Warning W a r n in g Concerning C o n c e r n in g Copyright C o p y rig h t Restrictions R e s tr ic tio n s The T h e copyright c o p y r ig h t law la w of o f the th e United U n ite d States S ta te s (Title (T itle 17, 1 7 , United U n ite d States S ta te s Code) C o d e ) governs g o v e rn s the th e making m a k in g of o f photocopies p h o to c o p ie s or o r other o th e r reproductions r e p r o d u c tio n s of o f copyrighted c o p y rig h te d material. m a te r ia l. Under U n d e r certain c e r ta in conditions c o n d itio n s specified s p e c ifie d in in the th e law, la w , libraries lib ra r ie s and a n d archives a rc h iv e s are a re authorized a u th o r iz e d to to furnish fu r n is h a a photocopy p h o to c o p y or o r other o th e r reproduction. r e p r o d u c tio n . One O n e of o f these th e s e specific s p e c ific conditions c o n d itio n s is is that th a t the th e photocopy p h o to c o p y or o r reproduction r e p r o d u c tio n is is not n o t to to be b e “used “ u s e d for fo r any a n y purpose p u rp o s e other th a n private p r iv a te study, s tu d y , scholarship, s c h o la r s h ip , or o r research.” r e s e a r c h .” If If a a user user o th e r than makes m akes a a request r e q u e s t for, fo r, or o r later la te r uses, uses, a a photocopy p h o to c o p y or o r reproduction r e p r o d u c tio n for fo r purposes p u r p o s e s in in excess e x c e s s of o f “fair “fa ir use,” u s e ,” that th a t user u s e r may m a y be b e liable lia b le for fo r copyright c o p y rig h t infringement. in fr in g e m e n t. This T h is institution in s titu tio n reserves r e s e r v e s the th e right r ig h t to to refuse re fu s e to judgment, to accept accept a a copying c o p y in g order o r d e r if, if, in in its its ju d g m e n t, fulfillment fu lfillm e n t of o f the th e order o rd e r would w o u ld involve in v o lv e violation v io la tio n of o f copyright c o p y r ig h t law. la w . 3 Routledge Taylor &. Francis Group International Journal of International Journal of Qualitative Qualitative Studies Studies in in Education Education ISSN: (Print) (Print) (Online) (Online)Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tqse20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tqse20 ISSN: Journal homepage: Avowing Avowing as as healing healing in in qualitative qualitative inquiry: inquiry: exceeding exceeding constructions constructions of of normative normative inquiry inquiry and and confession confession in in research research with with undocumented undocumented youth youth Sophia Sophia Rodriguez Rodriguez & & Aaron Aaron M. M. Kuntz Kuntz To cite cite this this article: article: Sophia Sophia Rodriguez Rodriguez & & Aaron M. Kuntz Kuntz (2021): (2021): Avowing Avowing as as healing healing in in To Aaron M. qualitative inquiry: inquiry: exceeding exceeding constructions constructions of of normative normative inquiry inquiry and and confession confession in in research research qualitative with with undocumented undocumented youth, youth, International International Journal Journal of of Qualitative Qualitative Studies Studies in in Education, Education, DOI: DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 10.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 To To link link to to this this article: article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 https://doi.Org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 Published Jun 2021. Published online: online: 07 07Jun 2021. Of Submit your article to to this this journal Submit your article journal C View related related articles articles C7 View View Crossmark Crossmark data data (~7 View Full Full Terms Terms & & Conditions Conditions of of access access and and use use can can be be found found at at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tqse20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journal lnformation?journalCode=tqse20 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OL QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION https://d0i.0rg/l 0.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1930256 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group I® Check for updates Avowing as healing in qualitative inquiry: exceeding constructions of normative inquiry and confession in research with undocumented youth Rodriguez3a Sophia Rodriguez Kuntzbb © and Aaron M. Kuntz a Department of Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Leadership, University of Maryland College Park, College department Department of Counseling, Recreation, and School Psychology, Florida International Park, MD, USA; b‘’Department University, Miami, FL, USA ABSTRACT ABSTRACT This article problematizes the role of the interview as a methodological strategy that loses its easy replication when employed in studies with undocumented youth. We raise questions about the contingencies of conducting qualitative interviews with undocumented youth –- what does it mean leverage the interview-event as a space of healing for them? What does it mean to recognize, or potentially mis-recognize one's identity in the context of a research interview? How might inquiry one’s function in exploring the uncertainties of an avowed identity and concon­ tribute not to normalization but to healing and justice? To engage such questions, we specifically examine the implications of interview practices as a dangerous (and productive) site where concerns of confession entangle with the potential for avowal as a resistive participatory pracprac­ tice. This paper argues that the confessional interview offers a moment of advocacy and healing through the avowal of their experience occuoccu­ pying undocumented identities. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 10 August 2020 2021 Accepted 29 April 2021 KEYWORDS Avowal; confession; qualitative interview; foucault; undocuundocu­ mented youth Introduction Gabby,11 uttered, ‘I'I don’t don't usually like to talk about my situsitu­ An undocumented high school youth, Gabby, ation. You don’t don't know who to trust. Our conversations are helpful. They only made me realize the importance of telling my story because [[... … ] we’re we're hushed. I wanted to share my experiences I'm seeking justice – - setting a platform, to encourage others to in your research context because I’m do the same’ same' (Interview, 4/2017). Gabby, among other undocumented youth in our research (Rodriguez, 2017, 2020a, 2020b), often engage in conversations about their immigration status with trusted adults in schools or through community-based organizations. However, the decision to disclose their status is fraught and carries with it the weight of potential exclusion, or worse, undocu­ the fear of deportation and family separation (Jefferies & Dabach, 2014). Research about undocubar­ mented students is evolving, particularly about their experiences of belonging, activism, and barriers to educational equity (Gonzales, 2016; Mangual Figueroa, 2017). Yet, less work has addressed how research processes impact youth, potential for advocacy, and how undocuundocu­ mented voices offer a unique epistemology themselves as part of the knowledge production process through research (Aguilar, 2019). CONTACT Sophia Rodriguez © srodrig4@umd.edu Q University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD 207425031, USA ß 2021 © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 22 (g) S. In response, this article raises questions about the role our research methods and ways of knowing play in the lives of undocumented youth, the potential for inquiry-as-advocacy (Kuntz, 2015), and the risks that researchers take when trying to engage in forms of ethical inquiry that do more than report personal positionalities. Instead, we utilize the interview space to center undocuvoices22 as knowledge-producers. This article specifically problematizes the role of the undocuvoices interview as a methodological strategy that loses its easy replication when employed in studies with undocumented youth; thus, we engage in a productive ‘critique’ 'critique' of the interview as a methmeth­ 1988).33 Throughout the article, we use the term interviewiCBA n te r v ie w odological tool often used (Foucault, 1988). event e v e n t to encompass the relational, reflexive, productive, and ethical dimensions of the interview space that we explore –- the collapsing of time and space and power dynamics of an interview in order to open up affective and ethical possibilities. We argue that this is needed when researching undocumented, and often invisible or minoritized, populations. We raise questions about the challenges and opportunities of conducting qualitative interviews with undocumented youth – - what does it mean to leverage the interview-event as a space of healing for them on their terms? How might inquiry function in exploring the uncertainties of an avowed identity (defined below) and contribute not to normalization but to healing and justice? To engage such questions, we theorize the interview-event, and the role that confession and avowal (all terms defined below; Foucault, 1978, 1978, 2014) can play as a form of resistive participatory practice, espeespe­ cially for minoritized and sensitive populations. We center undocuvoices to explore the implicaimplica­ tions of confession and avowing as healing. In this article we place a large degree of theoretical emphasis on the notion of avowal, a v o w a l , parpar­ ticularly as it extends from Michel Foucault’s Foucault's work on the confession as a means to produce govgov­ ernable (and docile) subjects. Throughout, we understand avowal a v o w a l as an enacted process that invokes an identity claim (through avowal, a v o w a l , one claims that one is something). s o m e t h i n g ) . Further, as expliexpli­ Foucault's work, avowal a v o w a l is enacted at the intersection of truth claims (elements cated throughout Foucault’s of veridiction) and the claims of the judicial system (elements of jurisdiction). This differentiates avowal a v o w a l from confession c o n f e s s i o n in that the former invokes a simultaneously individual and state-level identity whereas the latter articulates as a series of acts that may well run counter to one’s one's overover­ arching identity. More simply put, with avowal a v o w a l one reinscribes an identity (I am this) whereas confession c o n f e s s i o n recognizes actions that might not align with one’s one's identity (I did this, but that is out of character for me). What interests us regarding avowal a v o w a l are the possibilities for such enactments to bring together elements of truth and governance in ways that might be healing, even a v o w a l enacted empowering, for those who would otherwise be governed into docility. This is avowal as a means to disrupt the otherwise smooth intersection of veridiction and jurisdiction such that normative governmental claims and practices are no longer easy or all-encompassing. Contribution This article augments post-structural approaches to methodological inquiry in general, and to the interview more specifically, in order to consider alternative enactments of qualitative research for healing and social justice. For us, this begins with a reconsideration of the interview as both an epistemological orientation and research practice. In what follows, we address the post-strucpost-struc­ tural turn in qualitative inquiry, particularly its influence on the qualitative interview, and the ways in which truth, power, and subjectivities productively emerge within select contexts. Specifically, we engage with Foucault’s Foucault's (1978) concept and critique of the ‘confession’ 'confession' (often invoked in criticisms of traditional formations of the interview) and differentiate it from his later notion of ‘avowal’ 'avowal' (a concept found less often within the methodological literature). We argue that avowal becomes useful for theorizing the qualitative interview with unique populations research.44 To this end, we such as the undocumented immigrant youth we encounter in our research. unpack notions of ‘confession’ 'confession' (Foucault, 1978) 1978) and ‘avowal’ 'avowal' (Foucault et al., 2014) in qualitative INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 3 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF inquiry –- such terms take on layered importance when considered with those populations that legitim­ remain relatively hidden on the periphery of society, existing outside the visible norm of legitimate subjecthood. We do so in order to consider the complexities and possibilities inherent in acts of confession and avowal as a relational element of inquiry practice. After theorizing the interview-event and concepts of avowal and confession, we explore data fromRodriguez’s fromRodriguez's (2020a, 2020b, 2021) critical ethnography of undocumented youth perceptions of belonging, citizenship, identity, and racialized discrimination. Through our engagement with this data, we argue that the notion of avowal both complicates and produces an important way of understanding healing for marginalized undocumented youth not available under the frameframe­ work of the confessional. In this instance, far from a normalizing practice, the interview offers a productive intervention into the narrative status quo, an entry point into possibilities for social change at local and more macro-oriented levels that begin with ethical claims on necessary change. Simply stated, the interview offered a means to heal and address the symbolic and real violence of inequity participants encountered in our contemporary moment. That healing began implica­ with practices of avowal that articulated through the interview process. We thus offer implicaother­ tions for the use of such Foucauldian concepts in methodological processes, linking the otherwise bifurcated claims of epistemology with methodology. Background Conventional qualitative interviews Perhaps because of its historical alignment with cultural assumptions regarding the contained and essential Self, the interview has gained dominant prominence within the methodological litlit­ aus­ erature, particularly among qualitative researchers in education (Roulston, 2010). Within the auspices of conventional research methods, the interview functions as a mechanism for uncovering truths about human experience and as a means to represent such experiences with fidelity and authenticity. Further, through its ubiquity, the conventional interview interview55 serves as a prominent bridge between theoretical orientation and methodological practice (simultaneously demonstratdemonstrat­ ing a belief in individualized processes of meaning-making and as a technique for making such meaning visible/legible). This often results in the commonsensical use of interviews as a research method without full consideration of the theoretical assumptions implied by the practice, a cricri­ tique recognized by several methodological scholars (Kuntz, 2015; Popkewitz, 1984). 1984). Indeed, there remains no shortage of ‘how 'how to’ to' procedural manuals regarding the proper employment of 'conceptualizing' the interview within specific contexts the interview that attempt a new spin on ‘conceptualizing’ (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2009; Roulston, 2010; Roulston et al., 2003). Despite this, uncritical uses of the interview as a research practice continue, and scholars from all disciplines would do well to consider the means by which this method implies normalized epistemological assumptions regarding what can be known and how we might come to such knowledge. After all, no methmeth­ odological practice is fully innocent and without a theoretical orientation or epistemological stance, research practices are often invoked to reinscribe contemporary norms as much as to challenge them (Popkewitz, 1984; 1984; Snow et al., 2003). The manner in which conventional interviewing practices function to create normative views about groups has not gone unnoticed by critical scholars who refuse the epistemological assumptions inherent in this research method. Often, such critiques extend from a concern for what the interview asks of participants (that they, for example, must construct a core self to interview).66 Such criticisms often situate the interview as reveal to the researcher through the interview). replicating the power dynamics seen in the confessional, wherein the researcher receives the confessed experience of the participant. In this instance, power is unequally distributed among researcher-participants; power resides within the one who receives the articulated experience 4 S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 4 (g) S. and confession. This one-sided relation remains especially problematic when researchers work with vulnerable or underrepresented populations. As an extension of such concerns, qualitative methodologists have come to question what ‘voice’ 'voice' means and how researchers can ethically, if at all, rescue the term (Lather, 1991; Mazzei, 2013). Examples of how voice is constructed within research contexts most often point to the interview as a research technique for manufacturing, and eventually representing, voice in often problematic ways. Further, the commonplace critiques of interviews seem to align with parallel arguments made about qualitative research more broadly: the binary of the ‘authentic, 'authentic, caring’ caring' interviewer versus the ‘disinterested, 'disinterested, neo-positivist’ neo-positivist' interviewer (Roulston, 2010), for example. This is to say that concerns regarding the interview often serve as a microcosm of debates within 2006).77 qualitative research more generally (Schwandt, 2006). For those of us who are motivated by an ethical determination to invoke material change for otherwise vulnerable humans through our inquiry, we remain interested in thinking differently uni­ about the often-quick critiques of interviewing as necessarily confessional and expressive of unidimensional formations of power. Further, in our own work we find value in the interview as a means for inquiry –- we are not yet ready to do away with this research approach, despite its problematic histories. While we are uninterested in sensationalizing the qualitative interview as a 'romantic' construction (Roulston, 2010), we remain invested in halting the often simplistic and ‘romantic’ over-utilized critique that interviews are confessions and confessions are bad. Instead, we hope to complicate the effects of confessing practices from a post-structuralist orientation, and what that offers interviews with populations such as undocumented immigrant youth in our research. pro­ Perhaps the interview makes possible more than procedurized confessions, revealing the productively complicated issues at work here. This article illustrates how the interview offered moments of healing through the avowal of undocumented youth identities, extending beyond conventional interviewing and challenging its definitions and manifestations in qualitative research practice. Qualitative interviewing: procedural or ethical, a false divide? Critical methodological perspectives often refuse a clean separation between method, epistemolepistemol­ ogy, and ontology that remains a hallmark of positivism. Instead of clean division, a critical perper­ spective recognizes the entangled nature of research practices and the theoretical assumptions that inform them. As noted earlier, this uniquely manifests when considered within the context of the interview. For instance, peruse any introductory qualitative research textbook and one will note that this methodological technique assumes a layering or excavation metaphor for knowknow­ ing. That is, knowledge of experience is understood to be buried within the person and in need of extraction. As a consequence, the conventional interview becomes a means to uncover and make legible participant experiences for others. Here, the interview is a technique for accessing experien­ what already exists –- it does not create new knowledge but, instead, uncovers a priori experiences. To do so, the interviewer creates carefully crafted interview questions that orient from a larger research question and are asked (in the same order) of all participants in the study. Conventional interviews take place in environments that are ‘comfortable’ 'comfortable' for participants – meaning they lack distraction and environmental familiarity paves the way for easy articulation. In such instances, the participant’s participant's only role is to respond to the interviewer’s interviewer's questions – - to articulate some previous experience that the interviewer seeks to uncover. This leads to a scenscen­ ario in which participant experiences are ordered to ‘make 'make sense’ sense' according to the researcher’s researcher's frame of knowing. Through methodological translation, participant experiences are disciplined into normalized legibility. In such an instance, an epistemological practice (a means of coming to know) determines an ontological event (an experience that links to an identity). It is through the blurring of INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 5 5 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF epistemological practice with an ontological event that confessional concerns often arise. Yet, what remains perhaps most telling is that such engagement (whether critical or complimentary) with the interview pinpoints the means by which assumptions of knowing become procedurized techniques; that is, where epistemology meets method. It is as though methodological scholars are looking for interviews in all the wrong places, missing the interaction (of the epistemic with the ontic) that holds the most promise for sustained change in favor of an unfortunate fixation on technique (where the epistemic manifests method). Further, those methodological scholars who do question the implication of research practices on ontological levels often seem to favor an erasure of inquiry practices (such as the interview) all together. In what follows, we champion a different approach –- one in which ontological assumptions of being, epistemological concerns of knowing, and methodological engagements with coming to know are more productively entangled at the site of the interview-event (defined below). What remains interesting about the conventional use of the interview within the field of qualitative research is that while it is often embraced for the means by which it accesses some ‘authentic’ 'authentic' or ‘pure’ 'pure' experience or identity, its technical use as a research method actively works against such claims. That is, employing the interview draws on a ‘logic 'logic of extraction’ extraction' (Kuntz, 2015) that distances confected data and analyses from any ‘real 'real event.’ event.' In short, far from uncovering or making visible some a priori event or identity (assumptions regarding the excavating metaphor noted above), the interview process remains a technical creation: it produces something that was not there before. For example, a conventional interview process in which a participant’s participant's responses are reduced to an audio recording, then a written transcription and subsequently coded and categorized to fit within a broader collection of evidence (as examined in Kuntz, 2015). Thus, it remains important to refuse claims of the interview as some type of innocent techtech­ nique or technology (brought to bear as an external and ordering apparatus upon some experiexperi­ enced event) and to, instead, situate the interview as, itself, a relationally-bound event. Doing so shifts the nature of the questions asked of the interview from those of revelation (what does the interview reveal; what does its ordering make visible?) and to those of creation (what does an interview make possible; what phenomena come to be through the interview?). More than mere wordplay, this shift posits that engaging in the interview process is an element of work, of strivstriv­ ing to make possible that which did not exist before its enactment. Herein Flerein lies the productive danger of the interview –- it might challenge the status quo (what currently is) in order to genergener­ ate a different future (what has yet to be). It is in this transition that we find such promise for articu­ the interview as an inquiry practice where healing might occur; a repairing and renewing articucircumstan­ lation of what it means to operate within otherwise socially unjust contexts. Yet such circumstances are only available if the interview process is oriented away from confessing norms and conceptu­ towards the potential of avowal. As such, we reimagine the interview-event and then conceptualize confession and its link to this notion of avowal as an entry point for discussing how avowal functions to exceed the normative functions of procedural interviewing. Reimagining the interview-event Our claim regarding the interview-event and moments of avowal in our interviews (describe later) intend to (re)assert the ontology of the interview as entangled with epistemological assumptions and methodological techniques. Conventional uses of the interview tend to collapse epistemology and method, as the interviewee’s interviewee's articulation of self and experience is taken as both an expression of what is iCBA s and can c a n be b e known k n o w n as well as a technique for making such knowknow­ ledge legible. In this conflation, the interview is made into a procedural act, with the researcher’s researcher's role performed by extracting the knowledge possessed by the interviewee. By posing the interinter­ view as an ontological event, we argue that the conventional perspective obscures the S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 66 (g) S. complexities of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee as it unfolds. Further, by foregrounding the interview-event, we locate the productive potential of its enactment not in 'voice' but rather in the actual the representation, liberation, or empowerment of a silenced ‘voice’ exchange of questions, responses, assertions, and rebuttals that play out in real time. This perper­ spective gives interview techniques new meaning –- not as procedures for revealing hidden truths, but as moves which actively open and close possibilities for response and understanding within the relational encounter of the interview itself. Theoretical perspective(s) Confession perspectives,88 specifically Foucault’s Foucault's notions of confession and We engage with poststructural perspectives, avowal in order to reimagine the interview-event as a space of healing for undocumented youth contempor­ in our research. As Kvale (2006) has noted, the confession plays a significant role in contemporary culture, particularly when aligned with the power asymmetries inherent in interview projects. In this sense, the interview replicates the power dynamics of the traditional confession as 'participants' verbalize their experiences to a knowing ‘researcher’ 'researcher' who, in turn, recreates the parpar­ ‘participants’ ticipants’ ticipants' subjecthood through the technical processes of data analysis and dissemination. Indeed, in this instance, ‘participants’ 'participants' are subjected to the apparatus of the confession. In concon­ trast, we explicate this notion of confession as an enacted research practice and subsequently differentiate such practices from the notion of avowal. We then argue for avowal’s avowal's productive undocu­ and transformative potential for the subject-making of marginalized groups such as undocumented immigrant youth in our research, and focus on the collective voices of undocumented youth and on Gabby’s Gabby's (from the outset of the article) ongoing refusal to be integrated into a conventional narrative of confession. H CBA i s t o r y of of S e x u a l i t y Foucault (1978) situates the confession as one of the ‘main 'main rituals in In the History Sexuality the production of truth’ truth' (p. 56). This orientation of the confession in relation to truth remains important as confessing practices aim not to change the self but to reveal it (Taylor, 2009). Thus, b e f o r e the actual act of confession. As such, it is that the confessing self is believed to exist before through confession the self is made visible to governing apparatuses of power –- the confessed self is the governed self. Foucault (1978) thus critiques the central role of confession as a techtech­ nology for governance in Western society. Further, Foucault argues that confessing cultures remain obsessed with ‘the 'the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself, in between the mirage' (p. 59). words, a truth which the very form of the confession holds out like a shimmering mirage’ In this understanding, individuals confess not because they are interested in social change or individual growth, but to reveal a truth about their aa ppriori r i o r i selves; they confess to reveal the truth of their timeless identities. Relatedly, confession might be read to assume an outcome –perhaps one where individuals are absolved, pardoned, freed or liberated of guilt or other feelfeel­ ings that were hidden within the confessed. In this way, confession manufactures a response to subjective truth, calling forth the feeling that one must speak a certain set of self-truths in order to dissolve the very emotions that confession manufactures. As a consequence, the one who receives the confession remains in the power-laden position to both interpret the confession and point to possibilities for absolving others of their confessed identity. 'true' Relatedly, qualitative researchers are no strangers to the practice of excavating the ‘true’ selves of their participants, often asking others to confess the deeply held beliefs, desires, and values of their experiences in order to achieve some researched end. This assumed confessing relation has led scholars such as Tuck and Yang (2014) to condone practices of ‘rescue 'rescue research’ research' –- that is, research conducted to rescue some marginalized or otherwise silenced subject group from their culturally-absent position (the simplistic assumption critiqued by Tuck and Yang being that the creation of a subject-self is, as a matter of course, always emancipatory). As an INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 7 7 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF extension, Foucault situates confession as entangled in a larger set of power relations veiled as liberatory. Similarly, we situate the researcher as complicit in these power relations since it matmat­ ters who one is confessing to, towards what end, and for whose expressed purposes. Aligned with Foucault’s Foucault's critique of the confession for its coercive mechanisms, we recognize that the interview can be a risky space for the participant and the researcher, especially if researchers fail to problematize the processes and power relations engendered in the interview-event. As such, we find additional risk and promise in considerations of inquiry, as ensconced in processes of avowal –- practices that perhaps destabilize the traditionally-power laden practice of qualitative inquiry through an enacted confession. Avowal occurs within confession; a productive moment of change that is often glossed over in cursory engagements with the confessing subject in research. Therefore, it is to avowal that we turn our attention next. Avowal a CBA v o w a l as a process that shifts from claiming Following Foucault et al. (2014), we recognize avowal d i d this or that) to one of enacted identity (I am a m this or that). In this way, actions or practices (I did avowal breaks from confession through a focus on identity over practice (one can confess, for one's prior identity example, a series of illicit practices, be absolved of such acts, and go on with one’s intact –- such circumstance is not possible in avowal). Further, the revelatory identification of avowal is necessarily bound within the judicial system wherein one avows transgressive acts (as ('I am a criminal in need of reform’). reform'). Here, Flere, assertions an identity) in need of immediate correction (‘I preemp­ of past actions necessitate legitimated present-day claims of identity in order to legalize preemptive acts of the state to foreclose a possible future. Perhaps more simply stated, I identify past illicit actions as substantiating my avowal as a criminal, in order to allow the state to invoke corcor­ rective action on the avowed self. The truth of the subject is thus given a determined relation to Foucault's language, veridiction becomes intimately linked with governmental forms of justice (in Foucault’s jurisdiction). Traditional forms of research play no small role in such normalizing processes. Foucault's work also contends that And yet, the process of avowing that we explore through Foucault’s once individuals avow, they create the potential for both punishment and healing. Thus, while avowing can be a powerful moment and a movement towards justice and healing (in our case for participants and researchers alike), we also question whether this process and the power relarela­ tions embedded in the researcher bearing witness to such moments (effects of their creation) might play out in a similar process as we critiqued the process of confession. In other words, we underscore that these moments when undocumented youth avow their undocumentedness. u n d o c u m e n t e d n e s s . To point out the liminality and contingency of this avowed identity, Sophia has defined undocuundocu­ mentedness m e n t e d n e s s as ‘a 'a status they occupy due to institutional racism, profiling, racialization, and sursur­ veillance; not one that ought to overdetermine their being –- that enables them to powerfully critique immigration policy and schools’ schools' roles in perpetuating deficit discourses about the “problems” "problems" the undocumented subjectivity presents’ presents' (Rodriguez, 2020b, p. 4). The avowed identiidenti­ ties become useful as part of their strategy to seek justice through research acts. We do not claim that this is the only o n l y way that they can reclaim identities or selves, though. Instead, we observe how youth in this research engage in the interview-event to disrupt perceptions about their immigration status and personhood. Avowal remains somewhat enigmatic as it develops through an ongoing and entangled interinter­ change among all elements of the interview-event. That is, though at times seemingly concrete, acts of avowal are also necessarily contingent and ongoing. Indeed, Foucault established the internalization of avowing practices as emblematic of a cultural collapse of truth and justice (as we avow our identities, we situate them within a cultural ethic of right and wrong). How Flow might that very collapse (of truth with justice) reconfigure conventional identities along new ethical lines? That is, might the act of avowal animate new relations among identity and ethics S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 88 (g) S. previously unavailable before the avowing act? It is in this possibility that we locate promise for avowal to play a productive role in issues of inquiry and social justice. This remains especially important as we witness an ongoing normalization of avowing acts within political discourse. The proliferation of avowal leads to its ordinary repetition – - acts of avowal no longer only take place in the courtroom or some other dramatic locale, they are constituted in the mundane. On the one hand, the mundane evocation of avowal makes it all the more difficult to escape: avowal thus becomes a principal element of governance (of the self, by the self). On the other m CBA i s t a k e n proclamaproclama­ hand, the ubiquity of avowing practices marks the potential for productively mistaken tions of the self (a mis-characterization of who one is, in that moment, at that time). It is in this uncertain element that we find avowal as both dangerous and imbued with productive potential. After all, to disclose and undocumented identity marks youth and places them potentially at risk in a U.S. society that criminalizes and targets this population. What is one to do, for example, when another avows an identity with no certain or determined link to some judicial outcome? That is, might the promise of avowal extend from breaks in the previously determined relation of veridiction (truth-telling) and jurisdiction (claims of legality or legitimacy)? What truths are possible, then, if avowing undocumentedness functions to disrupt normative understandings of their personhood in hopes of healing? How might inquiry itself be a mechanism for provoking such breaks, for exploring the contingent possibility of avowal? In this sense, contingent avowal might present opportunities not for the normalization of identity (as is so often the case with confession) but for a healing rupture situated within an avowal. That is, perhaps recognizing an avowed identity as never fixed can offer a strategic engagement with identity-construction that is both healing (not requiring a disavowal that can be repetitively painful) and disruptive to the normative order. With the populations we work, these strategic engagements were evident as undocumented youth sought opportunities to ‘share 'share their story’ story' and promote justice for others in their community. Linking avowal in the interview-event with undocumented youth To explore the productive possibility of avowing within a broader interview-event, we turn now to our research with undocumented youth. While our article is primarily conceptual in nature, we explicated Foucault’s Foucault's critique of the confession in order to advance our claim that the notion of avowal is useful for methodological events such as the qualitative interview with undocuundocu­ mented youth. We thus discuss how avowal might promulgate healing in complicated yet propro­ ductive ways through integrating conceptual and empirical data. data.99 A collection of of interview-event(s) This section shares undocuvoices to ground how their immigration status, as piece of their ideniden­ tity, shapes their life course, and how they shared their stories through the interview-event to disrupt the systemic inequity and forms of exclusion they face, and open up spaces of healing through our research encounters. These youth were selected from the larger project because Sophia's fieldwork (Rodriguez, 2020b). Then, they were each interviewed multiple times during Sophia’s we return to Gabby from the outset of the article to deepen our exploration of avowal as healing. Avowing in these instances took different forms and we unravel a few examples through undocumented youth Olivia, Julia, and Gwen below, including: acknowledging the challenges of the avowed identity as undocumented and the possibilities for disrupting damaging narratives about it while experience healing through connection and solidarity with the researcher and additional undocumented youth. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 9 9 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF Olivia, an undocumented youth, called me (Sophia) to discuss postsecondary aspirations, chalchal­ lenges and fears. The minute I heard her voice, ‘Um, 'Urn, Hi, Miss?’; Miss?'; ‘Olivia’?? 'Olivia'?? ‘Yes, 'Yes, yes, it’s it's me,’ me,' I laughed and said how good it was to hear her voice and that she surprised me with her call. She continued, ‘Do 'Do you have a minute to talk about something?’ something?' I knew she was on the verge of recom­ graduating from college because we stayed in contact after the study. I wrote letters of recommendation for her to secure a scholarship. As I listened to her, I had a flashback of the first time I met her as a high school freshman and learned that she had recently arrived to the U.S. with her family. Interrupting my remembering, she said, ‘I'I have been accepted to graduate school don't know what to do because of my immigration status and the financial part.’ part.' and I don’t By centering Olivia here, we recall the fears and challenges that accompany pieces of the poten­ undocumented identity, a marker that shapes their life course and mobility in addition to potentially risking their lives and families through separation and deportation (Gonzales, 2016). When Olivia, or any other youth calls me to discuss school or family situations, the flood of memories return. I think simultaneously as a researcher and advocate about how I began interviews and observations with them as part of the research and the resources I tried to secure on their behalf over the years. As a researcher, I encountered many moments of fumbling through interview protocols, sticking to the ‘procedural’ 'procedural' aspects of the research process in order to ensure ‘good’ 'good' research (Tracy, 2010) while recognizing the need for organic moments, such as phone calls or urgent texts about ICE or deportation encounters, to emerge as they grappled with everyday uncertainty. Despite the ‘best’ 'best' (read: scientific, objective) intentions, ethical dilemmas emerged in pro­ moments that I had to make decisions about sticking to the procedural-technical interview protocols or opening up spaces to discuss things that were more urgent for youth. At times, this warranted meandering through conversations during ‘interviews 'interviews or questioning whether or not "interview data.”’ data.'" In the research space, stories like Olivia’s Olivia's were comcom­ organic conversations were “interview 'tell their story’ story' while remainremain­ mon, and so was the tension of leveraging the interview-event to ‘tell ing an excluded or hidden population. Coming out as undocumented could present risks to activ­ their livelihood or families, or provoke opportunities for solidarity, knowledge-sharing, and activothers' avowals of their undocumentedness enabled ism (Rodriguez, 2020a). Yet, Olivia and others’ deeper connection with each other and me. Another example of how youth avowed their identity was when Julia avowed, ‘You’re 'You're probprob­ ably gonna want to interview me since I am undocumented’ Many youths, in expressing their undocumented' desire to be understood in schools and describe their exclusion and isolation, engaged in avowavow­ ing an undocumented identity. For example, Julia, said: ‘People 'People don’t don't understand the isolation we feel. That’s you.’ As part of the research process, Julia explained that That's why I like talking to you.' Latinx groups are misrepresented in society and naming herself undocumented could help disdis­ rupt the perceptions of them. She shared: ‘We 'We need more of our voices to break down the close-mindedness in society. Sharing our stories is part of that.’ that.' Similarly, Gwen upon meeting me shared about her and her family’s family's status as undocumented in order to showcase positive perceptions of immigrants. She explained: ‘I'I think we need to think or dream higher. This is why I give a shit. Both of my parents did not get educated. My mom had to share pencils with her siblings. Like, they would break a pencil to share, how could they college?' afford to go to college?’ These examples of Olivia, Julia, and Gwen avowing reveals how their undocumentedness iden­ posed challenges to their educational aspirations but also how avowing an undocumented identity allowed them to share a platform about the challenges they faced and the opportunities to disrupt negative perceptions about this population. 'People in society don’t don't realize how we Latinx immigrants Similarly, Gabby further explained: ‘People contribute to the economy because they just don’t don't want us here. It’s It's racism. We gotta break down boundaries.’ boundaries.' Across these avowals were signs of hope and fear, and inspiration and unceruncer­ tainty. Each of these avowals during interview-events revealed how youth use uCBA s e interviews as spaces to resist negative perceptions about immigrants, both confessing and avowing their 10 (g) S. S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 10 undocumentedness as a challenge and refusal to deficit-based discourses. Centering these colcol­ lective avowals reveal the ongoing educational process offered by youth. These youth saw interinter­ views as strategic points for intervention in the normative framing of their lives. Within the context these interview-events with the youth above, we question the role of researchresearch­ ers and producers of knowledge about the undocumented community and continually center their experience through the lens of avowal (Foucault, 1982). Thinking through the process of interviewing undocumented youth in relation to the realities of their lives, it became critical to reconsider how the interview-event was troubling and productive. Despite reservations, and of course limitations, about collecting and telling stories through these ‘confessional’ 'confessional' interviews, we posit that the knowledge that is generated from inquiries that center their experiences through avowing show the political pospos­ sibilities and examples of local resistance to larger oppressive structures, policing, and politics. These undocumented youths' youths’ avowals become the material made possible through a reconception of the ‘confessional’ 'confessional' interview-event, which carries with it awareness of power and possibility but does not fully erase traditional articulations of interviews. Interview-event with a singular story of of the multiple To explore the utility of avowing as healing in our reconceptualization of the interview-event, we Gabby's experience of avowing her identity as undocumented, and in return to Gabby. We link Gabby’s doing so the productive possibility for justice and healing from her perspective. Gabby attends a rural Title I high school that has a decreasing population of students, 160 in a building that could hold up to 1000 students. Over 80% of the students approximately 160 are Hispanic with most being undocumented. This is an anti-immigrant state with restrictive laws toward undocumented populations and risky for youth to self-report their undocumented status (Rodriguez, 2018; Rodriguez & Monreal, 2017). I (Sophia) spent several months at the school with minimal interactions with Gabby. In the first meeting, along with additional undocumented youth that came together for a youth leadership coalition, Gabby said nothing. A month later, with the help of the social worker, I met Gabby and three other students who spent the twohour focus group sharing their experiences of discrimination and fear of deportation. Again, Gabby was silent. I proceeded to set up an individual interview with Gabby for later that week. 'What do you want to know?’ know?' We share this recollection During the first meeting, Gabby uttered, ‘What to illustrate that avowing does not always happen immediately or willingly; rather, Gabby chose when to avow her undocumented identity and explained over the course of several encounters what it meant to her and how it shaped her everyday reality. Next, we share three additional moments of Gabby’s Gabby's avowing journey in the research. Moment one Moment one revealed that Gabby recognizes her position as an outsider to society as a non-citinon-citi­ zen. Avowing her identity-marker here as undocumented was critical because it is how society positions her rather than how she defines herself. She understands her racialized identity as an undocumented immigrant despite these categories not being racial ones (Telles et al., 2011). Gabby said: they're not going to even take that into consideration what it’s it's like People are just so closed-minded that they’re to not be a citizen, and be like, ‘Oh, 'Oh, really?’ really?' They think you’re you're just another one trying to game the system or whatever. But that’s that's a real problem. II live that every single day. It’s It's like my parents pay taxes, which I don't even understand. How are we outside the community but still pay into a system where there’s there's money don’t flowing, and we contribute to the community, to the economy, and stuff. They just don’t don't like us. There’s There's no logical reason. They’re They're just … ... Racism, you just don’t don't give a shit, and they’re they're just going to say no. They’re They're the ones with power. (3/2017) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 11 11 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF Moment two In moment two, Gabby speaks to the unstable nature of this avowal –- her naming herself as 10 undocumented.10 undocumented –- and explains the layered identities even within the status of undocumented. In other words, avowing means attaching herself to the legal status and its limitations but also connects her with a group of undocumented students that aids in solidarity. Gabby processes the challenges of becoming ‘DACAmented’ 'DACAmented' (Gonzales et al., 2014) and disagrees with the stratifistratifi­ cation it causes in the Latino undocumented immigrant community. Avowing identities as undocumented and with/out DACA adds complexity because DACA is a label that can legitimize (i.e. help gain access to resources in society and to higher education) one’s one's personhood (Abrego, n-Gonzales, 2020). She rejects how policies stratify and reproduce inequity 2008; Abrego & Negr o Negron-Gonzales, among undocumented young people. Her avowing reflects the tenuous aspects of being attached to the governing mechanisms that accompany the undocumented label, such as laws and policies that promote temporary, if any, relief for some undocumented youth. She discusses this tension: They say life in the United States is great. They came from Mexico. Most of them are the same; they’re they're like, 'we're DACA,’ DACA/ or this and that. But, then there’s there's me or my brother and sister who are like, well ok good ‘we’re for you. Moment three Gabby's avowal of an undocumented ideniden­ Moment three illustrated the complicated aspects of Gabby’s tity and her continued feelings of being troubled by her status in society while also grappling with the political, relational power of becoming a part of a larger social movement of undocuundocu­ mented youth organizers. She said, ‘I'I feel like for society, it’s it's like, Who’s Who's a different color? Oh, you’re Hispanic, and then that’s, you’re probably not a citizen. Even if you are, you're you’re still you're that's, Oh, you're going to be pointed as if you're you’re not, you know?’ know?' She explains the racism and discrimination she observes in her community toward Latinx immigrants broadly and the social isolation she and her family feel at times. Gabby’s Gabby's reflection here speaks to what we will argue is the healing power of avowing, despite its contingent and unstable features. Gabby said: I didn’t family’s situation before because I was scared of risking my family’s didn't talk about my family's family's legal case and fear of being deported. I also didn’t didn't have anyone to talk about my family’s family's situation and when you’re you're put through something so traumatic as that it’s it's hard to trust anyone, so I didn’t didn't trust anyone but I also didn’t didn't see anyone who truly desired to seek justice with my story as much as I did. Though that fear and trust issues –- I guess you can say –- became less of a problem as II grew older and started to see more situations like mine and only to come to find out that their stories were being hushed just like mines. Our conversations are helpful. They only made me realize the importance of telling my story and the rush to get it out there because with all the injustices happening around us and it only being hushed, that just couldn’t couldn't keep on happening and that’s that's when I understood I had to step up and speak up and step up as a role it's ok to model for others to help them understand that we need to speak up but most importantly that it’s do so. I feel like the main reason II wanted to share my experiences in your research context was because I’m I'm seeking justice – - setting a platform, to encourage others to do the same because that way we are bound to make great changes! Gabby avows her undocumented identity in each of these moments. Her undocumentedness links her to the judicial and institutional systems that govern undocumented lives (Foucault et al., 2014) on the one hand while also tapping into a set of relationships that she imagines and iden­ rejects negative attitudes toward Latinx immigrants. Through claiming an (admittedly risky) iden('undocumented' as a legal status), Gabby tity that is normatively read within a judicial frame (‘undocumented’ potentially disrupts such fixity and productively invokes her position differently (‘undocumented’ ('undocumented' as ‘justice’), engaged in ‘setting a platform’ for change, and enacting the relational solidarity as 'justice'), 'setting platform' part of her undocumentedness. In this instance, veridication and jurisdiction still, as Foucault 12 (g) S. S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 12 notes, entangle. However, Gabby’s Gabby's enacted avowal points to different effects from such relations –- effects that are potentially healing through their disruptive enactment. This is evidenced when she said, ‘I'I wanted to step up and speak up’ up' for others in her community. Next, we consider these moments in relation to the productive and precarious dimensions of avowal as a practice of truth-telling about selves in troubled political times. Discussion First, we return to notions of confession and avowal, which open ways of thinking about the interview-event as an entanglement of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumpassump­ tions and practices. As we stated at the outset of this article, both complementary and critical scholarship about the interview tend to focus on how epistemological assumptions are manifest in procedural techniques. Notions of confession and avowal shift our gaze instead to ontological concerns as well as the production of truths, power, and subjectivities which unfold in the interGabby's interviews highlight the productive potential as well as the view-event. Moments from Gabby’s risks of these complex entanglements. Second, we turn more directly to the notion of avowal inter­ and its use in understanding the complexities and potential for healing embedded in the interGabby's interview, we suggest that avowal can unsettle view. Turning again to moments from Gabby’s con­ both the researcher and interviewee, making inquiry a risky activity while destabilizing the coneth­ ventional interview from normative tendencies. We argue that engaging in interviews as an ethical and justice-oriented act requires inviting risk and de-stabilization, acknowledging that theoretical assumptions and practices of meaning making are never innocent but instead have material effects for those involved. 'risky activity’ activity' of the interview-event is the potential for such enacted Of course, part of the ‘risky frame­ de-stabilizations to be reinscribed (by participants of all types) within the normalizing frameworks that we perhaps most hope to challenge or disrupt. In other words, there always remains the potential for any inquiry practice to replicate the very systems one hopes to change. However, to our minds this is not a reason to discount the potential to invoke slippages away trad­ from normative processes through our inquiry work. Indeed, it seems the very epitome of a tradact­ itional liberal and non-progressive frame to refuse radical reconceptualizations of living and acting simply because they might reproduce what already exists. Thus, it is that in this discussion we address notions of interview-events and avowal in the spirit of philosophical experimentation (a critical orientation that we hope is shared by our readers). Notions of confession and avowal are useful in the assertion of the interview-event, as they link epistemological assumptions with the production of truths and subjectivities which consticonsti­ litera­ tute individual experiences and identities. While avowal is rarely utilized in methodological literature, we acknowledge the risk in stating that the confession may contain productive potential. In confes­ doing so, our intent is not to dismiss the exercise of power and knowledge embedded in confessional interviews, but rather to complicate the oversimplified critique that interviews are confesconfes­ sions and confessions are bad. In the confessional interview, the participant enacts a procedural revelation of an authentic self or experience in what is purportedly a liberating process, although such liberation is only conceived as possible in the presence of the researcher (i.e. when a parpar­ ticipant ‘shares 'shares their story’). story'). What we have sought to do through (re)introducing the notion of avowal and sharing interview-events with undocumented youth here, especially Gabby, is to question the belief that such power is totalizing and entirely one-sided. The interview does not exist in a binary of dominance and subjugation, or as purely confessional. Instead, the interview’s interview's potential for disruptive possibility lies in the recognition that ‘those 'those with less power are not simsim­ ply trapped within the totalization of an asymmetrical power relation; the less powerful find innumerable, creative, even powerful ways to resist inequity’ inequity' (Scheurich, 1997, 1997, p. 71). Gabby’s Gabby's interviews in particular contain instances of confession (I am this, but that does not mean I am INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 13 13 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF other or bad) and avowal –- her expression of an undocumented identity exposes her to normalnormal­ izing practices and interventions of governance (i.e. being identified and governed by her immiimmi­ gration status and subjected to racism), and, at the same time, opens a possibility for transgressing and contradicting such practices (rejecting society’s society's perceptions of undocumented immigrants, racism toward immigrants broadly, and questioning the contradictions in U.S. society such as being excluded as undocumented while paying taxes, Rodriguez, 2020b). In other words, by avowing her undocumented identity (rather than rejecting or ignoring it) Gabby risks the simsim­ ultaneity of governance, transgression, and healing. Arguing for Gabby’s Gabby's moments as ontological events, our focus lies not on how to extract knowledge but instead on exploring the contingencies and ambiguity of the interview itself, and what became possible through her expressions of identity and experience; the potential that is the enacted interview-event. As Scheurich (1997) explains, the interview occurs in ‘radical, 'radical, indeinde­ terminate ambiguity or openness … at the lived intersection of language, meaning, and commuopenness... commu­ nication’ nication' (p. 74). The interview is relational, as the questions being asked, the tone and context of the interview are all inscribed in the constitution of the moment, as interviewer and interinter­ viewee work through tensions, recollections, formulations, and performances. These interviewevents began not with convention interview protocols and questions such as: ‘How 'How old are you? Tell me about your school experiences?’ experiences?' but rather with youth avowing and wrestling with their undocumentedness. What stands out then, in the interviews with Gabby, are the ways in which both interviewer and interviewee are unsettled and the processes of meaning making are indeinde­ terminate. Gabby’s Gabby's avowal of an undocumented identity shifts across each moment, as she recrec­ ognizes the legal, political, and social relations of power which are caught up in the way she articulates her subjectivity. These moments expose her to legal structures which intervene in the 'undocumented,' but also provide opportunities for her to assert her own lives of those who are ‘undocumented,’ agency and capacity to transgress against those same disciplining powers –- ‘With 'With all the injustiinjusti­ ces happening around us and it only being hushed, that just couldn’t couldn't keep on happening.’ happening.' Risk and potential in avowal The uncertainty and ambiguity of the interview-event comprises both its risk and positive potenpoten­ tial. For the interviewer, the risk is situated in inciting confession or resorting to paternalistic notions of empowerment and ‘rescuing 'rescuing voice.’ voice.' This is the risk of normalization. In the case of an interview with an undocumented youth, these risks contain the possibility for harm by maintainmaintain­ ing or exacerbating existing inequities, but also misusing the responsibility and trust which are so precariously situated in such interactions. For the interviewee, the risk is in the violence of having their voice extracted or captured, but also in being made an object of normalizing and disciplinary techniques. Yet, we have argued throughout this paper that avowal contains the possibility of healing. Avowal provokes breaks in the pre-existing relations of veridiction and jur­ jurisdiction –- of disrupting Gabby’s Gabby's recognition of herself as undocumented and its relation to unjust legal system. It disrupts how Olivia, Julia, Gwen are viewed in society because of the undocumented status. As they engaged in activism and knowledge-sharing, they also reported by learning about each other’s other's struggle. This possibility relies on the unsettling of both interinter­ viewer to not insert themselves and interviewee at the center of the interview-event, as each must recognize avowal as contingent and ongoing. These youths’ youths' avowals opened up productive possibilities. In the first moment, Gabby calls out the experiences, trauma, and political conditions which have led to her identification as undocumented; she holds them up, examining if and how they relate, interact, and make sense when placed alongside one another. What she finds are deep contradictions which unsettle and frustrate her: ‘it’s 'it's like my parents pay taxes, which I don’t don't even understand. How are we outside the community but still pay into a systeAdditionally, she finds further fault with the essentialized 14 (g) S. S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 14 notion of ‘undocumented’ 'undocumented' which is embedded in her social interactions. In the third moment, she expresses a sense of healing and progress, suggesting that ‘our 'our conversations are helpful.’ helpful.' Each moment is unmistakably confessional. Sophia’s presence as a witness to these moments is Sophia's not incidental, but we argue that Gabby’s Gabby's avowal is also not immaterial. Her avowed identity took on different meanings as it unfolded during encounters with the interviewer, both respondrespond­ ing to the frame of knowing of the interviewer but also transgressing in conscious and unconuncon­ scious ways that altered her future possibilities. We can disentangle our use of these quotes from Gabby as saying something about who she ‘is,’ 'is,' but rather imagine them within an indeterindeter­ minate process of becoming. In each interview-event, Gabby expresses an unfixed identity that is avowed only to be exposed as contradictory and incomplete, so that new possibilities for justice and healing open up. In short, throughout the interview-event Gabby enacts the relation between identity, truth, governance, and ethics as necessarily entangled and incomplete. And, she does so through acts of avowal that refuse normative claims on what that avowed identity is and how it is to be interpreted by conventional judicial and veridictory discourses. Theorizing in this way enables us to disrupt and reengage the utility of the interview. Fejes and Nicoll (2015) contend that confessional approaches to interviews can orient participants toward particular insights, and once avowing identities, even if contingent, participants can undocu­ become self-advocating. In these complex political and cultural times, research with undocumented young people is particularly fragile, and both researchers and youth can feel ‘divided’ 'divided' and uncertain (Foucault, 1982). 1982). In these moments, however, we contend are opportunities for resistance, healing and possibility. These moments reveal words, tears, pauses, silences not reflected on the inquirer’s inquirer's publication or even the transcript – - but we ‘take 'take care’ care' of these stories as part of our ethical dilemmas as our researcher selves are ‘torn 'torn up’ up' and incomplete (Childers, 2012). Regarding the interviewer, we did not forget about her; rather, we attempted to de-center the subject/author/interviewer in a similar way to centering Gabby’s Gabby's avowal – - which both concon­ straints and liberates. Judith Butler (1990), along with Foucault and Derrida, have discussed how identity, considered as ‘an 'an effect’ effect' of knowledge production or discursive practice, becomes a pospos­ sibility. This paradox initiates an understanding that any ‘identity 'identity is neither totally determined nor fully arbitrary’ arbitrary' (p. 140). 140). Despite the drive in qualitative inquiry to be ‘reflexive,’ 'reflexive,' and focus on ‘positionality,’ 'positionality,' – - which are often engagements relegated to a paragraph in the methods sections of articles without deeper dissecting of the very power relationships and differentials that enable academic representation of research –- we aim instead to not recenter ourselves in the article. Instead, we attempted to display the tenuous and paradoxical avowals of undocumented youth –- where the researcher subjectivity necessarily dissolves in the interview-event. Undocumented youth strategized how to avow their identity marker of undocumented. They knew that in doing so, they were governed by the juridical meanings of the status. However, avowing also allowed them to reclaim themselves in relation to the communities they inhabit. They are involved in an ‘on-going 'on-going process of differentiation,’ differentiation,' which we argue occurs through these contingent moments of avowing parts of themselves in the interview-event. These moments of avow are critical for interrupting and resisting the historically and institutional concon­ ferred definitions of undocumented (Butler, 1990). Concluding thoughts In some ways, we are conflicted about sharing the moments with Gabby and the additional youth in this study in this format. It is impossible not to ask, as we write about the risks of concon­ ventional interviews and the disciplinary techniques which essentialize and reduce identity, ‘are 'are we participating in those very acts in this paper?’ We remain uncertain and unsettled about the paper?' use of Gabby’s Gabby's voice here with additional youth voices, so far removed from the time and place INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE QUALITATIVE STUDIES STUDIES IN IN EDUCATION EDUCATION @ 15 15 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF of its actual articulation and detached from the interaction between two individuals –- full of hishis­ tories and contingencies –- from which it emerged. Our hope is that by emphasizing the unceruncer­ tainty and ambiguity of the transcription and representation, we have made clear that the moments with Gabby cannot be fully captured or categorized, but that the use of her words, others' words, in this context do not detract from her claims that ‘the 'the main and the collection of others’ reason I wanted to share my experiences in your research context was because I’m I'm seekseek­ ing justice.' justice.’ In the end, scholars have certainly been correct to question the multiple means by which research practices simultaneously demand and reveal confessing subjects. Most often, such scholars do so with the intent of challenging the normative subject-positioning of participants in con­ static and/or linear ways. At the same time, scholars of qualitative inquiry would do well to conrecog­ sider the means by which a shift towards avowal affords participants the opportunity to recognize subjectivities that shift and change, exceeding normative claims. In this way, avowal perhaps opens the possibility of hope and the potential to become otherwise. Situating inquiry within practices of avowal perhaps generates a productive risk that affords all participants (inquirers and participants alike) the possibility for generating new formations, ways of alignment not previously possible in relations of the confessional. Such circumstances require inquiry in education with an emphasis on intervening in productions of the normalized subject. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. All names in this article are pseudonyms. We thank Alonso Reyna Rivarola for introducing this term to us, which refers to the specific grassroots knowledge of undocumented scholars and persons. We aim here to use terms such as problematize and critique in a productive manner aligned with our Foucauldian orientation. For For example, Foucault (1988) explains, ‘A 'A critique is not a matter of saying that are'. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of things are not right as they are’. familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest. Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as we believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practising criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult (p. 154). Certainly, authors from an array of fields, especially queer theory have engaged with the notion of avowal (Sifuentes-Jauregui, 2014 is an excellent example of this), many of whom employ the work of Michel Foucault Foucault in their analysis. However, Flowever, our interest here lies in examining avowal within the auspices of an interviewevent and extending questions regarding inquiry practices more specifically. 'conventional interview’ interview' as a means to register notions of Throughout, we invoke the moniker of the ‘conventional interview techniques and assumptions most often displayed in textbooks and taught in classes that are procedural. These techniques and assumptions are thus replicated in research studies, becoming normative and invoked without question in empirical articles, especially within the field of education. For obvious reasons, such a scenario remains problematic for those cultures that do not adhere to claims of a pure or complete Self, i.e. transnational migrant identities (Aarsand & Aarsand, 2017). One example of more recent debates relates to posthuman approaches to inquiry. While beyond the scope of this article, we note that these larger debates in the field will eventually impact conducting research. Some in the field of qualitative research have even turned to consider nonhuman/post human objects on par with human participants, a move that most often champions a flattened ontological orientation that remains puzzling to scholars who foreground the ethical dimension of their inquiry among human populations. This post-human approach potentially displaces ethical stances that foreground consideration of humans (or, ‘the 'the human’). human'). 'interview subjects’ subjects' and not ‘participants’ 'participants' – - in a In this sense, it might be more honest to revert to referencing ‘interview conventional sense one is subject-to the interview-confession. Since this article is primarily conceptual, we do not provide a traditional empirical format for the article. However, Flowever, data were collected from 2015 to 2018, and the sources included participant-observations (þ700 (+700 hours), semi-structured interviews (N ¼ = 63), and focus groups with undocumented youth (see, Rodriguez, 2020b). The undocumented youth in this article were interviewed by Sophia three-six times during the study. Interviews Interviews were initially semi-structured, and subsequently open-ended and responsive to youths 16 (g) S. S. RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ AND AND A. A. KUNTZ KUNTZ 16 desires, experiences, and aspirations. Interviews occurred in school and community spaces, under trees, driving to appointments, and ranging from brief check-ins between classes to longer two hours discussions. 10. Since Since our our focus focus here here isis to to theorize theorize the the interview-event interview-event space space through through Foucault's Foucault’s notions notions of of confession confession and and avowal, we elected not delve into the intricacies of the immigration literature. However, for an understanding of current issues related to undocumented youth, see, Gonzales, 2011, 2016; Gonzales & Chavez, 2012). While all immigrant students, regardless of their immigration status have a right to K-12 education form the Supreme Court case Plyler P CBA l y l e r v. v . Doe D o e (1982), not all students are eligible for Obama’s Obama's initiative of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (D.A.C.A.). Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes on contributors Sophia Rodriguez is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University University of Maryland, College Park. 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