Umkaphi: Ukukhanda ucwaningo besintu yobuciko olaphayo – reconceptualising ethics and reflexivity in narrative enquiry method for drama therapy research

Abstract

Drama therapy’s central principles involve embodiment and projection. This article reflects on these principles as an undercurrent in the method chapter of my master’s thesis. I proffer that, as a novice narrative inquirer, I transformed the trauma of my grandmother’s hoarding of empty plastic bottles into an adjunct research process for a narrative enquiry method. Through the process, I draw parallels between this intuitively driven mode of conducting research, that is, reconfiguring the extra sensibilities attained from my maternal lineage: my mother, grandmother, aunts and other women elders who trained my researcher capabilities through Zulu cosmology. As such, I explain how the concept of umkaphi (guide) provides grounded ethical guidance, critical distance and interties with reflexivity. I argue that proximity to the subject matter, as well as participants, positions the researcher at an advantage for in-depth data collection and analysis. I explain how Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) research has affected drama therapy research and why a new reading of research is needed. The article is sectioned into titles forming waves of arrival: arriving to myself, arriving to drama therapy, arriving to the concepts of umkaphi, arriving to the concept of invisibilisation, and arriving to a method of transforming the experience of my grandmother’s hoarding into an aspect of narrative research methodology—ukuhlahlela okulahliwe. The findings signal a procedural change in drama therapy through unique and intentional reconfigurations by Black drama therapists.