The Nature Of Epiphany

The Nature of Epiphany Grant Kien Abstract This autoethnographic reflection explores the nature of Denzin’s notion of epiphany, an identifiable moment of lived experience that one can identify as a turning point in one’s understanding of oneself and one’s relationship to the world. The recurring, longitudinal but unpredictable characteristic of remembering the epiphanic moment as it erupts throughout one’s life leads to the description of epiphany as if it has a life of its own. Thus the epiphany compels the researcher to return to and explore that lifealtering moment. The emotional urgency induced by the epiphany thus turns the methodological instruction—that one must constantly return to that moment—into an imperative, meaning one must constantly reexamine the epiphany because the epiphany of its own accord demands reexamination. Keywords: autoethnography, epiphanic moments, performance ethnography University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gregory Hall, ICR, seminar room, Fall 2003: Dr. Denzin is pacing around the crowded room, telling us that, like James Baldwin, we must go back to that moment of pain, like James Baldwin did, reexamine it, return to it again and again, turning it over, reexamining it, challenging it, understanding it, forging new paths forward from it. I take the word ‘‘must’’ to be an instruction. Years later in San Francisco, 2012, I realize it isn’t an instruction. It is an imperative: We MUST return to that moment. We can’t help but return to it because it lives on its own inside its human host, inside the anatomical brain, as its own ‘‘Being.’’ To the host, it is immortal. And sometimes it takes possession of the body. San Francisco, Saturday Sept. 15, 2012, 6:30 a.m.: I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. Why not? Busy mind. What’s my mind so full of? That moment, years ago. International Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference, Urbana, Illinois, Saturday afternoon, 2004: I’m presenting in a session made up of Dr. Denzin’s students. So International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 6, No. 4, Winter 2013, pp. 578–584. ISSN 1940-8447, eISSN 1940-8455. © 2013 International Institute for Qualitative Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. All rights reserved. Request permission to photocopy or reproduce article content at the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/irqr.2013.6.4.578. THE NATURE OF EPIPHANY 579 there I am reading and telling ‘‘Mystory:’’ ‘‘A Night in Itaewon: Performing America in Seoul, South Korea.’’ It’s a story about something that I observed one night that impacted me very strongly. The room is packed with spectators, some students or former students of Dr. Denzin, many who are qualitative researchers interested in what was, at the time, a new frontier of performance ethnography. Here is what I read to them: ‘‘Welcome to Itaewon.’’ From the back seat of the taxi, I read the words splashed across a stylized marquee arching over the street, signifying the beginning of the ‘‘American’’ section of Seoul. It’s Saturday evening. Sean and I have been shopping in the giant Yongsan Electronics Market, and I convinced him that we should see nearby Itaewon on a Saturday night for the benefit of my study of performances of Westernness. Since Yongsan is the area in Seoul where the U.S. military base is located, in our taxi ride we pass through some extensively walled and barb-wired areas and observe many cadres of Korean police guarding the walls and entries along the way, dressed in blue paramilitary uniforms and holding long black staffs obviously designed for cracking the bones of unwelcome would-be entrants. I know these staffs are not mere props, having seen several news stories of people protesting the U.S. military presence attempting to gain entry to the base, repelled