Dear Terry, Keith, and Norm,

Terry's query and Keith's response on the problem of false
consciousness reminded me of a few lines of inquiry in the debate
titled "Picasso's PhD" on the DRS list in 2000.

One of the common claims for practice-based and studio-based
doctorates is that heightened self-awareness through reflection
should create advancements to practice. Second claim is that
reflection constitutes a form of research. Both claims may also be
stated for professional doctorates linked to practice. False
consciousness would obviously render both claims invalid for any
specific dissertation.

One of the difficulties of any research based on inquiry into the
self - including many forms of the practice-based PhD or studio PhD -
is that the researcher constitutes the object of his or her own
inquiry. This means that he or she is both the researcher and the
object of inquiry. This introduces a form of work and requires a
layer of clarified reflection that is far more difficult than the
work required for an ordinary PhD.

The studio or the clinic is, in a sense, the laboratory. A designer
in professional practice or an artist in the studio can be said to be
doing something comparable to laboratory research.

Lab work is tiresome, time-consuming, and painstaking. In the debate
on the debate on Picasso's PhD, I offered an example of laboratory
work to clarify the distinction between the lab process and the
research narrative that transforms clinical or lab work into
research. A colleague who did his PhD in neurobiology one spent a
couple of years in lab work to derive a small test tube of a specific
substance with which he was able to perform his crucial experiment.
While he read and undertook other activities at the same time, part
of his daily work for over two years involved using a high-tech
Mixmaster to extract and refine the specific substance from its
original form. (This is much like the years of work that the Curies
spent boiling down pitchblende to isolate radium.)

In addition to the main work, there is the work of cleaning test
tubes, marking samples, keeping the lab fridge clean - you name it,
and there is some form of physical work involved. That is the lab
work. An artist in the studio or a designer in professional practice
can be said to be doing something comparable.

At the end of the process, my colleague was responsible for
problematizing, describing, theorizing, and generalizing his results.
That is the thesis.

When an artist or designer does a practice-based PhD, a studio-based
PhD, or a professional doctorate involving reflection on internal
process, which is what must be done. One of the problems in our field
has been the problem of designers or artists who do not want to
transform artifactual knowledge or tacit knowledge into generalized
explicit knowledge on which others can draw.

The empirical content of the research may involve issues other than
words. Social scientists who study spatial interactions in the
choreography of social discourse are faced with a similar problem.
Nevertheless, those who study the microsociology of personal
interaction must also, as Erving Goffman did, describe, problematize,
and theorize this material to render it generally useful to others.

The physical work does not stand alone as empirical data. It must be
explained, captioned thoroughly, and described in words. Thus arises
the problem of false consciousness.

The difference between a practice-based PhD, a studio PhD or
professional doctorate and an ordinary PhD does not lie in the
thesis. It lies in the relationship of the practitioner to the
research enterprise. Active engagement as a practitioner is often a
great help in understanding the field.

When the body of work subject to investigation is the practitioner's
own work, the ideal thesis project should involve a level of
emotional and ontological richness that is not available when one
studies completely external phenomena or a body of work created by
another individual.

This very fact requires greater clarity rather than less clarity in
description and epistemology. It also requires the researcher to
address subtle philosophical and psychological issues.

Few scholars or thinkers in any field have done this well enough to
contribute significant knowledge to a field of inquiry. Those who
have done especially well include Kierkegaard and Freud. We can only
name a few such figures in every century. It is a function of the
difficult challenges involved in theorizing the self effectively.
Kierkegaard's work demonstrates how self-reflection and critical
inquiry function in developing a contribution that is both
subjectively and objectively significant. A psychological study such
as The Sickness Unto Death (1968 [1849]) is a particularly good
example. Ernest Becker's (1973) Pulitzer Prize-winning study, The
Denial of Death, examines Kierkegaard as a psychologist. Among other
issues, Becker's study sheds light on the difficult problem of
reflection that helps others to develop knowledge, in other words,
the forms reflection that Terry problematizes in an inquiry on false
consciousness in doctoral research.

As Keith notes, "Schon points out that very few practitioners reflect
and that the reflection process, to work, needs a primary disruption
of the experience." Reflection is the contrary of conducting business
as usual, in the studio, in practice, or anywhere.

One of the major challenges in addressing this issue is the need to
distinguish between a simple narration of direct experience and a
genuinely reflective narration of experience. This, in effect,
constitutes a step in what Chris Argyris and Donald Schon term
double-lop learning.

Then there is the challenge of the methodological reflection that is
central to any good research.

Both forms of reflection should be articulated in doctoral research
based on self-reflection. False consciousness renders both
impossible. As Kierkegaard demonstrates, clarity is also required,
and the failure of clarity in conceptualization and narration often
exacerbates the problem of false consciousness.

While Terry asked for solutions rather than a restatement of the
problem, I feel that a deeper and more reflective understanding of
the problem points the way to a solution. I will work with this
further and I hope to post some suggestion when I return from
Helsinki where I will attend a conference organized by Kari-Hans
Kommonen and his colleagues.

Norm also raises a key issue that deserves a response. I hope to post
a note in a few days.

Best regards,

Ken



References

Becker, Ernest. 1973 The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press.

Friedman, Ken. 2000. Subject: The Beryl Graham Challenge, Part 2,
section 2 [Conclusion]. DRS Discussion List. Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000
15:37:56 +0200

Kierkegaard, Søren. 1968 [1849]. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness
Unto Death. Translated with an introduction and notes by Walter
Lowrie. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.


--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University