Dear Nicola and Chris,
If you refer to what you have documented as "the poetic or the expressive
parts of the research," then this constitutes content. The metanarrative
deals with method. If you address the methodological issues appropriately,
you are discussing your understanding and approach to the content. You are
not creating a metanarrative of your own poetry or expression.
If, however, you are saying that there is some kind of "poetic or expressive
research" in the sense that many artists now claim their artistic production
is research, then it is indeed to create an open and transparent
metanarrative. This raises a plethora of questions that no one has resolved
effectively to date. Many of them came up in the "Picasso's PhD" debate, and
answers are still thin.
There are three issues worth considering.
The first is to examine how such researchers as Clifford Geertz or Mary
Catherine Bateson address some of these kinds of problems, in the sense of a
poesis of research, and an understanding of the expressive dimensions of
research. This is an art of inquiry and not a science, but it adds value and
depth to research.
The second is to recognize that some issues require depth and experience,
and one might do well to avoid certain kinds of problems until one is
experienced enough to handle them. The poetic and expressive dimensions of
research are philosophical and psychological issues in which the researcher
draws on the resources of the self. Karen Horney managed this, as did Soren
Kierkegaard. This is for people old enough to carry that weight lightly.
Doctoral students in their twenties are not usually ready for that kind of work.
The third issue involves supervisors skilled enough to tell students where
they are going wrong, and it involves students wise enough to listen and to
learn. The sad fact is that in many places, supervisors who have too low a
level of mastery don't even know when students are going wrong. An example I
see often is the case where students put forward a creative work or a
designed artifact as a research output, explaining it with an explanatory
essay that they mistakenly label an "exegesis." If these students or their
advisors had the depth and experience to undertand exegetical research, they
would know the difference between exegesis and eisegesis -- but that would
bring us back to the second issue.
Fortunately, we can make great progress by working with the metanarrative of
research where poetry and expression is content, and not method. Where
poetic and expressive method comes into play, we ought to be adding
philosophy, psychology, and criticism to our repertoire of research skills.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
Telephone +61 3 9214 6755
www.swinburne.edu.au/design
--
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:18:08 +0000, Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Nicola Morelli wrote:
>> 2. how do you render the poetic or the expressive parts of the research
in a way that allow for Ken's framework criteria (meta-narrativity and
openness/transparency to analysis)? (See Ken's post on 13.12.08)
Chris Rust added:
>Nicola's second question is the really big one. Right now I feel it can
>only be answered by individuals and groups thinking carefully about the
>actual material in their actual project. Gradually we'll build up some
>case material and that was my reason for mentioning some recent examples
>and also making one or two examples available via my website.
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