"Futures Pitilessly Blocked And Passions Violently Choked:" Narrating Fatalism In Non-Resident Fatherhood

Abstract

In this thesis, I use the Durkheimian concept of fatalism, a condition of excessive social regulation, to reinterpret the published personal journal of a non-resident father who constructs himself as a victim of unjust circumstances in relation to his non-resident status. This reinterpretation is undertaken through a reflexive narrative analysis to demonstrate that his story, written as if an expression of personal experience, is socially situated as a narrative construction. I also examine my own subject-formation and positionality to reflect on my implication in the text as a sympathetic, “preferred” reader. I show how this process of reflection also affected my conceptualization of fatalism and its application to the document in question. I explain how the act of writing this thesis became a reflexive journey toward a non-positivist approach to understanding and applying a Durkheimian concept and to assessing the narrative construction of “experiential” truth-claims by writers and readers.