Narrative and exploration: toward a poetics of knowledge in nursing

The dualism of subject and object has been a traditional model for nursing knowledge. That model is portrayed here as an epistemological exile. Our self-imposed exile from the lived world of nursing can be remedied by inquiry based on engagement rather than distance. One model for engaged inquiry is explorers' journeys in remote regions. Knowledge of a region can be local or colonial, according to the explorer's stake in the region as homeland or territory. Nursing is an existential region where people live. In the exploration of nursing as homeland, knowledge takes the form of local narrative, the story of a place told by its inhabitants. Narrative inquiry offers nursing an epistemology that is both ethically and aesthetically congruent with its practice of engagement.