A wounded storyteller

Serendipitously, I had been reading Arthur Frank, the wounded storyteller and then experienced a whole weekend of storytellers recalling the journey that had led them to become volunteers at Youthline. In Marae style for holding a space open, a place to stand and to have voice, lead to heartfelt sharing about paths and trajectories, creation stories, restitution stories and chaos stories. Stories of healing and stories where scabs were lifted. These were not 'just so' stories, and they were not fairy stories. They were not technoscience political stories either. They were heartfelt.

I am feeling somewhat in awe.

awe |ô|
noun
a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

And while I recall Latour(2005) saying 'sociology begins in wonder" p.21
I am having very ansty feelings with ANT right now.

The coming together of fortuitous events makes it seem like it was meant to be, but ANT is not going to wear a bar of it for me to say it feels fated or that the thesis has its own trajectory and I am but a conduit, channeling.
Instead I am left with the nuts and the bolts and the very ordinary, identifying every actor along the path from woe to go. I would like to hold on to the mystery and the mystical, to sense the higher purpose, but with ANT I am left with a serendipitous coming together, intersections that are timely. I feel this sort of blows the magic away...and I'm not sure I like the magic gone from this part of my world.

suckered in a textually mediated reality

I am murderously inclined having been suckered by trolling scum soliciting in outsourced thinking. Buying or selling; I'd rather deal to their body parts.

Thanks to Qmass for the reference: Frank, A. (2004). After methods, the story: From incongruity to truth in qualitative research. Qualitative health research, 14(3), 430-440.

Arthur Frank writes of the need to convince the reader of the body on the floor.
For the reader to recognize the problems faced as their own problems, such recognition makes the story compelling. The reader has to feel that his or her fate is somehow affected by the fate of those reported on. Generating a sense of entwined fates is the prerequisite - not simply a prerequisite- of good storytelling. The audience has to care what happens to the characters.
Offering an articulate imagination: Seeking not to explain but to deepen complexity, giving complexity an articulate form and making ordinary people vivid.

The textually mediated reality Frank describes is one I am familiar with, reality is that which is written of, audited; where artefact is mistaken for substance. Today I was suckered by a blog troll.