Dear Teena,
To me, the claim that "all writing is fiction" leads to an infinite
regress. If all writing is fiction, then why is Foucauld's take on
power relations any more reasonable or reliable than that of Simone
de Beauvoir or Herman Melville?
If all writing is fiction, then why would we wish to bother with any
account whatsoever? Why would any account be more useful or
illuminating than any other?
If all writing is fiction, why would a post-structuralist account be
more useful than an empiricist account or a cognitive account?
When we ask for an account of what people witness, hear, say, or
experience, we ask for integrity and reliability, not "validity."
This is not a matter of "proof." It is a matter of asking the author
to describe what is said, a responsible account of what others say.
To argue that "all writing is fiction" is to that that we have no
responsibility to the voices of those whose stories we recount. When
we recount the voices of other speakers, the words that we report
demand responsible reporting. This is not "proof," but responsibility.
Yours,
Ken
--
Teena Clerke wrote:
(1)
my intention was to provide an opening for discussion about design
research epistemology without introducing the construct of 'gender',
but by removing the actual bodies themselves. I saw this as a
poststructuralist way to ask a question about possibilities. I wanted
to see what people imagined design research might look like if either
men or women were removed from its practice. This asks for an
entirely different kind of imagining other than the binary of
men/women. In a Foucauldian sense, power and knowledge are
interrelated within the social relations between people and are
(re)produced within discourses. So, I thought if you take out the
bodies, what kind of discursive imagining would ensue?
(2)
Fiona talks about her embodied experiences in design research,
sitting through meetings and listening to the various ways in design
is perceived in a large faculty. I am curious to hear of others'
personal experiences, and particularly welcome those not based on
'proof'. In this call, I do not wish to debate 'validity' because
from my epistemological position, all writing is fiction.
--
Ken Friedman
Professor
Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
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