Stories of swimming and the embodied self in a three-dimensional narrative inquiry of transgender swimming experience.

Abstract

Against a backdrop of narrative inquiry that rarely gives attention to the occasion of storytelling in its third-dimension—its narrative environment or place—this article provides an illustration from a recent narrative inquiry into the swimming experiences of a local transgender community group. I demonstrate how stories are at work sequentially in the narrative environment or place, and shine a light on how the embodied biographies of researcher and participants are in constant dialogue with one another, shaped by and shaping research process, its stories, and associated selves and identities over time. I emphasize the way knowledge is subject to social conditions and place, and researcher and participant’s embodied biographies. In listening and attending to the social organisation of the storying process we can create conditions that allow us to shift experiences and change the larger social, cultural and institutional narratives to live by.