect them with

logical–linear principles. The voices she struggles with at that moment

cannot be integrated into a coherent statement.

The principle of the asignifying rupture implies that the connections

between the story elements can be “shattered” at any moment and replacedby new connections. In a rhizome, a rupture is never fatal, as new connections

that create new paths always arise.

We can see an example of such a rupture when we look at the following

fragment, which Charlotte told 2 weeks later:




. . . In the meantime I’ve also spoken with my psychologist about the

possible reasons, the causes for my anorexia. Do you still remember . . .

last time I said that I thought I got it because I started reading books about itwhen I was young. But in the meantime I have another idea about it. . . .

I was thinking and I now I know that it didn’t come from that. Those books,

that was already the beginning, already a first symptom. Now I know that it

has to do with my parents, with the way they treat me. You know, I always

have to do all sorts of things for them, they know everything about me, they

want to control everything about me. And the anorexia, they couldn’t control

that. . . . It was my way to resist them . . . something that was only mine.

This fragment from Charlotte’s story nicely shows how a certain connectioncan be broken and a new connection can appear to take its place. Charlotte

and her psychologist co-created a new possible entryway in the rhizomatic

story network to look at “her” anorexia. This example shows also the impor-

tance of discourse and the presence of the gaze of the “Other” in the con-

struction process of selfhood. Charlotte constructs and reconstructs her

selfhood in the language that is available to her and in her interactions with

others: psychologists, researchers, friends, parents. The voice that she speaks

is therefore never a “pure” voice; it is always a voice that is shaped by theavailable discourses (Saukko, 2000).

Cartography

The principle of cartography implies that we can compare narrative self-

hood with a dynamic map of narrations (and not with a tracing of reality),

a map that is always open and always changing. The narrations someone

tells about herself or himself are never complete; they form an ongoing

process of co-construction and co-reconstruction. As a researcher, one can

thus never have a view on the complete map of one’s participant, seeing that

this map is co-constructed, multiple, and constantly changing. We can only

explore several temporal regions and paths knowing that we are taking part

in the exploration.

Looking back on my conversations with Charlotte and everything she

told me about herself, I could conclude by saying that Charlotte and I

made a trip together like two adventurous nomads: We passed through

and settled temporarily in certain parts of the map, other parts we only

caught a glimpse of, and still others remain unknown to us. After our joint

trip, our nomadic trails don’t die; they grow further according to other lines

and connections.




Rhizomatic Stories: Consequences for Presentation

The way we “look” at self-stories automatically has consequences for theway we present these stories. The search for a possible presentation form is

something that every narrative researcher is confronted with. One way or

another, ultimately every narrative researcher must present the stories that

she or he has co-created with the participant to the reading public. The form

this takes varies depending on the researcher’s story vision. A traditional

researcher will be inclined to put all the participant’s narratives in a tradi-

tional story that is coherent around one plot with a beginning, middle, and

end. She or he will present the story from a distance (the all seeing eye/I thatsees and speaks about the “truth” of the other) as if she or he herself or him-

self is “outside the situation being described, hidden—an unobtrusive

camera—reporting, even on self activities” (Denzin, 1997, p. 224). This

presentation form creates for the reader the illusion that the presented story

forms a mirror of the “true” self/personality or life of the other, a mirror in

which the researcher remains absent. But what about the rhizome thinker?

How can she or he present the self stories and the way in which these stories

are co-constructed without lapsing into realist/traditional story writing?A presentation of a rhizome on paper is impossible as such. How could

one grasp a rhizome (and consequently selfhood as a rhizomatic story) on

paper when one takes into account the principles of infinite entrances, multi-

plicity, infinite connections, resistance against ruptures, and cartography? A

rhizome is never tangible as it is infinite and always changing. The moment

one tries to put rhizomatic selfhood into text or book form, one automatically

goes against the most important principle, that is, the principle of multiple

entryways. In contrast with everything someone co-constructs about herself

or himself during her or his life, a paper text or book necessarily only has

one or a limited number of entryways and exits. Besides, every paper text

fixes—less or more—that which is written in it; its mobility and openness

are always limited.

What does this mean for narrative researchers? First of all, this means

that narrative researchers have to let go the idea that they can present the

“complete” rhizomatic selfhood of their participants (this is impossible

because a rhizome is always dynamic and never finished). Just as they can

only follow one or a few possible paths in the rhizomatic story, they canonly present these paths, knowing that this is merely a needle in a haystack.

When one views selfhood as a rhizomatic story, as a researcher one knows

that one is not presenting the participant’s true self but merely one of the

many possible context-bound, co-constructed presentations of the self. The




temporary constellation between researcher and participant creates a time-

limited possibility for the self to be understood and communicated, but what

results is never a pure or a true self; it is a self that uses and is used by thebroader discourse context wherein it is embedded (Saukko, 2000). When

we speak about “presentation” or “presenting,” one has to consider that

presenting itself is a performance (Denzin, 1997), a new construction, a way

of “framing reality” (Denzin, 1997, pp. 224-225) and not a pure represen-

tation of an outside reality. In any act of writing, the discursive constitutive

work is at play, the “gaze” is always present (Davies et al., 2004). This

implies also that we—as writerly researchers—are always present in our

texts. Just like in the speaking, in the writing we give birth to our selves andthe selves of others (also those of our participants!).

The idea that one as a researcher cannot present the “complete” rhizomatic

selfhood of one’s participant stimulates the researcher to experiment with

new forms of writing. She or he has to search for writing forms that do not

create the illusion of direct representability (and the absence of the

researcher therein) nor of the existence of a traditional self but rather evoke

the rhizomatic thinking to the reader. To evoke the rhizomatic thinking to the

reader entails that one as a writerly researcher tries to bring the rhizomaticthinking with all its principles as much as possible in the written text and

that she or he herself or himself becomes “a part of the writing project”

(Denzin, 1997, p. 224).

For example, by explicitly pointing out to the reader that the text one

presents (possibly together with the participant) is but one of the many pos-

sible presentations (or entrances), one can avoid the illusory idea of the

existence of a true core self that can be “objectively” captured into written

words. In addition, one can also (although always to a limited extent) address

the other rhizomatic principles by allowing the multitude, the nonlinear

connections, the contradictions, the ruptures and new linkages (in sum, the

monster!) that occur in the stories to exist as much as possible and also to

explicitly present these on paper. One can do this by using poststructuralist

writing techniques such as writing from different “I” voices, writing in

columns, writing multiple storylines, introducing multiple entrances and

exits, and so on. Also, the idea that the researcher forms a part of the con-

struction and presentation work can be manifested in the text. The researcher

is not an “objective” narrator who stands outside or above the written text,she or he is present in the writing. By visibly reflecting on her or his own

positions in the writing, as a researcher she or he dismantles the illusion of

direct representation and of the “detached” researcher with her or his “all

seeing eye/I.”




An example of such reflexive, rhizomatic writing we can recognize is

what Denzin (1997, following Marcus, 1994) calls “messy texts.” Messy texts

are reflexive texts that try to break with the representational technologiesthat are typical for the traditional, realist writing forms. They are reflexive

because they “are aware of their own narrative apparatuses, they are sensitive

to how reality is socially constructed, and they understand that writing is a

way of ‘framing’reality” (Denzin, 1997, p. 224). A messy text “announces its

politics and ceaselessly interrogates the realities it invokes while folding the

teller’s story into the multivoiced history that is written” (p. 225). Just like a

rhizome, messy texts are “many sited, intertextual, always open ended, and

resistant to theoretical holism” (p. 224). They refuse “to impose meaning onthe reader” (p. 224), they “make readers work while resisting the temptation

to think in terms of simplistic dichotomies; difference, not conflict is fore

grounded” (p. 225). In contrast to traditional texts in which the writer remains

hidden as “an unobtrusive camera,” a messy text makes “the writer a part of

the writing project” (p. 224). But as Denzin points out, messy texts are more

than “subjective accounts of experiences” because they “attempt to reflexively

map the multiple discourses that occur in a given social space and hence they

are always multivoiced” (p. 225).

A Temporary Conclusion . . .

The fact that a rhizome as such cannot be presented does not mean,

however, that we cannot extend rhizomatic thinking to thinking about presen-

tation. As we have already emphasized in this article, as researchers we are

automatically confronted with limitations of which we must be aware and

which we must necessarily accept. We can never know the “complete” narra-

tive selfhood of people, the “complete” map of the rhizome. And the same

is true concerning presentation: We can never map the “complete” rhizomatic

story from which a person derives her or his selfhood. We can only present

one of the many possible context-bound, co-constructed presentations of

the self. All of this does not mean however that narrative research is less

interesting. To use the words of Deleuze and Guattari once again: “You can

enter a rhizome wherever you like, no single entryway has the privilege.

The only thing that changes depending on your choice of entryway is themap of the rhizome.” Although researcher and participant will only travel a

few parts, a few landscapes of the map, these landscapes can contain much

valuable information.




At last, rhizomatic thinking and writing seem to contribute to the problem

of subjectivity in reflexive research and writing. As Davies et al. (2004)

stated, by turning our gaze on the researching gaze from which we investi-gate a phenomenon, we risk incorporating ourselves into our research as the

very real selves that transcendent the constitutive power of discourse. On the

other hand, it is not acceptable to write as if the author were not present at

each stage of the discursive constitutive work of research, when we reject the

objective I/eye of positivist research. By considering selfhood as a rhizomatic

story, researchers and participants are conceived as discursive processes,

taking continuously their shapes in and through speaking and writing narra-

tives about the narratives they have just told or written, always from thecontinuously changing perspective of narrating after the just told. In rhi-

zomatic thinking and writing, a fixed or meta-linguistic subject is absent. The

subject—whether participant or researcher—is continuously (re)born in the

perspective of the narrating after the just narrated, always turning language

back on itself in a horizontally moving way, that is characterized by multiple

entryways, multiple connections and asignifying ruptures.

Notes

1. The I speaking here refers to the voice of Jasmina Sermijn, the first author. Charlotte is

an 18-year-old girl who was diagnosed 2 years ago as anorexic. Since the age of 16, when she

was admitted to a hospital, she has been regularly supervised by doctors and a psychologist.

At the time of the interview, she was in her last year of secondary school and intended to go

to the university the following year.

2. This research addresses the way people who have received a medical or psychiatric diag-

nosis in the course of their life construct their selfhood narratively. During an initial phase in

this research, five people were questioned. With questioning, we refer to multiple, regular

conversations in which the participants told about themselves, their lives in general, and theirexperiences with psychiatry. Most of these conversations were tape-recorded and then tran-

scribed. Charlotte was one of the participants with whom we had multiple conversations. At

her request, her name has been changed in this article.

3. We refer here to the “quilt metaphor” used by Deleuze and Guattari (1987, pp. 474-500;

also see Saukko, 2000). An embroidery quilt is a quilt that has a central motif (even if

extremely complex) and that exists out of a continuous pattern that forms a whole.

4. We also find this idea of the narrative self as a traditional story in traditional biographic

research (for an overview, see Angrosino, 1989; Bertaux, 1981; Langness & Frank, 1981;

Plummer, 1983), in which the life or the self of the research participant is presented as a com-

plete, coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end.

5. Term derived from Gibson, following Foucault and Derrida (see Herman & Vervaeck,

2005, p. 114).

6. With the metaphor of the patchwork quilt, Deleuze and Guattari (1987, pp. 474-500;

also see Saukko, 2000) refer to a quilt as a never-ending work of juxtaposition of disjunctive

elements. A patchwork quilt has no center, and the basic motif (the patch) is multifaceted.




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Jasmina Sermijn is a systemic therapist and a doctoral student in the Faculty of Psychology

and Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research concerns explorative

study of the interaction between psychiatric diagnoses and the construction of selfhood.

Patrick Devlieger, PhD, is senior lecturer in the Department of Social and Cultural

Anthropology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and visiting lecturer in the Department of

Disability and Human Development of the University of Illinois at Chicago. His fields of

interests are anthropology, disability studies, and ethnographic research.

Gerrit Loots, PhD, is lecturer in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the

Vrije Universiteit Brussel and visiting lecturer at the Department of Special Needs Education

of the Universiteit Gent. His fields of interests are psychotherapy and special needs education.
