Refracting experience: Reflection, postmodernity and transformations

Abstract

'Reflection' might be characterised as a process that uses a number of relatively simple models for analysis of occupational practice. Such models structure ways of focusing on cause, effect and affect. On the other hand, the rhetoric of professional and personal empowerment is grounded in the language of reflexivity, self-knowledge, humanistic psychology and (postmodern) constructions of spirituality and the sacred. However, nursing literature appears rarely to address the postmodern, cultural contexts of reflection. This paper identifies paradoxes at the heart of reflective practice in nursing and some of the ideological functions of reflection. It focuses on the tensions central to reflection, some of which have the potential to highlight contradictions in practice, research and the production of theory. The aim here is to consider modernist assumptions that have framed nursing and nursing research while often failing to interrogate and explicate its own inherent contradictions. It is argued that a more critical reflexive process grounded in social context is potentially transformative through engaging with the postmodern destabilising of normative assumptions. This is considered in relation to modernity and postmodernity and the increasing emphasis on text and intertextuality. In conclusion, it is proposed that refraction might be a helpful concept. It is suggested that through a more sociologically prismatic lens, the realities and truths of the reflective narrative can be interpreted as a transformative means of resistance to the dominant medicalised discourses.