Wade in the Water: Awash in the Sense of Adoption
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Date
2012
DOI
Open Access Location
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
School of Psychology, Massey University
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Abstract
A discursive approach to knowledge contends that
language is the constitutive force of experience and
lived reality. Meaning is created through language
use within relationships, while discourses function
as the statements that produce knowledge, power
and truth claims. We cannot step outside of the
discourses through which our knowledge of
experience is produced, though their complexity
always allows us to resist particular identities
that are discursively available to us. Based on
interviews with 12 adoptees constituted within
the ‘closed’ adoption period between 1955 and
1985, this narrative analysis represents the way in
which the adoptive body matters to participants’
experiences of adoption and their resistances to the
discourses that produce knowledge of adoption:
Embodiment needed to be incorporated into this
discursive work. Knowing, accessing and beingin-
the-world are achieved through our senses in
everyday life. We engage and shape cultural norms
that enable and constrain corporeality. The adoptive
experience is lived and felt through bodies that
struggle to articulate their corporeality through
discourse. Without discourses fit for purpose,
speaking embodiment in and through adoption
is precarious and adoptees attempt to articulate
subjectivities beyond those allowed. This paper
discusses the strategies used to materialise body
matters in researching adoption.
Description
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Keywords
Adoption, Adoptees, Body, Identity, Birth family, Adoptive family, Reunion