Well Ken,

I never meant to say that PhDs should be only "ekphrasial". I just 
suggested that what in your model was being used as exegesis would 
benefit, at least, from a first stage of ekphrasial work in practice 
based PhDs. (in many ways we agree)

First: because it seems rather awkward to make exegesis of your own 
work. (Imagine how easy it would be if the Apocalypse had an exegesis by 
John himself).

Second because Design benefits for being considered "work of art" in the 
sense ekphrasis is defined as a "written description of a work of art" 
(not that Design is Art or designers artists, or even designed things 
works of arts but because using the way of describing works of art to 
describe works of Design is rather useful doctoral wise, for several 
reasons):

Second/one: Because Design is not (only) a work of Science.

Second/two: Design was historically posited as "art in everyday life 
objects".

Second/three: Art History and Art Theory created robust frameworks to 
analyse objects with social functions. The fact that the History of 
Design gained autonomy from Art History is only because its field of 
inquiry was better delimited. In fact, the notion of Material Culture 
was developed to encompass all the produced objects including the ones 
"of Art" and "the Others".

Third: because the description of something is the first scientific 
attitude towards that thing.

Ekphrasial description as has been done by History of Art and Theory of 
Art, especially after The Frankfurt School, is much more than the 
accounts of features in objects. They are robust analytical discourses 
about objects or "creators" or "styles" and their relations.

Thus, to cut a long story short, I would be satisfied with ekphrasis instead of exegesis because it precisely would avoid the kind of misunderstanding that you wrote about. If you describe something you skip the confusion between eisegesis and exegesis.   

Finally, interpretations, explanations, exegeses of own works are final. By doing it you close the object and it really do not requires literature in the same way a description does. Imagine that you go into the Amazon jungle and find a new species. You make a drawing of it and send the drawing to a colleague in an Oxfordian museum or institute. What do you expect him to do: to describe it or to say what it means? And what of the two would require extensive literature research?

Plus, the matter about a practice lead PhD shouldn't be how you interpret according the existing knowledge your work (telling the truth about your work) but how consistently your work reveals itself related to the existing knowledge (because the object is truthful in itself and should be the final outcome of the PhD).

This means that in a practice lead PhD instead of telling what your work MEANS is better to tell what your work IS. 

Of course when you rely mostly in dictionary definitions to tell you what things are you tend to disregard how important descriptions are (sorry, I couldn't resist this one ;0) )

Cheers,

Eduardo



Ken Friedman escreveu:
> Dear Eduardo,
>
> Ekphrasis is valuable as one step in a doctoral thesis that involves a work of art, architecture, or design, but description of the work would not on its own merit awarding a PhD. A description of the work, no matter how articulate, does not do significantly more than the work itself. For a doctoral degree, one must articulate the original contribution to the knowledge of the field. That is the ostensible purpose of the exegesis, though in my view even a robust exegesis is insufficient for this task. 
>
> Even a robust exegesis does not fulfill the complete requirements of a thesis. An eisegetical statement is completely inadequate. An ekphrastic statement describing the work fails to position the work in the larger context of social and cultural meaning. A robust exegesis does this, but it does not disclose the research questions or the method of inquiry that gives rise to the knowledge that the researcher creates and contributes to the field. A sound thesis requires several elements, including a literature review. Without arguing that Terry Love's thesis model is the only acceptable thesis format, one virtue of Terry's model is that it explicitly requires the doctoral student to develop and present all the key elements of a robust thesis.
>
> Or so I see it.
>
> Warm wishes,
>
> Ken
>
>   
>