Carol Rambo Ronai

This “layered account” of the author’s night dancing and wrestling with Kitty’s All Girl Review, for the purposes of gaining access to her male and female striptease dancers, is and is not Part 2 of an article that appeared in the September 1998 issue of Qualitative Inquiry. Making use of the metaphor of drawing, the author invokes Derrida’s nonconcepts of “mimesis” and “sous rature” as a lens through which to view her lived experiences with the troupe, identity, and writing. As each layer is superimposed on prior layers, new meanings emerge. All images and impressions are subject to erasure at any time given the absence of a one-to-one correspondence of representation to reality and the changing nature of relationships between performers over time and from differing perspectives. Ultimately, lived experience, identity, and writing can be seen as simultaneous processes of destruction and creation.

Using life history interviews with 14 female and 10 male striptease dancers, the researchers examined how the language of deviance is used in the life narratives of exotic dancers. Past studies have oriented toward striptease as an occupational curiosity for men and as deviant for women. This article addressed both genders in one study. Eschewing typical deviance vocabularies of analysis, the authors drew upon “biographical work” as our theoretical orientation to frame the life history interview materials and to develop the concept of “narrative resistance.” Rather than assuming that deviance is inherent to striptease dancing for women, but not men, the authors demonstrated how deviance is a socially constructed narrative resource that all dancers may draw upon to construct an account of self. The narrative resistance strategies discussed here include two deviance exemplars: sleaze and immersion. The authors concluded with two discussions: one regarding gender and biographical work and the other regarding the generalizability of narrative resistance as a biographical work strategy.

In this article I have explored why I love and hate my mother. It is a retrospective and ongoing participant observation of the phenomenon of being the daughter of a mother with mental retardation. In it, I make use of a layered account--an experimental, postmodern, ethnographic reporting format that enables researchers to use varied resources, such as social theory, lived experience, and emotions. By using my own experience, I explore, through first-person narrative, the complex issues and emotions involved. My conclusion is that the situation is fraught with ambivalence because my present interactions with my mother are cast in the light of a past where my mother simultaneously neglected and protected me.