Abstract
Connecting identity, broadly defined to recent âadvancesâ in educational research, this paper takes up two different feminist treatments based in pragmatism and poststructuralism. The first is from Charlene Haddock Seigfried on âexperience,â and the second is from Peggy Phelan on âperformance.â The first is in keeping with a dominant tradition to secure identity through visibility and the second suggests critique through a turn to invisibility. The first arises out of Dewey's naturalism and the second through Lacan, performance art, and anti-representation. At bottom is suggestion that an entire narrative tradition in educational research is potentially self-defeating