Paradoxical Experience Research Articles

Clowns, pirates, poets and garbage collectors: the beauty of paradox in the poems of James March

ABSTRACT James March’s poetry and poems are an insightful, delightful, witty and aesthetic – yet ultimately marginalised – provocation. With a cheekiness that exploits his scholarly reputation while undermining it, he sympathetically debunks the managerial ethos (indeed ideology) of rational certainty and strategic purposiveness. In introducing his poems, we draw on (arche)typal tropes of the clown, pirate, poet and garbage collector to reveal how March’s poetry provides valuable insights into the lived experience of paradox. In conclusion, we use his marginalised provocation to argue for a bearable lightness of being in using art to surface and address the challenges of living with paradox.

Performance Implications of Gig Workers’ Reactions to Daily Paradoxical Experiences

Performance Implications of Gig Workers’ Reactions to Daily Paradoxical Experiences

Transcending Boundaries: The Role of Literature in Challenging Social Norms and Redefining Perspectives on Migration and Cultural Marginality Through the Works of Halaby, Lahiri, and Hamid

This study aims to examine the transformative power of literature in challenging prevailing social norms and reshaping perspectives on migration, alterity, and cultural marginalization. Focusing on the novels Once in a Promised Land by Layla Halaby, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, the analysis examines the representation of the individual Other, challenging stereotypes, and highlighting the characters’ personal and political traumas. The concept of nowhereness, which stands for the emotional and psychological state of migrants moving in unfamiliar cities, is explored, highlighting the paradoxical experience of simultaneous death and rebirth. The characters in these novels are in a deep state of emptiness, serving as “citizens in waiting and deportees in waiting.” Their experiences in the liminal space of waiting are closely intertwined, creating a shared temporal landscape that enriches the exploration of the complexity of migrants. In this regard, the authors challenge the conventional tactics of silencing voices and concealing images to transform the harrowing ordeals of the Other into a powerful means of social introspection. The authors engage with Western hegemony and imperialism, seeking to inspire understanding and admiration for subaltern cultures that are marginalized by the Western world.

A Buddhist Mindfulness View of Paradox: Silence and Skepticism of Language to Dismantle Paradoxes

This study explores how Buddhist mindfulness as a self-reflective practice helps individuals respond to a paradox and ultimately dismantle it. To deeply immerse myself into this context, I conducted a nine-month ethnographic fieldwork in three Korean Buddhist temples that confront the paradox between the need for financial resources and spiritual values that disavow money. The findings show a series of cognitive mechanisms that reveal multiple roles of mindfulness, manifested as silence and skepticism of language. First, the monastic environment enables monks to become familiar with a life of silence that turns their attention to the inner mind from the external-empirical world. The silence serves as a mental buffer when monks switch between their sacred role and their business role. Over time, deep silence directs them to skepticism of language that triggers doubt on preexisting linguistic categories, boundaries, and separations. When the preexisting linguistic categories finally disappear in their mind, monks no longer rely on any differentiating or integrating tactic to navigate their paradox. In other words, they no longer perceive a paradox, which means the paradox has disappeared from their life. These cognitive mechanisms construct the monks’ worldview on contradictions, conflicts, and dualities, leading them from the experience of paradox to a unique mental state, the nonexperience of paradox. Integrating this mental state and the worldview of Buddhist monks with paradox research, this study theorizes a Buddhist mindfulness view of paradox. Funding: This work was supported by Chulalongkorn University.

Shelley’s Despairing Lyrics: Unfolding the Layers of Affliction and Resilient Forces

This article investigates how Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) embodies the diverse aspects of his internal crisis in despairing lyrics based on severe physical illness and tragic family occasions of 1817-8. It argues that the interlinking poems and prose written over these periods reveal the author’s agonizing response to the inevitable facets of the world and his life, which involves the recurrent motifs of mortality, ruination, and despondency. The paper furthers how he confronts this transitory necessity with an awareness of hope and love. The writer intertwines these positive reactions with the speaker’s paradoxical experiences of irony and dilemma when facing the ongoing affliction imposed by uncertainly and instability regarding the anticipation for a liberation from such afflictive moments. Shelley’s poems to depict despondency, however, embed the dynamic progress of the speaker’s mind, which associates with his resilient quest for spiritual freedom unyielding to the physical and internal trapment. This adherence of liberty prefigures the works of his final year 1822, especially A Defence of Poetry where he epitomizes the nature of imagination as a substantial power to bring ultimate freedom and mutual love to the gloom of the present life.

Navigating double marginalization: narratives of Asian (American) educators teaching and building solidarity

ABSTRACT This study examines Asian (American) teachers’ racialized experiences teaching and building solidarity with predominantly Black and Latinx students. Adopting tenets of Asian Critical Theory, the findings reveal participants’ paradoxical experiences of ‘double marginalization’: On one hand, they are broadly excluded from the Black-White racial paradigm and made invisible as racial outsiders and ‘forever foreigners’; on the other hand, they report feeling marginalized within the communities of Color due to the prevailing ‘model minority’ and ‘honorary White’ tropes. In resisting the ‘double marginalization’, participants strategically utilize their Asian (American) identities and experiences to challenge stereotypes about Asian (American) people and foster relationships with students and parents based on their shared struggles against White supremacy. This study has implications to reject Asian (American) invisibility in education research and practice by reclaiming the legacies of cross-racial solidarity-building among communities of Color and supporting the development of collective critical consciousness against racial division.

Experiences of Adolescents on Antiretroviral Therapy at Rustenburg Sub-District, Northwest Province, South Africa.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is the treatment of people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) using anti-HIV drugs. The standard treatment consists of a combination of drugs (often called highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART) that suppress HIV replication. As a result, people who have been infected live longer while on ART, which was initiated in South Africa in 2004. The study aimed to explore the experiences of adolescents on antiretroviral therapy in two primary health care clinics in Rustenburg sub-district Northwest Province. Qualitative, explorative, descriptive, and contextual approaches were adopted. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select the healthcare facilities, and adolescents were chosen using convenience sampling. In-depth individual interviews were used to collect data from the participants. Only 13 adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 years were interviewed. Collected data were analyzed using Tesch's eight steps. Qualitative themes identified included a description of the experiences of adolescents living HIV to adulthood and challenges experienced from childhood to adolescence period. Each theme had different sub-themes which included the paradoxical experiences of being diagnosed with HIV and being on antiretroviral treatment. Adolescents experienced poor adherence to ART due to treatment side effects such as drowsiness, change in body image, and headaches. Self-stigma resulted in adolescents not disclosing their status to their peers, closest and sexual partners which also made them not to adhere well in treatment. The study findings revealed that HIV-positive adolescents encounter various experiences while on ART, which causes them not to adhere to treatment. In the study, adolescents also experienced self-stigma which also affected their treatment adherence and brought fear of losing their loved ones.

Navigating the paradox: Strategies utilized by pregnant widows in an attempt to reconcile life and death

Losing a spouse is a traumatic experience, especially at a younger age. This experience is arguably more intense and complex if the woman becomes a widow while pregnant. In the current study, we examined the strategies Israeli women who became widows while pregnant utilized to reconcile life and death. Twelve adult women who became widows while pregnant participated in this study, which involved in-depth semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis of the interview content revealed four main strategies utilized to reconcile their simultaneous paradoxical experience of both life and death: Passiveness – focusing on neither life nor death; Segregation – focusing on either life or death; Continuum – perceiving life and death are the same; and Integration – coming to terms with both life and death. The women commonly utilized multiple strategies while navigating this paradox, with most participants using all four at some point during their attempted reconciliation process.

Student ratio matters: policy implementation, ethnic visibility, and effect on student interaction in China’s relocated boarding schools

ABSTRACT The Xinjiang Class is a relocated boarding school policy launched in 2000 to recruit students from Xinjiang to receive senior secondary education in selected schools of China’s Central and Eastern provinces with local students. The policy has continuously expanded, amidst controversy and criticism. The existing literature on Xinjiang Class has mainly focused on the political motivations and students’ paradoxical experiences, while generally overlooking the difference of the policy’s administrative structure and its relations to students’ interaction in daily schooling. Drawing on fieldwork in two Xinjiang Class schools, this article discusses the differentiated policy implementations in two schools and their resulting effects on ethnic visibility of Xinjiang students and their everyday interethnic interactions. Our findings suggest that student ratios matter for bridging interethnic interactions: The more Xinjiang students in the classroom are correlated with more positive interactions and less are correlated with more negative interactions. By exploring the nuanced and important roles of ethnic visibility in shaping everyday school interaction, our study offers a new approach to explore ethnic relations beyond the current majority-minority dualism. It also contributes to the current debates on the complex dynamics of centralization and decentralization in China through an education perspective. The complexities and contradictions we have explored in China’s minority education offer useful lessons for other multi-ethnic countries.

From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź—Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994

From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź—Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994

Paradoxical experiences of healthcare workers during COVID-19: a qualitative analysis of anonymous, web-based, audio narratives

ABSTRACT Purpose To gain a deeper understanding of healthcare workers experiences during COVID-19 using an anonymous, web-based, audio narrative platform. Methods Data were collected from healthcare workers in the midwestern United States using a web-enabled audio diary approach. Participant recordings were analysed using a narrative coding and conceptualization process derived from grounded theory coding techniques. Results Fifteen healthcare workers, in direct patient care or non-patient care roles, submitted 18 audio narratives. Two paradoxical themes emerged: 1) A paradox of distress and meaningfulness, where a harsh work environment resulted in psychological distress while simultaneously resulting in new rewarding experiences, sense of purpose and positive outlooks. 2) A paradox of social isolation and connection, where despite extreme isolation, healthcare workers formed intense and meaningful interpersonal connections with patients and colleagues in new ways. Conclusions A web-enabled audio diary approach provided an opportunity for healthcare workers to reflect deeper on their experiences without investigator influence, which led to some unique findings. Paradoxically, amid social isolation and extreme distress, a sense of value, meaning and rewarding human connections emerged. These findings suggest that interventions addressing healthcare worker burnout and distress might be enhanced by leveraging naturally occurring positive experiences as much as mitigating negative ones.

The Paradoxical Tensions of Speaking-Being Silent: An Ethical Perspective.

Choosing whether or not to speak or be silent is a paradoxical experience that emerges in the moment. For the discipline of nursing, it is an important value priority found in nurse-person, nurse-group, and nurse-community situations. The discipline of nursing is at a crossroad when contemplating what its place and status will be in the chaotic and ever-changing healthcare and higher educational arenas. The author in this article sheds new light on the future direction for what it means to articulate meaning as a nurse and the ethical consequences of choosing to speak-not speak up for the ever-changing priorities and purposes of the healthcare disciplines.

Where do I belong? Conflicted identities and the paradox of simultaneous stigma and social aggrandizement of military veterans in organizations

Military veterans often transition into the civilian workforce after serving in a nation’s armed forces. The process of integrating this unique class into organizations is directly affected by the social exchanges and interactions in the organization. Utilizing an in-depth interviews-based qualitative study of 40 veterans across 12 different organizations, and integrating social identity theory, we use template analysis to identify a paradox existent in social exchanges with other organizational members where veterans are simultaneously stigmatized and socially aggrandized. These paradoxical experiences interact with veterans’ self-conceptualization and social identities to reinforce expectations, cause culture shock and eventual turnover. We present a model of this tension, contributing to literatures on veterans in the workforce, paradox, and social identity theory as well as offering HR perspectives on this phenomenon.

Salience and Time: The Existential Ground of Organizational Paradox

The experience of organizational paradox, interdependent contradictions persisting over time, has been studied from cognitive, psychological, and discursive perspectives. In all these cases, experience is described in terms of the actual presence of paradox. However, the existential ground of organizational paradox lying beyond its presence remains undertheorized. I mobilize Heidegger’s existential analytic to unpack the experience of organizational paradox that is revealed in our modes of being, which, in turn, temporalize the experience. First, I explore the intimate relationship between paradox and tension by unpacking how we encounter them in the world. Then, I explain the meaning of to be experiencing paradox by showing the role played by the modes of the actual and the possible. Finally, I unpack the temporality of organizational paradox. The existential understanding of paradox uncovers how tensions and paradoxes gain their paralyzing and productive nature, and they reveal distinct ways in which the potential of paradox is disclosed.

Battle of the Classes. Social Class and Work Status in Determining Women Director Appointments

The literature on women on board of directors provides limited insights on how the social class origins of the women executives influence their selection on corporate boards and their career trajectories. Gender research in management has narrowly focused on the disadvantages women experience in the workplace. However, women's unique and complex social identities with multiple group memberships, such as social class and work status, can lead to paradoxical experiences in the workplace, with women experiencing both advantages and disadvantages. To shed new light on the role of multiple identities for women executives in gaining board directorship, I leverage the social classification based on “caste” in India. I develop a theoretical model to show the influence of social class, work status, and social class mobility in director selection market for women executives. The model predicts four distinct profiles of women executives and their outcomes in the director labor market. By using the intersectionality of social class and work status, I propose that women executives with high work status and low social class will be able to display their authority and dominance in the workplace and craft credible professional executive images at work, and hence will be buffered from the stereotypic bias of incompetence due to gender and social class. In contrast, for women directors with high social class but low work status, high social class will mitigate the adverse effects of low work status by signaling their high social capital through their homophilic kinship ties. Moreover, the director appointments of women executives with lower work status will allow upward mobility of these director profiles and improve their future career prospects in the corporate elite.

Art and Real Life: Trauma and Reconciliation in The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This essay discusses the employment of selected art forms and their effectiveness in portraying trauma and reconciliation in Tan Twan Eng’s novel, The Garden of Evening Mists ,(2012), employing the concepts of trauma by Caruth (1996), focusing on the inadequacy of language to articulate trauma. The trauma model features most prominently by Caruth argues that traumatic events are never known directly. Any knowledge of these past events is only a form of reproduction of the original. Therefore, trauma is a ‘paradoxical experience;’ what is most traumatic is that which does not appear in conscious memory— this inability to know challenges the reliability of language to represent the full extent of trauma. However, Tan’s novel shows that the problem of representing trauma can be countered in forms of art that function as a medium to convey and release silenced trauma. While trauma escapes language, personal memories become collective memories when commemorated in art forms. Letting go of the past is achieved by bringing it to the present in art forms. Tan’s work significantly adds to the analysis of trauma in literary works. By employing the dominant tropes of Japanese art forms in the novel, Tan employs strategies that demonstrate that literature and art can narrate silenced experiences and traumatic historical events and escapes articulation.

Only one Mayweather: a critique of hope from the hopeful

AbstractProfessional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role their hopes of ‘making it big’ play in perpetuating industry inequalities, recognizing what I call the ideological function of hope. Despite this, they remain committed to hopes of dramatic success. Their simultaneous optimism and cynicism complicates contemporary accounts of hope as a strategy of resilience in contexts of profound uncertainty. Building on ethnographic research with Accra boxers, I theorize hoping as a paradoxical experience of critique and optimism in equal measure, to account for the contradictory ways people act when orienting themselves towards better futures.

An Interrogation and Analysis of Postmodern ‘Self’ in Robert Lowell’s Sonnet Reading Myself

The interrogation and analysis of 'Self' in Robert Lowell's Sonnet Reading Myself is the research statement. Jean Francois Lyotard proposed the idea of 'Delegitimation' of Grand Narratives in Modern Times (1). This concept of Delegitimation gives power to an individual to narrate her or his self and gives complete control to have his power. The introspection of self in Robert Lowell's sonnet is analyzed critically in this postmodern sense. It aims at the liberation from the fixed system of beliefs or stereotypical norms of the society in writing a literary piece by analyzing the lines of the sonnet in a postmodernist way. Specifically, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of reducing inequality is examined through the poet’s self in the paradoxical situation in a postmodern sense. It also questions the paradoxical existence and experiences faced by the poet in his life. The realisation of the self is significant in the present world gives the individual the freedom to create equal space for himself and others in society.

The World Poetics of Lockdown in Pandemic Poetry

Abstract This essay uses contemporary theories on World Literature to discuss two anthologies of pandemic poetry: Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown, and And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the Covid-19 Pandemic. These anthologies develop a new criticality on issues of migration, biopower, and inequality that have long “plagued” cultures of late capitalism. As they represent various states of lockdown imposed around the world due to the spread of the coronavirus, the anthologies grapple with the paradoxical experience of the “singular-universal” that comes with living in a pandemic. By emphasizing the untranslatability of diverse bodies, races, cultures, and languages, these anthologies deconstruct the perceived synchrony of experiencing lockdown. This essay reveals how they attempt to deconstruct the Eurocentrism of “World Literature” by reconfiguring the category of the “global” and representing collective trauma.

Experiences of People with Cancer from Rural and Remote Areas of Western Australia Using Supported Accommodation in Perth While Undergoing Treatment.

The aim of the study was to explore the lived experiences of people diagnosed with cancer from rural and remote areas of Western Australia, who utilise supported accommodation services whilst undergoing treatment in the capital city (Perth). Methods A qualitative phenomenological approach was used in this study. Ten participants were recruited using purposive sampling, who were aged between 35–65 years, were diagnosed with cancer within the previous three months and used accommodation services within the past 12 months. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with a duration of approximately 45–60 min via Zoom, FaceTime or phone call. Interview data was transcribed, thematically analysed and coded into relevant themes. Results: Three overarching themes were derived from the interviews–“It’s harder to have cancer when you have to relocate for treatment,” “The paradoxical experience of staying at the accommodation,” and “Feeling grateful for the support offered’. Conclusions: People diagnosed with cancer who have to relocate during treatment require emotional, logistical, and social supports. Cancer accommodation services are essential in enabling individuals to continue engaging in meaningful occupations and maintain their quality of life. Our study highlights the need for cancer accommodation services to consider the complex needs of individuals completing treatment for cancer in locations away from their usual homes.