CRITICAL DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN POSITIONLESS AND POSITIONED

SPACES

Journal of Constructivist Psychology

Michael Guilfoyle

Department of Educational Psychology

University of the Western Cape

Private Bag X17

Cape Town, 7535

South Africa.

E-mail: mguilfoyle@uwc.ac.za

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Abstract

This paper offers a series of distinctions, not always made by

Avdi and Winslade, to clarify my argument that persons can

find themselves outside of workable subject positions, but

that they are inherently predisposed to actively seek out

positioning. First, I distinguish between the study’s

theoretical aims and the “data” used in its service,

highlighting that I am neither supporting nor especially

critiquing Bugental’s therapeutic style. Second, the

interactive “dance” of therapy stressed by Avdi and Winslade

must be distinguished from, because it does not fully

determine, the experiences of one of the dancers. Laurence is

not merely a function of the therapeutic relationship, or of

the therapist’s power. To see him in that way effectively

erases the integrity of his personal experience. Third, we

should be careful not to conflate persons’ experiences with

the culturally derived stories we want to tell about them. I

wonder if Avdi’s theorizing entails an imposition of

psychoanalytic discourse on Laurence’s experience of

meaninglessness. Fourth, in response to Winslade, I suggest

that it is useful to distinguish between language and

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narrative, and I argue that Laurence’s use of language does

not automatically qualify his words as narratives or

discourses, as Winslade claims. And fifth, Avdi’s suggestion

that one can stand “in the spaces” between positions creates

an image of stranding before a feast of buffet options. But

experience is not always like this, and so I suggest that

occupying such liminal spaces can also be experienced as more

akin to a discursive famine.

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It is a privilege to be in dialogue with Evrinomy Avdi and

John Winslade, thinkers and writers whose work I have long

admired. In my writing, but also in my teaching and research

supervision, Advi’s work on positioning theory and therapeutic

practice has been a rich source of reference and intellectual

stimulation. I have enjoyed Winslade’s fascinating engagement

with the work of Gilles Deleuze, and share with him an

interest in developing post-structural theoretical resources

for narrative practice.

Their commentaries have thrown up so many issues that it

is hard to know where to begin. I finally decided that I would

offer a series of distinctions, not always made by my

dialogical partners, in an attempt to further clarify my

arguments.

Distinguishing data from theory

Avdi and Winslade credit me with certain rationales for

selecting an existential psychotherapy case for analysis,

which are far from my actual purpose. Avdi suggests my paper

contributes to a kind of “therapy integration”; presumably she

means I am trying to integrate existential practices with

post-structural positioning understandings. Winslade seems to

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think, at times, that my aim is to critique the existential

approach, but at other times I wondered if he thought I was

promoting it, given that he spends so much of his commentary

criticising Bugental’s therapeutic style, and seemed to imply

I wanted to “celebrate” un-positioned experience.

So let me reiterate: I am neither advocating existential

practice nor recommending Bugental’s style; I am not

suggesting we seek un-positioned spaces as a therapeutic goal;

and I am not promoting an integration of different therapeutic

or theoretical flavors. Rather, I am trying to work in a

decidedly post-structural key, using some overlooked

Foucauldian ideas about the individual, to extend our

understanding of the relationship between persons and

positions. Specifically, I am suggesting that we can talk

about the existence of a pre-discursive individual who

contributes to his or her own positioning. My thinking is as

follows. First, we are not always experientially situated in

subject positions, and I use Laurence’s case as an

illustration of this. Second, such moments – if the reader

will grant their existence - require intervention of some

sort. Other people and discourses may well lure us back into

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the world of meaning (e.g., a therapist might suggest a

meaning or tell us what is “really” going on; a friend might

reassure, confront, or ignore us, thereby offering us one

identity space or another). But I argue that the human being

has an a priori capacity to intervene on his or her own behalf

and actively seek out usable subject positions, which must

then be thickened to be sustainable.

To take a step back, my interest in such questions arises

in the context of the considerable tensions on the issues of

personal agency and discourse determinism in the narrative,

discursive, and Foucauldian literature (e.g., Guilfoyle, 2012,

2014; Lee, 2004; Said, 1986; Taylor, 1986; Žižek, 2000). Thus,

rather than viewing the person as passively constituted - as

“mechanically punched out” by discourse, as Habermas (1990, p.

293) sees the Foucauldian view - I am arguing for the

existence of a kind of personal agency that precedes

discourse, but which consists in an always present orientation

to it. Admittedly, this is not personal agency on a grand

scale, but it is an opening nonetheless. We might then

consider finding ways to make use of this idea in our

therapeutic practices.

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Avdi’s and Winslade’s readings tell me that the case I

chose to analyse might be a source of confusion. It is

important to note that I used it purely as an empirical basis

for analysis; in the parlance of research methodology, it is

data. Even so, Winslade suggests it is the wrong data to use,

and argues that I should have examined a more positioning-

friendly approach (e.g., narrative therapy, perhaps). I

considered that possibility, but faced a problem. Post-

structurally oriented therapies are inclined to see stories,

discourses, and positions everywhere. They do not theorise the

in-between spaces to which I refer, and tend therefore to skip

over experiential gaps in meaning (I will come to Avdi’s

psychoanalytic views on this below). For example, Michael

White (2004) argues that if a person is not aligned with an

assigned identity and story, “then s/he is living a different

life and is being someone else” (p. 176). That is, White

notices the fractures in the position-constituting narrative,

but immediately constructs them as evidence of alternative

stories. There is little loitering in the spaces between

stories and positions. So I had to look elsewhere for “data”.

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I thought that Bugental’s approach was peculiar in this

respect, giving us ample material on which to reflect.

Winslade’s methodological suggestion – that we should

only perform post-structural analyses on practices that are

already organised in post-structural terms – is surely

excessive. One can do useful discourse analytic or positioning

studies on a wide range of material: on psychodynamic therapy

(e.g., Madill & Barkham, 1997), cognitive behaviour therapy

(Guilfoyle, 2009), systemic family therapy (Avdi, 2005), or,

for that matter, on gender dynamics in the classroom.

Walkerdine’s (1981) excellent analysis, which revealed how

four-year old boys can position their teacher in disempowering

ways by drawing on commonly available gender discourses,

required neither the children nor their teachers to be post-

structural thinkers. 

Winslade feels that Bugental’s theoretical framework is

so different from that of post-structuralism that “it can

scarcely lead to anything other than the conclusions that

Guilfoyle reaches, because that is where it starts.” I’m not

sure if he is saying that I start with Bugental’s assumptions

and end up with Bugental-like conclusions? Actually, I was

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very careful to separate out Bugental’s assumptions from my

own understandings. Both my starting point and my conclusions

– which are located in the world of post-structuralism and

positioning – are very different from those of Bugental’s

existential psychotherapy. Consider the following: Bugental

believes there is a single, authentic self, whereas I critique

the notion of authenticity and suggest that there are multiple

ways of being a self, any number of which might be experienced

as authentic; Bugental believes that positions derived from

discourse and society are inauthentic because they come from

the outside, and remove us from our “real selves”, whereas I

maintain that it is precisely on the basis of these socially

constructed narratives and positions that a sense of

authenticity must be constructed; Bugental believes some core,

authentic “self” lives in the spaces between subject

positions, whereas I argue that these spaces do not contain

any inherent self or meaning, but must be injected with

meaning, which must in turn be thematized, historicised,

scaffolded, and dialogically constructed – socially built - if

they are to become habitable and sustainable subject

positions.

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My response to Winslade’s critique is that I started out

with post-structural assumptions, and ended up somewhere in

that same theoretical territory, but with some proposals to be

considered.

Distinguishing the dancer from the dance

Both commentators want me to have focused more on the

therapeutic interaction. Winslade strongly emphasises the

power dynamics of the session, while Avdi says that my

analysis “fails” because I “sidestep” the “dance... of mutual

positioning”, thereby missing an opportunity to “gain further

insight into the process of therapy”.

I find this relational insistence puzzling, given the

questions I was asking, and the fact that a great many things

go on in a therapy (or any other) conversation. Besides, I

doubt it would have been terribly interesting to analyse the

power manoeuvres on which Winslade focuses. Examinations of

such in-session power dynamics have been done for decades

(e.g., Davis, 1986; Guilfoyle, 2001, 2002, 2009), and neither

Avdi’s nor Winslade’s suggestions tell us much that is new

(even though I agree with much of what they say). The

interaction is not the only thing going on. Indeed, Winslade

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speaks of gravity, genetics, and biology, all playing a role

in our lives, while Avdi highlights embodiment and dissociated

positions, which, by definition, are not products of the

interaction itself.

But Winslade is so focused on the interaction that I

wondered if he really heard my argument. He is particularly

troubled by Bugental’s initial intervention (“You’re scared

shitless”), and says that Laurence’s response (culminating in

his statement, “Yes I am”) might reflect “acquiescence to

therapeutic power” rather than “truth”. He says this

“alternative analysis need not be decisive. It is enough that

it is possible”. But enough for what?; to discount Laurence’s

subsequent words because “it is possible” that they come from

Bugental?

First, we should remember that all talk is given shape and

meaning via local (e.g., Bugental’s influence on Laurence) or

distal (e.g., the cultural discourses of in-control

businessmen) social forces; “Our speech … is filled with

others’ words” (Bakhtin, 2010, p. 89). If we only listen to

the utterances of persons who are not subject to power, we

would never hear another word. But second, is Winslade

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suggesting that Bugental’s words might have created Laurence’s

panic and terror; that Laurence became terrified out of

obedience? This takes the constructionist account and the

concerns of power too literally, and the influence of the

therapist too far. Yes, Bugental’s views dominate the session

in many ways, but his voice is not so powerful that his three-

word sentence could inject a fully-formed terror into

Laurence’s life. (In my view, Bugental’s strong influence

comes through not at this point, but when he relentlessly

pushes Laurence towards what seems like an abyss on the one

side, and challenges him repeatedly not to return to his more

familiar “business machine” position, on the other.) We should

recall that Laurence was well able to disagree with Bugental,

and accused him at one point of making a “stupid” suggestion.

“You’re scared shitless” may have been Bugental’s phrase, but

it seemed to resonate with Laurence.

What I found interesting was not the power dynamics, but

the experiences and responses of an individual whose access to

available positions was being blocked. My focus, in other

words, was not on “the dance”, as Avdi calls it, but on one of

the dancers. We need not obliterate the individuals who

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constitute (and of course are also constituted by) the

relational dance. When I wrote the paper, my reflections

revolved around the idea that there are moments in time in

which we are not “subjects”, or products of discourse

(O’Leary, 2002, p. 118). So: If discourse provides us with

meaning, security, a place, and a sense of belonging, what

happens when we no longer feel contained within it? This may

occur in the context of an interaction (as happens here), but

this does not mean we should forego our question and focus on

mutual positionings and power dynamics. My focus remains on

the dancer, and my question persists: How do persons respond

to being de-subjectified? What happens to our meanings and

stories when we lose our anchoring positions? What do we do in

response? Indeed, can we even know to do anything in this

circumstance, given that knowing relies on speaking from a

positioned space? Is there anyone “there” – “in here”, as it

were - to guide us back to the safety of discourse, or do we

rely on discourse itself (perhaps via its recruiting agents,

such as therapists, teachers, parents, friends, etc.) to

initiate some kind of recapturing operation? What are the

dynamics of agency in this circumstance?

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I found Bugental’s work interesting precisely because he

frustrated Laurence’s attempts to do what we all do all the

time: move into different positions. This is not necessarily a

therapeutic virtue, but certainly a methodological aid in this

instance.

Distinguishing stories from the experiences they

construct

Both commentators, however, take issue with the premise

of my questions: that one can find oneself outside of, or

between subject positions, and that this is the situation

Laurence is in at certain points. Avdi uses psychoanalytic,

object relations, and dialogical-self theories to argue that I

have misread the situation and that Laurence is indeed

positioned; specifically, in a “terrified, out of control and

helpless child” position. Winslade argues that we should not

conclude that Laurence is outside of positioning simply

because he is “lost for words”. I will address Avdi’s concerns

here, and return to Winslade’s views below, when I discuss the

distinction between narratives and language.

As I understand it, Avdi’s primary thesis is that the

“helpless child” position she attributes to Laurence is a

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“split off”, “dissociated” position, which needs to be re-

absorbed into his overall repertoire of positions. She views

such an expansion of, and fluidity between, positions as

central to what she calls “psychological health” or “well-

being”. I wish to note that I, together with many narrative

and post-structural therapists, prefer not to hold persons to

such predetermined standards regarding how they should or

should not live; even if it is only to tell them that they

should be able to move between a multitude of personal

positions “without losing any of them” (as she puts it when

speaking of Bromberg’s psychoanalytic stance). I favour

narrative therapy’s emphasis on cultivating personally

preferred ways of being, rather than pre-established expert

judgements on what counts as psychological health. I have

previously argued (Guilfoyle, 2014) that these preferences,

and indeed the overall orientation of narrative therapy

itself, can be understood in terms of Foucault’s (e.g., 2001)

vision of the ethical and aesthetic subject, which he offers

as a strategic counterpoint to the subject’s constitution in

societal power/ knowledge dynamics (Gros, 2005). Here, the

person is invited not to integrate multiple positions into a

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fluid broadened self – as Avdi suggests – but to make

commitments to personalised values and ideals; to become “the

patriot of his or her own values (Veyne, 1993, p. 3), and to

shape his or her conduct accordingly. On this view, Laurence

need not integrate his sense of being out of control into an

expanded self, nor is he called to discover the “authentic

self” that Bugental believes lies within. Rather, we might aim

to explore not what being “out of control” means, but what it

could come to mean, specifically with respect to what is

important in his life, and how he would like to live it.

Mine is, broadly speaking, a constructionist approach (in

Foucault’s rather than Gergen’s sense). Laurence’s bewildering

experience is yet to be constructed, not mined for the secret

selves that Avdi supposes it simultaneously conceals and

betrays. Her argument repeatedly suggests that the “helpless

child” position she sees in Laurence’s experience was always

already there. For example, she says that Laurence “tends to

dissociate” himself from what she calls his “out of control

position”, and she understands the therapy as involving an

exploration of such “marginalized” positions or “self-states”;

positions, in other words, that already exist. Throughout her

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commentary we encounter the idea that Laurence’s experience is

based on a pre-existing nugget of life, a “self-state” or

“voice”, formed long ago, waiting in the background to erupt –

or be “enacted” - at an opportune moment. I see this as Avdi’s

central mistake: believing that Laurence’s experience of

meaninglessness is already meaningful. This belief may lead

her to misconstrue her own constitutive act – she positions

Laurence – as a discovery of some inner truth.

It seems to me more plausible – and more hopeful - that

following moments of fear, panic, or crisis, we emerge

equipped not with some resurrected pre-existing, hidden chunk

of selfhood now integrated into the broader self-field, but

with historical experiences, stories, and social models that

need only have a good-enough narrative fit. I think of it as

retrospectively finding and shaping up experiential moments,

often drawn from far and wide, to actively craft – precisely,

to construct – a story that is workable, rather than

pretending we have found that special, golden nugget (e.g.,

the dissociated out-of-control self-state) required for self-

expansion.

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In addition to telling persons what their experience

“really” means, one of the difficulties in assuming that

experience is inevitably already contained within a pre-

existing (conscious or unconscious) position is that it

restricts the person’s possibilities for self-understanding

and action. It limits our experiences and ways of being to a

finite array of pre-established stories and positions. Avdi’s

“un-narrated experience = dissociated positions” argument

seems to imply that we can never move beyond who we have

become; all we can be is some combination of what we already

have been.

In contrast, the therapeutic strategy of co-constructing

a narrative with a good-enough fit gives us space to become

“other than who we were” (White, 2000, p. 164). We construct

self-narratives and positions using not the positions we find

(allegedly) already formed within us and the various internal

combinations and hierarchies they afford, but the almost

endless supply of “materials lying about in society” (White,

2004, p. 103). We are not bound or determined by our “selves”

or our histories. Our stories and positions are merely social

and cultural “forms” we have adopted, and do not constitute

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our “substance” (Foucault, 1997, p. 290). Such a view gives us

the freedom to exercise what Foucault has hinted is the “most

singular part” of ourselves: to “no longer remain… the same”

(2000, p. 444).

On this account, Laurence’s story of his angry 17-year-

old self should not be construed as the discovery of a pre-

existing position whose prior dissociation has been causing

him trouble – as if the cause of a stomach ache has been

pinpointed - but as only a good-enough narrative.

Historically, it just about fits his frustrations at having to

always hold himself in check, and offers a personal grounding

for his search for new cultural materials, discourses, and

narratives (e.g. the notion of a “allowing feelings”,

perhaps), which in turn open up new vistas and possibilities

for action. His limits are defined not by his pre-existing

positions, but by the multiplying plethora of social models,

narratives, and other discursive cultural “equipment” (c.f.,

Foucault, in Rabinow, 2003, p. 1) circulating around him. This

expands opportunities for resistance, change, and creativity.

Avdi fills Laurence’s experiential gaps of meaning with

theoretical meanings of her choosing, and thereby ushers in a

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particular set of cultural “equipment” to story them. Her

discourse becomes part of the social material that can be used

to build Laurence’s new narrative. But in the process, she

(like Bugental) draws on a very narrow range of cultural

material for meaning-making purposes (i.e., her own

psychoanalytic interpretations, and what this allows her to

“find” in Laurence’s history of positions). Indeed, neither

Avdi nor Bugental acknowledge that since Laurence offers no

positive architectural design for his new narrative, it is

they who end up providing it. But then they mistakenly

attribute the design to Laurence - to his supposedly

unconscious, dissociated positions, and his pre-existing

“authentic” self, respectively. He is positioned as the

unwitting architect of a narrative structure that is, in my

view, a reiteration of a pre-constructed professional

therapeutic discourse.

Of course, we could use any number of discourses to

seize, or claim Laurence’s experience and conduct, shaping it

up so it that matches and reproduces pre-existing knowledge

claims and practices; so that it becomes known and familiar to

the therapist. We could use a cognitive-behavioural discourse

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to argue that his panic is the result of becoming caught up in

erroneous and irrational thought patterns. We might draw on

gender theories to interpret his conduct in terms of an

identification with a hegemonic style of masculinity that does

not permit out-of-control experience. Or we could, as Avdi

also seems to do, draw on discourses of age and maturity to

suggest that it is only children who feel out of control and

panicked, so that when an adult (like Laurence) feels this

way, it is indicative of a kind of regression to a child

state. Each of these understandings reflect and reproduce

already existing discourses and practices, and will go on to

have its own effects, generating its own ways of thinking

about self and other, as well as its own power dynamics and

social arrangements.

Avdi conflates Laurence’s experience with her

interpretation of it. And of course, my own reading is also an

interpretation. But there may be some therapeutic advantages

to resisting the imposition of pre-constructed stories, and to

thinking of Laurence’s experience as not-yet-storied. Such a

deferral of meaning allows me to align with, and to trust,

Laurence’s experience. Instead of telling him what it “really”

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means, my inclination is to believe him when he says “I don’t

have the words”, and that for him it is “outside of words”: He

is saying that he can find no meaningful interpretation for

his terrifying experience.

If I had met Laurence at that point, my initial role

would not be to provide meaning, but to “just listen” (Frank,

2007, p.21); to witness how difficult and bewildering it must

be to doubt his own existence, to feel that he is nobody. In

the process, I do suggest certain positions for him, and

thereby offer openings into narrative: I am not advocating

neutrality. But these suggested positions do not provide

positive contents for his experience. First, as I witness and

honor his experience, at a relational level I invite Laurence

into the position of one who is witnessed. And there is a

hopefulness in my witnessing, informed by the second kind of

position I invite him into: I see him occupying a transitional

space, just as I have argued, travelling away from somewhere

towards somewhere else, whose coordinates and contents we do

not yet know. He may feel he has arrived at a devastating

destination (e.g., declaring, “I am nobody”), but I invite its

reimagining as a place of transit. Avdi and Bugental seem to

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know where Laurence is headed – to his dissociated states, and

his authentic self, respectively – but I do not. I can only

believe that he is going somewhere.

The challenge I am trying to meet with this twin

positioning is, as Frank (2007) has said, “to honor the

telling of chaos while leaving open a possibility of change”

(p. 28).

My hypothesis – that from this transitional space

Laurence will go “prowling” (to use his word) for a meaningful

account - allows me to trust that stories and positions will

come, in whose production and scaffolding I will inevitably

play a dialogical role. And when these nascent stories emerge,

of course they will have to be tried on for size. We would

have to keep a critical eye on the ways in which they support

or resist the problematic dominant narratives that troubled

Laurence in the first instance, and attend to their resonance

with the ways of being in the world that are of value to him.

Distinguishing linguistic from narrative emptiness

Winslade and I agree that the notion of liminal spaces

could bring further nuance to our understanding of

positioning. But he thinks I posit these as “pure” extra-

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discursive spaces, and on that basis believes I go too far.

First, I must clarify that I do not see this space as “pure”,

“in contradiction with” or totally “free of discursive

influences”. I think I understand why Winslade reads my paper

this way, as I frequently – and too loosely - referred to this

space as “empty”. Perhaps this also feeds into Avdi’s claim

that there is ambiguity in my stance. What I was trying to say

is that this space can be considered to be discursively or

narratively empty; which is not to say it is empty as such. On

reflection, I think it better to imagine this site, following

Nietzsche (c.f., Heidegger, 1987) and perhaps Foucault

(O’Leary, 2002; Veyne, 2010), as rather messy, characterised

by a chaotic multiplicity of meaning fragments, memories,

images, bodily impulses, and feelings.

Nevertheless, both Winslade and Avdi think it unlikely

that such a space could be “narratively” or “discursively

empty”. I stand by those particular comments, however, which

turn on a distinction between discourse and narrative, on the

one hand, and language, on the other. Winslade conflates the

two when he says that “even if it were possible to find a

place free of discursive influence, it would cease to maintain

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such independence the minute it was talked about in language”.

I agree that traces or fragments of discourse are evident in

this liminal space as Laurence experiences it; he does indeed

use words as he searches for meaning. But I think it is a

mistake to think of these words as representing fully fledged,

operational discourses. Rather, they seem to represent what

Wellmer (1998) calls “an abyss of meaninglessness in the midst of

a world of linguistic meaning” (p. 171). Laurence’s statements

– “Oh God damn it… I don’t think I can take it… it just

scatters my thoughts… I don’t have the words… can’t think

clearly” - have linguistic meaning, but little narrative

substance. They do not reflect fully fledged, usable,

inhabitable subject positions, but only meaning

fragments; inchoate, undeveloped, linguistic reachings towards –

though in themselves not yet attaining – narrative coherence.

Much work is required to render these reachings usable,

meaningful, and, therefore, inhabitable. Can these words be

considered stories – with plots, character positions, and

timelines - that constitute functioning subject positions? Are

they stories of the kind that White (e.g., 1993) speaks of

when he says narratives constitute our lives and identities?

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Are they stories of the kind that are capable (to paraphrase

Foucault, 1972) of systematically forming the objects of which

they speak? My argument is that they do not.

Winslade argues that someone being “lost for words” does

not mean he or she is necessarily outside of discourse in that

experience. In principle, I agree with him. I was lost for

words when I first witnessed a live performance of Mozart’s

Requiem, which transported me to a world of musical beauty I

had not thought possible; when my daughter was born just a few

weeks before writing this response, I could not find the words

to express the jumble of emotions I felt, moving me into a

rapid series of hopes and fears about the joys and

responsibilities of fatherhood; and when I was a teenager,

sitting across from my friend whose father had died, I was not

able to find adequate words of sympathy and support, leading

me in frustration to compare myself to others whom I believed

would have been wiser, more helpful. I could not find the

words in any of these instances, but there is no doubt that in

each case I was transported into discursive and relational

worlds that offered sense, possibilities, and potential places

for me to be situated. These were not well-developed worlds,

26

representing experiences which were new to me; but they did

provide openings into a host of new stories and positions. As

Winslade says, being lost for words does not mean we are

outside of positioning.

But Laurence’s experience was nothing like this. He had

been pulled out of the stories and positions he knew so well

(and Bugental surely played an important role in disqualifying

these, as highlighted in the paper) but, crucially, without

viable alternatives in sight. He had lost touch with the very

things that discourse, and the positions that flow from it,

gives us.

Winslade does seem to entertain the possibility of

liminal spaces, at least. And on their substance and dynamics,

he made an interesting comment: In such spaces “the reach of a

particular piece of positioning is less powerful, but still

able to be felt”. This nuanced observation suggests that even

in his most scared moments, Laurence almost certainly

experienced the tug of his old business-machine position, and

probably many others besides. He could probably feel their

lures and promises, but could not fully identify with them. My

overall hypothesis goes a little further though: I am not

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merely suggesting that when we find ourselves in these liminal

spaces we can count on being rescued, recruited back into

meaning, by the gravitational tugs of circulating discourses –

although this may well often be the case - but that, in

addition, we will go about looking for them. In a sense, we will seek

to rescue ourselves.

Distinguishing discursive feast from famine

Finally, it may be worth reflecting on the different

images Avdi and I seem to have of the space I am trying to

point to. For me, the space between positions is occupied by

what O’Leary calls the “human animal” (p.118): a formless,

“fundamentally indeterminate being” (Smith, 1996, p. 164),

shorn of his or her discursive clothes. But to my ear, Avdi

(particularly when she draws from Bromberg) sees being between

positions as more like standing before a buffet of positioning

options. But in order for us to partake - to make a choice -

we must know what we stand for, what we want and don’t want,

what we value, and what matters for us in that moment (and

Bromberg acknowledges this). In other words, we stand already

primed by our histories. It makes sense that Avdi would see a

position there, because this is indeed a positioned space.

28

Much of life is like this: I must choose between staying

late at work, going to the pub, or going home to my family –

“standing in the spaces”, as Bromberg has it. I make my

choice, inhabiting my “father” and “husband” positions, while

retaining access to the others (maybe tomorrow or at the

weekend). But this is not the space of which I am speaking.

What if I lose the pub, my job, and my family? If I am fired,

get divorced and barred from the pub for drinking too heavily,

I am surely thrown out of my network of familiar positions. I

can no longer contemplate the discursive feast because it has

been swept away. And while I will no doubt go searching for

alternative nourishment, this does not change the fact that,

perhaps for only a brief moment in time, I might experience my

situation as more famine-like; as a loss of what I had – of

what I was - rather than a gain of a once-marginalised option.

Conclusion

Sadly, there are numerous aspects of Avdi’s and

Winslade’s arguments that I did not get to. I found their

comments stimulating and engaging, and appreciate the

opportunity to respond as I have. Perhaps we will find other

29

fora to continue the dialogue. Nevertheless, I hope my

response goes some way in clarifying my arguments.

Acknowledgments

This work is based on research supported by the National

Research Foundation (NRF, South

Africa). Any opinion, findings and conclusions, or

recommendations expressed in this material are those of the

author, and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in

regard thereto.

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