Abstract
In this chapter, I argue that the theoretical and conceptual possibilities for paradox in studies of school leadership have, so far, largely gone unrealised. I describe its deployment in this book as a conceptual frame for understanding the way principals and their work are currently constituted. The use of ‘conceptual frame’ is to capture the way paradox is broadly influential in the book’s design, reaching into ‘the system of concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs and theories’ (Maxwell, 2013, p. 39) that it proposes and expounds.
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Notes
- 1.
The ‘wondrer’, used here by Colie to describe the audience to paradox, was a term originally used in George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589/2012). Puttenham refers to the poet ‘wondrer’ who will ‘report of a thing that is marvellous’ and ‘seem not to speak it simply but with some sign of admiration’ (p. 233). He then likens the wondrer to the figure of the ‘doubtfull’ who ‘will seeme to cast perils’ and ‘makes doubt of things’ (p. 234).
- 2.
A Möbius strip is a two-sided strip which becomes a one-sided continuous band when its ends are joined.
- 3.
According to Smith and Lewis (2011), persistent dilemmas may actually signal the possible emergence of paradoxical qualities. They claim that a dilemma ‘may prove paradoxical’ if contradictions continue to resurface over time, so suggesting ‘interrelatedness and persistence’ (p. 387). Lüscher and Lewis (2008) applied this idea in action research to help middle managers ‘work through’ double binds as they grappled with the need to manage self-managed teams. They termed their strategy sparring sessions, during which managers would move toward rather than away from a tension, examining it first as a problem to solved, then as a dilemma and, finally, as the tension persisted, as a paradox to live with on an ongoing basis.
- 4.
While described as ‘Hegelian’, this process is only a general reference to the work of Hegel as he never actually used the terminology ‘thesis’, ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis’. Hegel ascribed these terms to Kant, making wide use of a different model based on the terms ‘abstract’, ‘negative’ and ‘concrete. See Maybee (2016).
- 5.
In a relationship that bears on my own empirical work, Droogers (2002) applies the idea of ‘simultaneity’ to the participant-observer role in anthropological fieldwork. He says that the position represents ‘continuity as well as rupture, identification as well as distance, both simultaneity and simulation’ (p. 53).
- 6.
‘Heteroglossia’ is a term coined by Bakhtin (1934/2004) to denote the presence of two or more voices.
- 7.
Luhrmann (1995) describes a self-referential function for these qualities, which is relevant to allocating theoretical content to paradox, when he says that ‘the practical function’ of paradox ‘is to produce the shock necessary if one is to have the courage to propose a far-reaching theoretical change’ (p. 30).
- 8.
Medina (2011) says that Foucault’s (2003) notion of ‘the insurrection of subjugated knowledges’ describes ‘forms of experiencing and remembering that are pushed to the margins and rendered unqualified and unworthy of epistemic respect by prevailing and hegemonic discourses’. Such knowledges, Medina claims, ‘remain invisible to mainstream perspectives’ so that ‘certain possibilities for resistance and subversion go unnoticed’ (p. 11).
- 9.
Woermann (2016) provides a convincing account of how Derrida sought to deal productively with this aporetic logic and the incomplete nature of meaning, through development of his deconstructive philosophy.
- 10.
The more expansive version of Wittgenstein’s famous quote is also relevant. It says, ‘(n)ever stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness’ (in Fiumara, 2013, p. 194).
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Dolan, C. (2020). Thinking with Paradox. In: Paradox and the School Leader. Educational Leadership Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3086-9_2
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