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.
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