Toward a Practice of Critical Recognition: Life Narrative in the Sociology Classroom and Beyond

The centrality of the self (including in published life narratives, social media confessionals, social movements and even our own classroom rituals), and the attendant conflation of experience, analysis, and truth, revive longstanding questions about our investment in the individual. The self and its narration continue to be messy and evolve in tandem with intense societal, technological, and economic shifts. This article grows from an interest in the tension between affirming the diverse set of experiences that gather in our classrooms, and challenging students to think systemically about the social world and our place in it. Published life-narratives—here I discuss the work of Virginia Grise and Valeria Luiselli—provide pedagogical opportunities to fortify agentic knowers by cultivating a practice of critical recognition. A practice of critical recognition in the classroom and beyond may help us all better face both what we know and what we don’t know, together.