caution required

Throughout much of the explorations of porosity, I was troubled by my desire to be explicit about my research processes, but also quite fearful of the potential effects of speaking.

Some of this fear came from the reinscription of my positioning as marginalized in texts whose purpose it was to do the opposite. For example when Ezzy (2004) writes about the prevalence of "methodological atheism" (p. 118) within the academy, he both offers relief in acknowledging the prevalence and power of academic (or self-) policing vis-à-vis including spiritual experiences as part of a research process, but at the same time, his accounts reinscribe the impossibility of speaking of or through spirit. The effect is somewhat similar when Hurtado (2003) suggests that "[t]o claim the spiritual within the academy is blasphemous" (p. 218). Statements such as Hurtado's confirm reasons why this project has been so difficult to complete, while at the same time making it more difficult. Statements such as his reinscribe that which is prevalent in dominant discourse, and make it much more challenging (I find) to take up more marginalized storylines which suggest that indeed, it is possible to engage with spirit in the context of academic research (e.g. Clements, 2004).

Furthermore, knowing the context within which I write, which includes strong (often conservative) Christian influences and a high (and justified) concern with issues of appropriation of Aboriginal knowledge, I remained (and still do), cautiously selective about how much to say, and what language(s) to use. Yet to provide a rationale for the hypertext for my committee, and university, meant that I eventually had to be both explicit and up-front with the epistemological assumptions underlying this hypertext, rather than wait until readers might travel to the more explicit links, as the hypertextual reading process allows (see Taking Representation Seriously).