In search of a cheerful lament: ‘Bizarre partners’ in an a/r/tographic community of practice

In this a/r/tographic fable, four literacy education researchers convey the complexities encountered when they struck out to challenge scholarly norms that erased image-making from academic writing practices. Working from different paradigms – pragmatic, critical and postmodern – they formed an enquiry group with an a priori stance of ‘yes’ to each other’s positions and explorations. During data analysis and writing, however, the group discovered that consensus/disconsensus acted to both stitch together and fray their collective work. Drawing from a/r/tographic notions of communities of creative practice and Lyotard’s writings on the necessary role of ‘bizarre partners’ in the violence of learning, the authors present one telling of how they worked with ‘confusion and ambiguity’ to create knowledge in the energy generated when ‘contradictions and resistances are faced’.

After a short story, a fable or tale, sketch or exemplum, a moral draws out an unpretentious, localized, and provisional bit of wisdom, soon to be forgotten. Morals often, heedlessly, contradict each other. Together, they make a rustling of maxims, a cheerful lament: that’s life.