Conversation across paradigms: unitary-transformative and critical feminist perspectives

The purpose of this article is to convey a conversation that occurred over a period of months between a unitary-transformative scholar and a critical feminist scholar. The intention of our conversation was to uncover, through dialogue and engagement, ways in which these two paradigms might help us understand the forces and conditions which impede and may liberate full expression of health and well-being. Areas of essential tensions addressed were the relationships of action and theory, sense and soul, stories and numbers, and aesthetics and empirics. Critical conversational points were notions of liberation, consciousness and social conditions, unpredictability and acausality, and potentials for reconciliation that would serve nursing and society. We concluded that although there are significant differences that exist between the two paradigms, there are areas in which we might begin to speak with one voice for the betterment of nursing and health care.