by Jon Lackman | 17 December 2007 | Theory
In the Fall 2007 issue of Symbolic Interaction, Carol Rambo writes:
It was 1979. Ms. Marie Miranda, my ninth-grade art teacher, was a short, plump, leprechaun of a woman with yellow-blonde hair stacked in a lacquered, pin curl tower. Typically encased in a floral-print sheath dress, the curvature of her spine positioned her head in front of, rather than on top of, her body. Though she was odd, her presence was fierce and commanding. No one dared make fun of her. She let us know, with great pride, that she had “worked for the CIA under George Bush,” when he was the director in 1976. Behind her back other teachers claimed, with a shudder, that she had been an informant against communists during the McCarthy era … I loved her. Everyday, as soon as the lunch bell rang, I ran through the halls to the cafeteria to be the first in line so I could eat fast and get back to Ms. Miranda’s class. She opened the classroom door during lunch for the few of us who were “serious about art” …
I present here a few vignettes from my experiences as an art student, coupled with post-structuralist theory and symbolic interaction, as an opportunity to demonstrate “autoethnographic sketching.” According to Dunning (1991:333), “The abiding awareness of pluralist realities—multiple points of view—makes us question the completeness if not the veracity, of any world that can be fully depicted from a single viewpoint.” By presenting multiple points of view on a subject, even if they are seemingly contradictory, a picture of the subject can emerge through the layers of interpretive impressions left by the vignettes … A sketch is an incomplete study, by definition. Information is left out or suggested, and the mind’s eye is invited to fill in the details.
