Affirming the visual-material: taking (theoretical) stock, finding an argument that works

Progress. This post was NOT written at 2.30am. It’s a rehearsal for a series of papers-in-development, about “the visual” and social research, and it builds on the crisis-induced stocktake that was my previous post. This post gets down to the job of constructing a workable theoretical framing, by considering what visual-material methods are, and how I can affirm their substantial position (my) social research (and why I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the label “methods” as a result).

Note: I use the term “visual-material” methods instead of simply visual methods because I am talking about images and things, drawing and materials, ‘artefacts’ that have substance.

1. Much work with “visual methods” is (both intentionally and unintentionally) decorative, instrumental or focused exclusively on novelty. People often ‘like’ visual methods because they are ‘nice’ or make things more interesting. If we mean harmless, pleasant, decorative, then nice is not good. The next step up is to take a more instrumental view, along the lines of ‘visual methods are good for eliciting qualitative data’. I have a little more time for this view, but my PROBLEM is the relegation of methods as a tool, something that gets the “real” work done, i.e. the “data collected”. We might say that we don’t really take a positivist view of data, that we know methods are not invisible, but do we/I practice what we/I preach?

2. Visual-material methods are not neutral. I say that visual-material methods are active, generative materials, not window dressing, or a style for some other substance. I say that they have an interesting, multi-dimensional status - they can “be” several things at the same time and can connect diverse things in new ways (e.g. including, but also beyond logical-rational relationships). I still like (existential) phenomenologists (e.g. Hans-Georg Gadamer, or  Jean-Luc Marion’s) ideas that the arts (including painting) are something to be ‘encountered’ in an active sense, are work with us to cause is to see (ourselves) through strangeness, analogy, metaphor and so on. However, I’m not sure the existential argument goes far enough. Encounters, yes, hermeneutics also, but I’m not sure the visual-material as mimesis of something else, towards something else is much more than method, even if - granted - it’s a much more acceptable, active method.

3. We need an affirmative and substantial view of visual-material “methods”. What’s the alternative to decoration, or even space for encounter? My line of thinking is as follows. If visual-material methods are to be “more than method”, this requires - ultimately - to challenge the subject-object relationship between method and data. We might accept that methods ‘influence’ the data in a social constructionist sense, but I’m wondering if that’s not much of an (epistemological) shift. Instead, what if we challenged the artificial separation of methods-methodology-theory-data that we are keen to segregate in our desire for ‘rigour’ and so on? What if we took seriously that each ‘contact’ with the data changed the data? What if data only becomes accessible to us in and through our means of seeing?

4. The time has come for methods ‘like’ the visual-material. I suspect I will have to refine this argument, but this grand statement is my way of saying that the characteristics of advanced capitalism produce some messy effects. Human life is entangled with technologies and their metrics and global issues such as climate change and stateless people are issues that cross boundaries. These things (and more) drive complex, contradictory scenarios in which people become new, fractured, hybrid  subjects, and specific groups experience marginalisation, and inequality. In the face of complexity, ambiguity, multi-speed and multi-scale issues all at play together, leaving traditional research methods appearing ill-equipped. I’m going to suggest that visual-material methods represent a type of method that have the potential to speak to this situation. Given my last blog post about my theoretical nomadism and the journey I have been on to find a home for my research practice, I therefore am ‘trying out’ PostHumanism as a conceptual frame to argue this.

5. PostHumanism is an ideal ground for the future of visual-material methods. I admit, I have resisted reading much about PostHumanism, as I assumed it was a pendulum swing against the human, and given that all my work is about relationships, I didn’t have time for (what I saw as) theoretical pretentiousness and first world / middle class anxieties which might be hard to apply in working class communities. I’m shifting my position now. Without giving a lengthy summary of PostHumanism here (which I’m not qualified to write, being new to the game) I will point out a few simplified features, as I understand them, which make it an ideal ground for (my) visual-material methods:

• Restricting our ‘unit of analysis’ to the individual human, community or society is a flawed decision. Human activity is not “solely” human. ‘Human’ identity, activity and agency is intimately connected to, and co-constituted by much that is not ‘human’: computers, algorithms, objects, spaces, cartographic lines and more.
• ‘Human’ projects are more-than-human projects: global warming, income inequality, what and how we eat, mental health...the list goes on. Unfamiliar as it may seem, a key to moving towards connected solutions is to refine the relatedness of the world through a complex, diverse, but single immanent-material system. This is not simple monism; a single, unified, homogeneous unit, but a messy entanglements and patterns of people and (many) things. 
• We see things less as individual ‘units’ (as markets require) than lines, processes, collectives, patterns: things that emerge and become. ‘Becoming’ replaces the individual human as an ethical and productive unit of enquiry. We could say: relationships, not things. 
• Affect is something shared, passed through, transmitted, and the opposite to individual autonomy. Once we take affect seriously, we can take up Braidotti’s (2019) call for “an intensive form of trans-disciplinarity and boundary-crossing among a range of discourses” (p.28), or, I say, a concern with following lines into all the places they go. [For more on this, see my previous post on Deleuze, diagrams, mapping, stacking and folding.]
• The consequence of all these points can be heightened anxiety, but more importantly, can be a desire to affirm that which is different, affective and relational (Braidotti, 2019: 11, 34) through a desire to act; an ethical praxis. Humans and their relationships are not lost, but enhanced, viewed with a concern for diversity, relatedness and ethics, rather than commodification and exploitation.

6. If we take these points seriously, the purpose, status and substance of methods must be revised to be relevant. I focus on the connected, the in-between, the processes of becoming, and start with some of Braidotti’s (2019) calls for action, responding to her call for “conceptual creativity” (p.34) and to develop a material (practical) “plane of encounter for multiple differentiated positions” (p.38). I note some principles in a move towards an affirmative view of the visual-material:

• Visual-material methods are not some neutral ‘other’ relegated to the role of novel decoration, illustration or even way of elicitation. They materialise the flow and connection of forces that connect as we engage. 
• They come loaded with potential, and offer to re-imagine, rather than represent. They are part of the act of relating: a generative, productive act, affirming the human-with.
• Visual-material methods achieve this by making strange and turning the traditional subject, and by (re)animating situations, (think of ethnographic study or performance, rather than a still life study). 
• They can fore-ground that which is excluded, marginalised, edited out and prohibited under homogenous and oppressive regimes of power. 
• Visual-material methods therefore become active in the research site, acting back on situations and co-producing ‘data’. Their persistence allows for different sorts of encounters, work-with, and new forms to emerge. They can be challenging and insistent. 
• Their ambiguity allows for exploration and holding of tensions, contradictions, negative spaces and give form to what is traditionally not described in research. 

The down side to theoretical nomadism (towards a way of talking about visual methods and practice)

Disclaimer: I wrote this at 2.30am, because these thoughts were in my head. I am in a process of re-writing, so read at your peril! - You may find this helpful if you struggle to articulate your theoretical points of reference. 

I need to find a way forward with an article that is convincing and do-able. An article with a long history of crashing and re-booting. 

I can see the need to pull together some coherent thinking, given that the article has been developed over a long time and incrementally, for different audiences. 

On one hand. I can see an opportunity here - I potentially have a few articles on the timeline which would benefit from a similar foundation. ...and I don’t have a solid theoretical foundation for the thing that I have found myself wanting to write about. 

This ‘thing’ - the common thread through lots of my work - is to do with the agency of the visual-material in practices. In this case, it’s the process of Sensemaking. I want to talk about perspective change, reflection / reflexivity, the ‘doing’ of things and finding ways to connect and collaborate (both in terms of people/systems, but also the development of narratives). 

I think part of my challenge has come about because I have been eclectic in my choice of inspirations for thinking about practice and visual-material methods. My PhD gave me a hermeneutic perspective (initially via Paul Ricoeur), and that connected me to a thread of literature about phenomenology, mimesis self and narrative. This connected me to existential material from Heidegger and Gadamer, where I connected to reference points around the life-world, being-in-the-world (Dasein), things being to hand, encounters, shared horizons and the like. 

I have traveled nomadically and heuristically, not paying much attention to the logic or implications of the epistemological ‘jumps’ I have made in moving from one body of literature to another. This was demonstrated again through further theoretical ‘turns’ I have made whilst looking for material on how people get things done, how we engage with the world, and the role of the visual. 

Next came forms of (or cousins of) practice theorisation - attractive because it gave me a framework within which to integrate different sorts of things. On reflection, this has been such an interest to me because I want to settle on a perspective that is satisfying both theoretically and practically. It has to be useful, but must make sense ontologically and epistemologically. In (versions of) practice theory, I can think about patterns of things that come together at certain places and times. Familiar patterns that can be improvised, but which are altered as the elements are altered. 

At the same time - writing this helps me see why I get so confused! - I have found really interesting motifs and images in post structural work, initially of Deleuze. I could not have jumped around more if I had tried. As an artist, the ability to move beyond and between traditional boundaries has felt useful; I don’t define myself as a scholar or expert of “a discipline”, but someone who wants to put ideas to work pragmatically. So - a focus on flows, becomings, emergence, diagrams, maps, rhizomes and lines of flight has been another way to connect “things” in situations. 

This sort of heuristic and nomadic development of ideas over the last ten years or so has given me the ability to have LOTS of different conversations, to change perspective, to ask questions. What it has also done is thoroughly confuse my academic writing. I now see that if I had landed on one idea and mined that in a persistent, rigorous and thorough way, I would be publishing more articles (a better “publishing machine”).

Am I putting too much pressure on myself - of course - BUT at this point, facing the need to have a more coherent and developed paradigm to write within, I can take the opportunity to settle on a framework (not the only, but one at least) that I can shore up. 

I return to the topic(s) that I keep coming back to - shared activity, meaning-making and the visual-material - in the context of wellbeing, professional practice and children’s services. Or, to put it in a shorter way, visual methods and collaborative practices. 

If I expect to summarise a synthesis of all the theoretical perspectives above, that isn’t possible. I didn’t connect with them because they had logical connections, but because I was looking for people who talked about experience, change, activity in the world and aesthetics. I have written something recently Silvia Gherardi’s relational-materialism. This was satisfying for me because it was a form of practice theory that was about materiality and affect. It’s getting me closer to a territory I feel I could create something more robust about. I struggle with the tension of needing to develop ‘ rigour’ and wanting to journey and connect things nomadically. I hate snobbish implications from reviewers who pick up the amateurish aspects of my thinking. I would hate to be an “expert” but I want to journey with questions. However, to publish, I’ve got to make sense. I can’t publish questions or present drawings alone!

My next step, for an article I am doing a complete re-write of (familiar theme), is to connect Sensemaking, professional stories and visual-material methods through a new materialist / posthuman frame that focuses on affect and inter-action. I want to find a way of talking about acting with others AND the visual-material. I don’t want to create an intellectual project, I just want a way of saying “See! This is what I’m talking about! These things!” In a way that won’t get blown out of the water for being inconsistent, lacking rigour and so on. 

Next steps: Gherardi, Braidotti and a relational-material ‘place’ in which I can talk acting together and the agency of the visual within that. 

This is why I got up at 2.30am to write this, and may regret that.