Performance as transformation / transformative: problematizing performance in PAR

In participatory action research (PAR), university-based researchers often take foundational concepts such as transformation, empowerment, critical consciousness, and mutual understanding for granted as desirable or necessary outcomes or achievements. We discuss the danger of this and suggest that researchers recognize these as processes that participants may or may not experience, achieve, or even desire. In this manuscript, four members of a long-term research collective engage in reflexive practice to problematize notions of transformation and empowerment in PAR, with the aim of pushing ourselves to align our epistemological commitments with our practice of participatory inquiry. We focus on whether, and to what extent, high school co-researchers considered the performative components of a PAR project - such as Theatre of the Oppressed and spoken word poetry - to be transformative experiences and what, in fact, transformation means to them. As we explore our various experiences with and perspectives on performance in the context of PAR, we question and problematize its use, and call on other participatory inquirers to no longer take for granted its purpose or outcomes.