Encounters and Directions in Research: Pages from a Simulacrum Journal

This article is a companion piece to a presentation given at the 19th Annual Conference on Interdisciplinary Studies 2006 (University of Georgia), at which I read extracts from my simulacrum reflective journal-performing a narrative about narrative research. Narratives of research, like all narratives, are a means by which we impose order on a chaotic world. But narratives also function to subvert that order, to undermine the commonplace and the canonical. It is the appearance of the unexpected from which the narrative emerges. The journal facilitates this process of narrative construction, enabling a creative exploration of concepts and ideas, functioning at both a content level and supporting "writing as a method of inquiry." The article illustrates this, its purpose to subvert, but extend, understandings about the processes involved in doing "being a researcher."