Changing Art into Research

Soliloquy Methodology

Jocene Vallack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351044738
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Changing Art into Research: Soliloquy Methodology presents a research methodology that enables inquiry into one's personal experiences in an endeavour to reveal essential commonalities of human experience. Arts-informed research methods are becoming increasingly popular with scholars in Arts, Education and the Social Sciences, but there is often confusion about how to turn arts practice into rigorous inquiry.

This book examines the theoretical perspectives needed to inform these research approaches, which are often missing in methods teaching and research. Soliloquy is a new methodology that interprets and applies Husserl's philosophical concept of Transcendental Phenomenology. It marries together the synthesizing powers of the unconscious mind with the analytical capacities of conscious cognition and articulation. It further explores the possibility that both cognitive and intuitive ways of knowing are valid and appropriate for academic inquiry, provided these methods are aligned through a philosophically consistent, theoretical framework.

This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in arts-based qualitative research and those doing an arts-based practice dissertation.

1

A concise overview of Soliloquy

Image, symbol, archetype and metaphor are the language of the unconscious mind. Through a process with many names and many manifestations – phenomenological reduction, archetypal awareness, mythical consciousness, epiphany and intuition, to name a few that will arise throughout this book – unconscious knowledge is able to surface and be cognitively interpreted and articulated. Our everyday experiences are the data, which enter the unconscious and are then made sensible through dream and its symbols, allowing reasoning consciousness to understand that which we already instinctively know. Artists are familiar with the process and are able to work seamlessly between intuition and logic. The methodology I call Soliloquy attempts to channel this natural procedure for research.

Soliloquy is research methodology, informed by the masterwork of Edmund Husserl, which he called Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl developed phenomenology over the decades he worked as an academic mathematician and philosopher, but Transcendental Phenomenology was his magnum opus. I have used this theory to inform the research methodology I call Soliloquy. It may suit practitioners who need to research things outside of the scope and limitations of the scientific way of understanding reality as materialistic and mechanistic. It invites a liaison between the rationality of positivism and the intuitive knowledge that can be elicited from an unconscious, metaphoric awareness.

On a rational level, I believe it is important for researchers to make themselves aware, at least to some degree, of the philosophies that inform their chosen approach to an inquiry. They need to understand why their methodology is the one which can best address their particular research question. The difficulty for many researchers is that philosophers do not usually write for the average, intelligent reader. Some have suggested that philosophers write only for themselves (McLellan et al., 2019), which is understandable because much of what they discuss mandates a command of elite terminology with which the rest of us struggle. I have struggled with it for at least twenty-five years now, and although I do not pretend to be as eloquent in these matters as those who write for philosophers, I aspire now to present a clear and accurate account of the thinking, which has informed phenomenology and this methodology I call Soliloquy.

The book aims to present an approach to research, which allows the practitioner to use personal experience to inform research. Through a kind of personal psychoanalysis, wisdom drawn out from one’s own unconscious is then able to be rationally analysed to inform the inquiry. Unlike some emerging arts-based methodologies, which appear to be more about personal, emotional expression than a relatable outcome, Soliloquy relies on both the intuitive unconscious and rational logic to work together to marry creative insight with tangible research results. The intuitive expression is the way to the final product of the research, not the outcome itself. As I have argued on other occasions, research should be able to make the implicit explicit. It is a way of creating language for tacit knowledge. I maintain that unlike art, research is always a partially cognitive activity that must be comprehended and articulated by its creator, but that the data used to inform the analysis is better for the addition of intuitive knowledge drawn from the unconscious.

Throughout this book, I invite the reader to explore the philosophies that inform the theoretical framework of Soliloquy. It is primarily based on the later work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), specifically, his much maligned (Hopkins, 2001) and misunderstood concept of Transcendental Phenomenology, which emerged at the end of his career and became the capstone of his life’s work in phenomenology. It was before its time, as its time is now. When Husserl was writing back in the early part of the twentieth century, modernism was unable to deal with notions of intuition and the unconscious. Freud, a contemporary of Husserl, was only then creating psychoanalysis. It seems that the two were on a dynamic wavelength that had not yet impacted on the modern world.

As it will sometimes happen, Husserl’s insights were part of a community of thoughts that were coinciding and altogether evolving at that time, at the start of the twentieth century. We can see that now with the benefit of hindsight. Husserl, along with certain of his contemporaries – Jean Gebser (1986), Carl Jung (1953), Sigmund Freud (1959), Pablo Picasso and Ruldof Steiner (1911), to name a few, were collectively moving beyond the grand but limited, scientific view of the world, towards a wonder and appreciation of ideal objects and spiritual dimensions that are best accessed through philosophy or theosophy. It is in these domains that newcomers are likely to become lost, so this book seeks to act as a map and a guide for the new and intrepid phenomenologist who would dare to follow Husserl down the trajectory of transcendentalism.

The most difficult task for me, when I began my reading into the works of these great scholars, was that the terminology was foreign and ambiguous. I discovered that (especially in phenomenology) various writers used the same terms in starkly different ways, which can be initially frustrating and confusing. Therefore, I refer the reader again to the glossary of terms at the end of this book, which may indicate the perspective from which I am using the terminology. I do not purport that the definitions here are finite. I merely aim to clarify how, after much consideration, I am understanding and using the vocabulary in this work at this time. This is my truth as I currently understand it.

I intend that the style of language in this text should be candid and direct. It is one of my preferred strategies for clear communication. Whereas scientific genres use passive voice, I will talk directly to you. I agree with Sheldrake, who points out that ‘the passive voice is still employed to maintain the illusion of disembodied objectivity’, and ‘(before quantum physics was discovered) … physicists tried to pretend they were not involved in their own experiments’ (Sheldrake, 2013, p. 295). He goes on to make a strong argument as to why this objectivity in Science can sometimes be illusionary. We will consider Sheldrake’s thesis in some detail in the next chapter. Soliloquy is not a positivist methodology and this is not a book informed exclusively by modernism, so let us speak plainly.

Some of you may be inspired to work with the methodology of Soliloquy in a practical way and avoid the arduous debate on phenomenology. May I advise caution here. I believe that each researcher should understand the approach s/he has chosen to investigate hir research question and be able to articulate why it is the most appropriate methodology to use. It is very important. This introductory chapter will give an overview of Soliloquy and argue that it aligns philosophically with phenomenology and theoretically with the intuitive methods used. Once this has been grasped, I see nothing wrong with trialling the methods, providing you accept and understand that you are proceeding within the context of a theoretical research framework. The remainder of this chapter sets out a concise description of that framework. It outlines the basic procedure of how to use the methodology. Hold it up against your research project and see if it looks like an appropriate fit.

However, if you dare to journey beyond these steps, and venture further into the theoretical reasoning that informs the research methodology, I invite you to continue with me beyond this summary chapter and into the crystal cave that is the philosopher’s domain. Come and see if you agree that it is truly glorious.

What is Soliloquy?

Soliloquy is a research methodology grounded in pure phenomenology. Here I echo my endeavour to make it accessible for all, who in the name of research are prepared to reflect bravely and openly on their personal experiences. It is an application of the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1981). The mandate of pure phenomenology is that the researcher must personally experience the phenomena under investigation. Unlike other first-person approaches that focus on description, such as Autoethnography (Ellis, 2004; Ellis, Jones & Adams, 2013) or that which has come to be known as ‘new’ phenomenology (Crotty, 1996), Soliloquy seeks a definite research outcome in the form of an a priori (metaphysical or archetypal) object. This object is the research essence and it sums up what the whole research is about. Arts practitioners are particularly suited to using Soliloquy, as these archetypal insights frequently present themselves intuitively and symbolically through arts practices such as writing, painting, performing or film-making. Consequently, arts-based researchers could excel with this approach, because the experience of staying brave throughout the apparent void, which is really the incubation period for creativity, is familiar to them. Yet it is the very thing that most disturbs traditional researchers. Artists have learned to trust these potentially unnerving periods of doubt as preludes to innovation. It is the pain before the birth. Similarly, practitioners of psychoanalysis know that insights can eventually surface from the chaos of free-association and dream analysis, while their patients may initially feel overwhelmed by the complexity. It becomes easier when we trust that these are the ways through which the unconscious informs consciousness.

Soliloquy is based on three principles:

• that the unconscious mind is far superior to logic and cognition when it comes to seeing patterns and meaning in apparent chaos;
• that the foundations of psychoanalysis can be wellsprings, reaching deep into the collective unconscious for reflective research inquiry; and
• that it can take the researcher from the most subjective reflections to the most intersubjective, universal outcomes.

Using analytical tools akin to those of the psychotherapist and the transcendental philosopher, the researcher first embarks on an experience of the research in question. For example, I developed and used the approach on two separate occasions, while investigating two very different phenomena: that of play directing and that of one’s ability to relate to technology. Progressing, then, through the five phases of the methodology, which I call the Methods – experience, epoche, epiphany, explication and examination – the researcher finishes with the answer to the research question in the form of an image, myth or metaphor. These cryptic clues from the unconscious are then analysed logically to reveal and explain the research result. Just as through psychoanalysis, an uncertain and complex dream may eventually provide the dreamer with profound insight, so too may subjective, lifeworld complexities lead the researcher to universal insights and solutions. The unconscious mind, skilled at making patterns from chaos, can inform research logic.

Soliloquy is housed within a philosophically aligned research framework of phenomenology, which can take inquiry from subjective complexity to a single, ‘intersubjective’ (Husserl, 1964/1929), archetypal research outcome. What does this mean? It means that my most basic human experiences can be known universally by humankind. The researcher uses hir own experience as data and hir unconscious mind as a catalyst or melting pot. S/he works (in the early stages at least) intuitively rather than cognitively. Later, hir logical consciousness will elucidate and explain the meaning that has been presented by the unconscious. That is the research cycle of Soliloquy – intuition then iconic representation of meaning, then articulation of meaning.

The philosophical phenomenology informing Soliloquy

How do we know what we think we know? How do we find our truths? As human survivors, we trust in our hunches, in information from our personal experiences and in our reasoning powers to make sense of the world. So why then, as researchers, do we traditionally recognise only the latter? The methodology I call Soliloquy is informed by the philosophy of phenomenology, written one hundred years ago by Edmund Husserl, and misunderstood by many ever since. Husserl said that phenomenologists must firstly know a phenomenon through subjective experiences and intuition (Husserl, 1964/1929, pp. 34–36), before realising its transcendental and universal quintessence. Modern science could not frame this notion, so although Husserl’s terminology was somehow retained and arguably plagiarised by Heidegger, and then consequently misused by others who followed him, Husserl’s meaning was ultimately disfigured and then lost to many. Popularly, phenomenology has come to mean many things to many researchers, and mostly these new incarnations do not logically align with Husserl’s original thinking. Soliloquy draws again on the original gist of the terminology used by Husserl and sets out a radical process for making sense of it and applying it to research.

Various versions of the methodologies, which go by the name of ‘Phenomenology’ have been widely used in qualitative research for the past few decades. Spawned by Heidegger, something which Crotty (1996) calls ‘new’ phenomenology, grew out of the American Humanist Movement and claims to be based on the work of Husserl. Like Crotty, I maintain it is not, and I will argue this allegation in detail in Chapter 4. The jargon is Husserl’s but its interpretation is skewed. The philosophical lens of twentieth-century modernism was too narrowly scientific in perspective to appreciate Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. The latter seemed abstract and somewhat metaphysical. Rationality and logic cannot manifest a priori forms or archetypes as does the unconscious, yet in pure phenomenology these become the key components. I will argue that Transcendental Phenomenology provides a sound theoretical perspective on which to erect the research paradigm of Soliloquy, and I will offer for the reader’s appraisal and possible use, a step by step approach for doing Soliloquy as an empirical adaptation of Transcendental Phenomenology.

In the last few hundred years, positivist protocols, directing us more to the quantities rather than the qualities of matters, have served us well in many regards. Scientific reasoning champions a way to approach questions about the physical world, which require answers that can be measured. Scientific Method sets out the rules for research, and each of us who attended high school last century may recall that it was widely considered to be the only valid approach to inquiry. It is still, in some circles, recognised as the only rigorous paradigm for research. However, most will now concede it is not so well suited to investigations into less tangible questions about feelings, ethics and values. In order to research these sorts of essential questions, in such areas as the Social Sciences, Psychology and Education, we need to seek other ways. Qualities such as empathy and intuition resist quantification. Just as I may use both my intuitive and my analytical skills to make lifeworld judgments, so too may I approach research in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. A concise overview of Soliloquy
• 2. The co-existing realities of the ephemeral and the eternal: Aristotle and Plato
• 3. Intuition
• 4. The theoretical perspective of Soliloquy: Transcendental Phenomenology
• 5. Soliloquy for the intuitive researcher: The methods
• Glossary
• Index