Abstract
I joined the Radical Hope Project in 2014, working as a research assistant embedded in the Toronto Regal Heights site during the first year of the project. In 2016, I travelled to Taiwan with the team (Kathleen Gallagher, Dirk Rodricks, and Andrew Kushnir) to collaborate with Dr. Wan-Jung Wang and the students at the Tainan site. During the trip and afterwards as I dove into data analysis, I was struck by the deep responsibility of how data is represented, and what it means to share one’s findings truthfully. Using Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) definition of metaphor as a way to understand and experience one thing in terms of another, this chapter examines the use of metaphor and the ways in which the representation of data through, in, or via metaphor illustrates the challenges of ‘truthful data.’ The global scope and drama methodology of the Radical Hope Project complicate how researchers might attempt to be ‘truth-tellers’ across vastly different cultural contexts and fictional representations. While metaphor in some methodological instances usefully acts as a means of closing a gap between understanding and misunderstanding, it is important to also consider how metaphor might create distance by signaling a miscommunication or lack of communication in the very need for such a metaphor. This chapter proposes that it is necessary to consider metaphor not just as a means of accessing ‘true meaning,’ but also as a way of invoking a self-reflexive epistemological distance.
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This student self-identified as Indigenous earlier in the interview.
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Jacobson, K. (2020). A Method of Mis/Understanding: Translation Gaps, Metaphoric Truths, and Reflexive Methodologies. In: Gallagher, K., Rodricks, D., Jacobson, K. (eds) Global Youth Citizenry and Radical Hope. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 10. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1282-7_7
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