When Narrative is Impossible: Difficult Knowledge, Storytelling, and Ethical Practice in Narrative Research and Pedagogy in Music Education

Stories impel us to grapple with the humanity of another. Using story to recount experience, however, raises both challenges and questions. This paper explores the complexities that arise when narrative researchers attempt to render stories of trauma. I draw upon what Deborah Britzman (1998) calls “difficult knowledge” to explore what encounters with stories of trauma may produce, and I consider both the potential of narrative research and the pedagogical potential of both stories and music to facilitate wrestling with difficult knowledge. I grapple with two related questions: 1) What considerations should be taken into account to engage ethically in narrative research, particularly narratives that emanate from trauma or that include stories of trauma? and 2) What considerations should be taken into account when sharing stories of trauma as an educator? I then consider both the impossibility of representation within narrative in light of difficult knowledge, and further examine how Delbo’s (1995/2014) “useless knowledge” unsettles straightforward understandings of difficult knowledge in pedagogy and in research. Finally, I explore implications for researchers and educators, followed by an examination of a politics of refusal in telling, representing, or engaging with story.