The Travelling Practice(s) of Cultural Analysis
José Luis Viesca Rivas
Student number: 11316403
RMA Cultural Analysis
Supervisor
Niall Martin
Second reader
Murat Aydemir
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Date of Submission
Index
Acknowledgments 3
Introduction
4 - 9
Chapter 1
10 - 27
Chapter 2
28 - 48
Chapter 3
49 - 63
Conclusions
64 - 71
Bibliography
72 - 74
Acknowledgements
A mi familia sin la cual éste trabajo y ésta estancia hubieran sido imposibles. Son el mejor equipo del mundo.
To my Friends, old and new, for all the deep conversations, intellectual and affective exchanges and of course, the travels and the fun.
To my colleagues – present and future, hoping this work will help imagine different alternatives and ways of practicing Cultural Analysis.
To my teachers – past and present – for your patience, care and respect.
I´m specially indebted to Professor Niall Martin without whom this work would have been impossible. Thanks for all those extra hours and the fantastic conversations we had in your green-house therapy room.
Last but not least, to the Elephant. For all that love and care, laughter and joy.
J.L. Viesca Rivas Amsterdam, 2018
The Travelling Practice(s) of Cultural Analysis
IntroductionWith its constitutive emphasis on interdisciplinarity, Cultural Analysis has traditionally focused on, and been thought of, in terms of its relationship with disciplinarity and the subjects constituted by disciplines. In this thesis, however, I want to examine instead the relationship between Cultural Analysis (CA) and a similarly hybrid and interdisciplinary academic practice – Artistic Research (AR). Within the broader concern of how two interdisciplinary practices can encounter one another, what is the effect of placing and practicing them together, what benefits and insights might such an encounter produce, I want to revisit questions such as ‘How does Cultural Analysis produce knowledge?’ ‘How does it engage with its object?’ ‘What does this engagement entail?’ and ‘What does Cultural Analysis do as an epistemological practice?’
Before beginning this exploration, it is important to acknowledge from the outset the difficulty of the task at hand, given that there are, in one sense, as many answers to these questions as there are artistic researchers and cultural analysts working on them and that CA and AR are distinct systems that manifest through different mediums (typically textual and typically non-textual, respectively). Nevertheless, I will argue that it is possible to profit from this tension. The difficulty created by this very multiplicity provides an opportunity to explore the diverse elements, limits and “silent assumptions” (Bal Travelling Concepts 1) that constitute and differentiate these practices and can create a reflective platform where their potential collaborative synergies can be put to work.
This task will take the form of a speculative enterprise, that is a creative exercise directed at thinking possibilities and “imagining alternatives” (Arlander) more than providing definitive answers. Speculation, as will be seen in chapters two and three, offers itself as a
concept that, it will be argued, could constitute the shared space where CA and AR can meet and collaborate. To anticipate my argument, as cultural analysts, we are taught to ask not what our object is, but instead, what does it do, displacing the focus of the query from `being` towards `doing`, emphasising the performative nature of the practice of CA. From another perspective, and as its name suggests, Artistic Research is defined by its medial approach to knowledge production though the arts, or as scholar Henk Borgdorff would describe it, through “the articulation of the unreflective, non-conceptual content enclosed in aesthetic experiences, enacted in creative practices, and embodied in artistic products.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 149, my emphasis) The emphasis placed on the practical character, shared by the two disciplines, already suggests a common ground to begin the analysis. The concepts of “practice” along with “engagement”, “research” and “speculation” will thus be central to this thesis.
The first chapter focuses on CA, drawing mainly from texts and essays by Dutch scholar Mieke Bal, and aims to work out the angles and questions that emerge from and define cultural analysis as an “interdisciplinary research practice” (Aydemir 38). The reasons for choosing Mieke Bal´s work as an optic on cultural analysis are many: firstly, she presents her own work as exemplary of the practice for which she coined the term cultural analysis1, she co-founded ASCA, the first research community to give an institutional form to this practice, has written several works which have become (maybe against her prediction or will) canonical texts for the field. But additionally, she has also become an artist in her own right – through the production of video art – and as such, she is an ideal starting point or reference point for this project with its focus on the bridge between theoretical and material practices.
1Even though it was actually coined by Clifford Geertz in passing, she adjudges herself the term in “Travelling
For these reasons, and in order to understand what CA does, the point of departure for these travels will be a relatively short, but condensed performance of what the practice is. Using the “Früchtl/Bal” debate as a model, I will analyse, synthesize and employ the procedures Mieke Bal follows in response to the attacks, observations and challenges posed to CA by philosopher Joseph Früchtl in the “heated exchange” (Aydemir 37) that was published in Krisis, the Journal for contemporary Philosophy in 2008.
Involving three academics – Mieke Bal, Joseph Früchtl and Murat Aydemir, the “Früchtl/Bal” debate will also serve as a useful reflection on the way CA is conceived and seen from the perspective of traditional disciplines – philosophy in this case – and to point out, albeit it in a negative form, the limits and problems of the practice of cultural analysis as well as its habitual procedures in performing the task of cultural analysis.
In this I will follow one of CA´s essential axioms – that is, committing to the engagement with an object - and reflect on this practice in relation to the famous parable of the “blind men and the elephant” which first appeared in the Buddhist scriptures, Udana 68 -69. This parable, in its commentary on the problem of the relativity of knowledge production, its trans-historical and trans-cultural travels and its pedagogical nature serves as a working image or metaphor of how CA goes about producing “different knowledge” (Aydemir 38). The parable, as it is illustrated by Japanese ukiyo-e master artist Katsushika Hokusai,2 will serve then as an alternative platform through/with which to think about the practice of CA by enabling us to understand CA in light of its different possible interpretations.
2 There are many representations of the parable, however, Hokusai´s was chosen because the print book it comes from – Houkusai Manga – was meant as a pedagogical tool for artists.
A second chapter will explore Artistic Research and CA side by side, aiming thus to reflect upon the similarities and differences between these non-disciplinary practices. As in chapter one, this part will mainly focus on locating and understanding the practice of AR and the constitutive elements that are propitious to an exchange with CA. Of special interest will be the analysis of their epistemological methods – how they produce knowledge- and the different ways in which they conceive of their object of study, the notion of research and thus, their practice. Henk Borgdorff´s book The Conflict of the Faculties, the Routledge Companion to Research in the arts and diverse articles from the Journal for Artistic Research among other sources, will be the guiding texts for this section.
In this, second, chapter the concepts of “creativity”, “play” and “experimentation” will be emphasised as they provide useful descriptors for the attitude AR takes towards research and its practices; attitudes that, even though present in CA, are not allocated the prominence they have in AR. It will be argued that CA and AR are not that different – except maybe for the former´s “disavowal” of the “liberal subject” which seems to occlude the creative aspect of the practice through the anthropomorphizing of the object that presents it thus as a “subject” that “speaks back”, apparently relieving CA form the inherent ethics involved in this creative act.
Mediating between chapters two and three then, will be the concept of speculation. As noted above, speculation is taken to indicate the practice of thinking possibilities, or as artist Annette Arlander states, the practice “of imagining, of envisioning alternatives” (Arlander, 2016) aiming with this definition to describe indirectly, or sideways, CA as a practice that aims at producing images, objects or possible visions of reality that had been ignored or occluded by the closure that disciplinary knowledge had provided to this point, thus bringing artistic practice and CA a little closer. In this case, the guiding question is not
what is, nor what does it do, but ‘What if?’ – a question which opens up a space for speculation.
Finally, the third chapter will address and make use of speculation to rethink how concepts such as knowledge or research are defined and used, and thus how this alters or blurs the division of subject and object, practice and theory, knowing and doing. It will be argued that a central aspect in this transformation would be the shift towards a “practice-turn” where the processual and the contingent take over the fixed and definite. This shift locates the body and material (artistic) practices at the centre, emphasizing touch as one of the alternative mediums to engage with the object. New materialism will be briefly brought into the discussion as it allows us to understand the importance of matter and the material dimension of the objects of study. This theory, which accounts for a different epistemological perspective, could provide a common ground or a set of concepts that could serve as a link between artistic research and cultural analysis as they meet in speculation. Through the work of Karen Barad, more specifically her essay ‘On touch’ - I will briefly explore New Materialist takes on touching and matter which, in turn redefine the epistemological structures and position of the analyst in face of its object of study, the method of engagement with the object, and ideally, allow the definition of the practice to travel from its location in cultural analysis to what I will term a “speculative practice” or the “practice of producing possible visions of reality”.
This thesis is a localized, particular study as it draws from sources that point directly to the place – the academy – where this practice is taught and reproduced – the Dutch academy, or the University of Amsterdam – the UvA, to be more precise, and through material and sources produced mainly in this academic context precisely because of their locatedness, acknowledging indirectly, that there are other ways of practicing CA as it has travelled to
other countries and academic contexts. This self-imposed restriction is imposed for two reasons: one, to delimit the object to a very precise location and to very precise actors – particularly Mieke Bal´s work – in order to start from an achievable field from where an analysis can be performed, and secondly, to explore through that limitation what the practice of CA is – or does – today, for a specific community and as an academic endeavour.
Chapter 1
The Practice(s) of Cultural Analysis 3
Practice
1 – The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it.
2 – The customary, habitual, or expected procedure or way of doing of something.
3 – Repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
Parable of the blind men and the elephant Hokusai Katsushika, Manga, vol. 3, 1814
3 This chapter borrows its title from a collection of essays edited by Mieke Bal and published in 1999 by the
Stanford University Press – which has been central to the foundation or institutionalization of CA in the UvA Dutch Academy.
What is Cultural Analysis? What is it that we do, when we perform what we call Cultural Analysis?4 I borrow these, slightly paraphrased, questions from the Früchtl/Bal debate, to reflect upon the procedures, methods and workings of CA as a practice. What type of practice is it? What does it do?
To try and answer these questions while remaining true to CA´s commitment to engagement with an object, I have chosen as my partner in the debate (Bal) the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant (pictured above). As it is originally told in the Udana, or Buddhist scriptures of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism it describes the Buddha´s use of the parable to illustrate the relativity of knowledge and epistemic indeterminacy. The parable goes like this:
Once upon a time there was a certain Raja who called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind... and show them an elephant.' 'Very good, sire,' replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, 'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant. "When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?' "Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who
knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.
"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes, it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.
Brethren, the Raja was delighted with the scene.
Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance, they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.5
The parable, which originated in the Indian subcontinent around the 1st Millennium BCE, has travelled to other cultures, each adapting or interpreting it in different ways and emphasizing different aspects of its message. For example, in Hinduism the parable speaks about how the same reality is interpreted differently by everyone. In Jainism, it is used to explain that, to understand an entity with multiple properties, multiple views are needed, while Sufism adapted it to show that individual perception is limited6. The parable didn´t stop there, but migrated to the West; the most famous version recreated in a poem by John Godfrey Saxe in the 19th Century, or more recently, in the 20th Century, in music where ´Natalie Merchant sang this poem in full on her Leave Your Sleep album (Disc 1, track 13)´ (´Parable of the blind men and the elephant´ Wikipedia) It has also been picked up by physics
5katinkahesselink.net/tibet/blind-men-elephant.html (accessed: 20/03/2018)
6Rumi, “the 13th Century Persian poet and teacher of Sufism, included it in his Masnavi” from whom we
receive this beautiful and precise image: “The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast” (´Parable of the blind men and the elephant´ Wikipedia)
as an analogy for wave-particle duality where ´quantum-scale objects can be described both as a particle and as a wave´, or in biology, where it stands as a model for the Polyclonal B cell response, a reaction in the immune system of mammals that destroys antigens by attacking its overlapping parts or “epitopes” by the self-cloning of such cells. Nowadays, the image and the parable are common; a single search in Google producing almost one million results.
How is this parable useful to think or picture what Cultural Analysis does? As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, the parable will serve as a working image or metaphor of how CA goes about producing “different knowledge” (Aydemir). In it and through it, different aspects of CA will be exposed. Why a parable?
A parable, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is “a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson”, and according to Abram and Harpham´s A Glossary of Literary Terms, ´A parable is a very short narrative about human beings presented as to stress the tacit analogy or parallel, with a general thesis or lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience. […] the parable is not merely a literary or didactic device but a “basic cognitive principle” that comes into play in interpreting “every level of our experience” and that “shows up everywhere, from simple actions like telling time to complex literary creations […].´ (Abram and Harpham 11) Thus, its pedagogical nature, the use of abstract arguments and metaphorical language, and its capacity to host different interpretations, the parable will help present the practice of CA under different guises. Through a simple story, an ethical subtext or lesson is transmitted, one to which CA can be related, as it will be argued, in terms of what it does and how it engages its objects. In what follows, different interpretations of the parable will be given, presenting different angles or versions of the practice.
1)The parable as a metaphor for Cultural Analysis in relation to other disciplines
Cultural Analysis under duress or Who´s afraid of Cultural Analysis?
Imagine that the Elephant from our parable is Cultural Analysis, brought in to the courtyard (the Academy) to be “seen” by the Raja, who will represent the Humanities. The elephant waits, patiently, as the group of blind men inspects him. Each blind man representing a traditional discipline with which CA has rapport, such as philosophy, sociology, history, or visual studies and one representing a Cultural Analyst. They all come together, to see and understand this strange thing called Cultural Analysis. As in the original story – and as it appears in the Früchtl/Bal debate7 – the diverse views on what CA is, collide and create conflict among those trying to define it – each holding to their own view.
A philosopher – such as Joseph Früchtl, for example, might claim that CA is a “bad or parasitic philosophy” (Früchtl, 70). Cultural analyst Murat Aydemir will answer that it is actually an “interdisciplinary research practice” while Mieke Bal defines it as “the practice of engaging objects” (Bal, “You do” 59) presenting in turn philosophy as a “branch” or “variant of cultural analysis” (Aydemir, 37). For Früchtl, CA is a “floundering” enterprise while, throughout her response –under duress - Bal disagrees, deploying a short example of practice through which she aims to demonstrate the opposite.
Just as the blind men and the quarrelsome preachers and scholars in the parable, the diverse actors working for or against CA define it one way or the other, revealing in the process the multiplicity of its nature and the difficulty – and polemic - that results from attempting one single definition, challenging even the need to ask such a question. At the end
7The Früchtl/Bal debate is a theoretical exchange that took place among three academics, Mieke Bal, Jospeh
Früchtl and Murat Aydemir first “[…]in the context of the ASCA international workshop on Engaging Objects (March 2008)” (Aydemir, 37) and later, as a series of four consecutive texts published in the Journal for Contemporary Philosophy Krisis – a Dutch, “open-access, peer-reviewed journal”7- over volumes 1 and 2 of the
of the debate, each scholar takes their own definition as the good one, resulting not in consensus, but dissent. The controversy seems to revolve around various traits of CA, but more specifically from its interdisciplinary nature, which, in its interstitial ontology, challenges the clear-cut boundaries of the disciplines among/between which it resides and with which it works. The breaching of Philosophy´s boundaries and what appears as a transgression of its assigned space of action, seems to be one of the greatest concerns for Früchtl, who considers the methodology and way theories are implemented to be insufficiently (philosophically) rigorous enough, fearing that the philosophical tradition is “simply used or used for pragmatic reasons without asking systematic questions concerning the premises and consequences of a theory” (Früchtl, 37). Aydemir, in his response to Früchtl, characterizes this reaction as a result of “a dread-filled tribulation about the place of philosophy in the contemporary humanities, in which it has shed, cannot but shed, its position as meta- or supra discipline” (Aydemir, 37). This reveals CA as a contested, polemic field of research which has come to “shake the beehive” of other disciplines that feel threatened as the former opens-up and occupies a new, proper space in the Humanities´ academic landscape. It also points at the development of academia and how the once-clear cut boundaries that organized knowledge into disciplines have become blurry. In this interpretation CA appears as an irritating, almost capricious practice that changes according to the perspective from which it is seen, but which has, however, recognizable traits that single it out as a different entity.
What precisely does it do in order to irritate the older disciplines to that extent?
To answer this question, a second interpretation of the parable will be useful where two types of knowledge production will be presented. What does Cultural analysis do?
2)The parable as a metaphor for knowledge production – Two epistemic Elephants
How do we produce knowledge? What is the difference between disciplinary and interdisciplinary epistemic practices?
2.1) The single blind man – disciplinary knowledge – The first epistemic elephant.
Imagine now that the elephant represents reality, or the world and its objects and the blind men again represent the different disciplines. In this interpretation, each blind man is brought individually to “see” the elephant, each one dedicated to, or specialized in, a specific part of the animal. There is one who specializes in tusks, one in legs, another in trunks; each one developing their own methods, theories and concepts to understand and see the elephant.
The result of this approach is deep, profound, comprehensive knowledge about that specific part of the animal. Thus, for example, the “trunkist” will speak about elasticity and will consider the necessary humidity of the flesh, its location in respect to the mouth and its capacity to know by touching. The “tuskist” will consider the ivory that constitutes the tusks, he will speak of hardness, defence, curvature and colour, its uses and its general location next to the mouth, while the “leggist” will study coordination, movement, support and bone structure. Each one responds, delimits and defends their work according to the distribution of knowledges and their respective objects and each speaks in the language specific to their objects. In this interpretation of the parable, the Raja (Academic institution) compensates each researcher according to the results presented and in relation to the hierarchy of value assigned to the knowledge produced. Thus, and if the Raja´s interest revolves around travelling and displacement, the “leggist” would receive more money than say, the “tuskist”.
Or, if he is aiming to rid himself of flies, the money for research would be split maybe between the “trunkist” and the man specialized in tails.
All together constitute the academy and represent the diverse disciplines, each producing, within their speciality, specific and localized knowledge. The problem with this approach, as seen from the perspective of interdisciplinarity, is that by focusing on, or specializing in, one trait, a general view, a more interconnected, comprehensive, holistic understanding of the elephant may be lost.
This idea takes us to the third interpretation:
2.2) The parable as a metaphor for interdisciplinarity – All the men together or Multiple epistemic elephants
Here, again, the elephant represents reality, the world and its phenomena, objects or events and the blind men the diverse disciplines. The difference in this version though, is that throughout the probing and research the blind men collaborate to “see” the bigger picture altogether. The “tuskist” collaborating with the “trunkist” deploys “elasticity” to explore the materiality of the tusks, while the “tuskist” borrows the concept of “curvature” to explain the behaviour of the elongated organ; the “tailist” in dialogue with the “leggist” encounter each other through the notion of balance and equilibrium; concepts originally provided by the “trunkist”. As a group, and from their specific fields, all disciplines contribute to render a much more comprehensive, over-all view of the pachyderm. By working together, the blind men realize the limited scope of their respective approaches and thus a “trunkist-tailist”, or a “earist-leggist” might emerge, blurring, in the process, the initial division between their specialities. This, in turn, allows other concepts, and theories to emerge; think of the “earist-leggist” and the “trunkist-tailist” discussing, and coming to the conclusion all these parts have
to come together somewhere but, where? Their joint venture leads them to touch and probe until they find the spine and the skeleton of the animal, which gives rise to the “spinalist” or “skeletonist”, a new field or theory that is capable to explain how the elephant is structured. This working-together, this collaboration is interdisciplinarity, which both Bal and Früchtl describe as “conducting a meeting with several methods” (Früchtl 54; Bal Travelling Concepts 4). According to him “[t]o conduct in that context means ´to lead´, ´to head´, ´to master´, ´to guide´, ´to direct´, ´to govern´, to act as a conductor.” (Früchtl, 54) and what is needed then is “a strong subject […] a head, a master who keeps the overview and balances the reasons for one or the other method, or a combination of them, which in fact means developing a new method” (ibid). This new method, and this “strong subject” are called Cultural Analysis and the cultural analyst – both of which figure in the next interpretation of the parable.
3) The parable as a metaphor for the practice of CA What does CA do?
Looking at unseen parts of the elephant
In this fourth interpretation of the parable, the blind men again represent the different disciplines, the elephant is the phenomena or object of Culture and the Raja is the cultural analyst. Where is cultural analysis? What does it do?
Let´s depart from the idea of interdisciplinarity. The Cultural Analyst, just as the Raja does in our parable, faced with a complex object and being the “strong subject”, summons different methods and disciplines to “conduct a meeting” and engage the phenomena that interests him.
This multiple approach, as we have seen, is interdisciplinarity. According to Aydemir, “the interdisciplinarity that matters acknowledges, while refusing to take for granted, the
ownership of specific objects by respective disciplines, but suspends the possessive relationship between discipline and object.” (Aydemir, 38) What sort of object is this that requires such a complex, interdisciplinary approach?
Keeping with the logic of multiple natures, we find that the objects of CA are defined in various ways, such as: “[…] a thing that works, that occupies, in our culture – just such a position - of a key between itself and the world, and vice versa.” (Bal, 2002, 172) or as “[…] active participants in the performance of the analysis in that they enable reflection and speculation and they can contradict projections and wrong-headed interpretations (If the analysis lets them!) and thus constitute a theoretical object with philosophical relevance.” (Bal, 2003: 24) Equally they are “[…] sites at which discursive formation intersects with material properties (Crary, 1990: 31).” (Bal, 2003: 15) Things, active participants, theoretical objects or sites of conjuncture, the objects of CA are elusive and multiple, subtle, almost ambiguous. However different, all these definitions have something in common and this is that the object of CA is “an object that belongs to no one” (Bal), which is to say that it “ostensibly refuses to be locked up in an approach limited to a single discipline.” (Bal, “You do” 65)
Here Bal´s definition of CA as the “practice of engaging objects” (Bal “You do” 59) comes back to mind. If the practice of CA is defined by its engagement with the object, then, the multiple nature of the object requires an interdisciplinary approach to engage with all of “its own terms”. To bring all these visions, methods, concepts, disciplines together, the “best mastery a cultural analyst can possibly achieve” (Bal “You do” 66) is selectivity, which “asks of the selected ideas relevance, adequacy and effectivity in its stated goal of engaging the cultural object on its own terms.” (Bal “You do” 66).
The Raja realizes that his decision to bring in the blind men to see the elephant is an interdisciplinary selective act which determines to certain extent the outcome of his query as the selected disciplines create the conditions that grant access to the object though analysis.
The analysis of the object in CA is performed carefully, thoroughly, first, by breaking down the object into its constitutive parts or recognizing “the objects own terms” then, by performing a close inspection of these elements using the disciplines that seem relevant, adequate and effective. This detailed inspection and the sustained analysis of the elements is called close-reading, which, coming from literary analysis can be defined as “detailed and careful analysis of a written work; also: the product of such analysis” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). According to Mieke Bal “Detailed analysis –where no quotation can serve as an illustration but where it will always be scrutinized in depth and detail, with a suspension of certainties – resists reduction. Even though, obviously, objects cannot speak, they can be treated with enough respect for their irreducible complexity and unyielding muteness […] to allow them to check the thrust of an interpretation, and to divert and complicate it.” (Bal Travelling concepts 45)
The Raja, through close reading and interpretation, proceeds to “bind what has been previously separated” (Bal “You do” 68) by the analysis. He produces his final interpretation and arrives at a conclusion about his object. However, the Raja realizes that there is something about the elephant he cannot pin down. This something harasses him, haunts him, deprives him of sleep, our Raja realizes he is restless. A series of questions emerge from this single moment of self-reflection, questions that exceed the capacities of his epistemic tools (the blind men and their description) the elephant, and even the parable in which he is embedded. The Raja – as cultural analyst – wonders: What drives me to frame an animal in this way? What do the elephant, and this situation, elicit in me?
The Raja goes back to his object. He realizes that in order to understand where the sensation of restlessness comes from, he has to address and analyse each part, each sensation, each articulation that composes that which he considers to be his object. By close reading, he is able to recognize that one part of the object is the elephant, another, the descriptions provided by the blind men, yet another one, the fact that he has set up this situation and that to a certain extent he is responsible for it, and the last – (here is where our Raja has an epiphany) – he comes to realize that actually, the “restlessness” he feels towards the situation stems from his own interest in understanding how the blind men “see” the animal through touch, how the different interpretations produced by the blind men reveal how knowledge and truth are relative and partial and how, his simple object, is actually the result of a conjuncture- of a coming together of circumstances that entangles all of the actors involved, including the tree! Scholar Jonathan Culler describes this self-reflectivity precisely as that which distinguishes CA from Cultural Studies, as the former is a “kind of analysis of cultural production that constantly risks paralysis by reflecting on itself; it is that mode of analysis and presentation that is compelled to attempt to analyse itself, its own concepts and standpoint. Cultural analysis thus, would be the site of the anxiety-ridden subject.” (Culler 346)
Said otherwise by Culler, what makes CA different, is “its reflection on the way in which its own disciplinary and methodological standpoints shape the objects that it analyses.” (Culler 346). Brethren, the Raja, momentarily delighted with his find, (and now I´m freely reinterpreting the parable) realizes the advantages of a cultural analysis perspective which allows him to think and see these other questions, and simultaneously, the ethical side to his cultural analyst enterprise. He thinks how he engages with the object and the ethics this entails, in other words, he ponders the methods and ways he implements to produce
“different knowledge” and how these methods allow him to see some parts, while other remain occluded.
He is once again accosted by a set of questions that rob him of a much-needed sleep: What are the other aspects of the elephant that hadn´t come to the fore? Smell? Sound? Its symbolism? What does the elephant think/feel about being probed like that? Is the “reading” or “seeing” of the blind men the possible voice of the object? Does it speak back?
What does the elephant feel like? What does he eat, how does he reproduce or breathe? Who owns and brought in the elephant? Who has power over the elephant? What happens with the elephant afterwards? What is the effect of the objectification of the elephant?
4) Fifth interpretation: Speaking to the object “on its own terms” Elephant ethics
In this version (which happens in the Raja´s mind) late at night, our Raja cannot stop thinking of the elephant, and if the image provided by the blind men was accurate enough or close enough to what the elephant really is.
He realizes that his experiment was actually a sort of dialogue, a dialogue established with each individual part of the elephant through the descriptions provided by the blind men and the subsequent interpretation by the Raja. It is in this sense that CA is understood as a dialogue or dialogic as “interpretative practices in visual culture studies endorse the notion that meaning is dialogic. It comes about through rather than existing prior to the interpretation. Meaning is a dialogue between viewer and object as well as between viewers.” (Bal “Visual essentialism” 24)
As in any type of dialogue, there are ethics involved – ethics of listening, ethics of “acknowledging the importance of speech turns in communication” (Bal “You do” 60) It also leads the Raja to consider how, through the dialogue and the encounter, intersubjectivity is established – the elephant and the problem of his description become a place for discussion, dissent or consensus. But this consciousness somehow doesn´t seem to extend to or include the elephant´s voice.
Did he talk or establish a dialogue with the elephant? “Yes and no” the Raja answers to himself, for on the one hand, he managed to see and understand the elephant in front of him – the touching and probing, the questioning and close reading coming together into a single image, and on the other, he realizes that the dialogue or rapport was done exclusively through words – through human language – the only language our Raja speaks. Our Raja ponders on the ethics implied in establishing a dialogue, specially one aimed at understanding an object that lays there, open to our interpretations only on the basis of an imposed language.
The Raja considers, how, in order to understand the elephant and how it is perceived, he invited men who, through their specialties (trunkists, leggists or tailists) could respond to the “object´s own terms” that is, “the ways the work solicits its viewer” (Bal “You do” 60) (the trunk requiring the trunkist, the tail the tailist and so on) or, in the parable´s terms, how the elephant, as an epistemic object, is composed of different aspects that elicit something in the Raja that requires an interdisciplinary approach. From these terms and his subsequent interpretation, our Raja is able to understand that knowledge is relative, that a complex object such as the elephant needs a conjoint effort – or an interdisciplinary approach - to come to the fore, and that this sort of engagement, located in time space, demands a
self-reflective position, one that acknowledges the situatedness and partiality of the exercise. All this, however, doesn´t satisfy our Raja who feels and knows that something is missing. But, what? The Raja goes back to the idea of the dialogue and the ethics implied. Was the dialogue established with the elephant really on “its own terms”?
Then and there it hits him. He realizes that the way he structured the whole exercise could present a problem, for, he asks himself, “Was the dialogue with the elephant an imposition?” “Were these really the elephant´s own terms?” “What if the elephant was actually speaking back?” How does the research method affect the way the object or, in this case, the elephant comes through?
In a second self-reflexive turn, our Raja starts breaking down the whole experience into its constitutive parts, that is, he starts analysing his epistemic exercise, and comes to realize that the image of the elephant that the blind men had provided so far was the result of his own limitations – from the fact that the Raja, or the men do not speak “elephant”. He remembers the descriptions provided by the blind men and realizes that they are all medial translations, that is, from a tactile experience to a visual and discursive one. The Raja understands that the preconditions that frame and produces his way of knowing, his epistemology are visual cognition, or a visual essentialism that pervade his experiment. (Our Raja remembers asking the blind how they “see” the elephant and feels momentarily ashamed and uncomfortable with his lack of tact). He also recognizes that maybe blind men can only produce one type of description. “What if” he wonders, “next time I invite little children, and deaf people, or women and queers or mutes, to describe the elephant?” Could I have access to what the real elephant is or, maybe even hear its voice?
Does the elephant really speak back – in its own language - or, as it happens with the blind men, the elephant´s voice is the echo of those talking around him? Is the dialogue established with the elephant through the blind men the result of the object-elephant speaking back – soliciting its viewers - or is it a hermeneutic imposition? In other words, is the Raja creating the elephant by way of his approach?
“What if” - he asks himself right before going to sleep, “I could speak elephant?” 5) Final interpretation –
The revenge of the elephants or The Dreaming Raja
That night, our Raja finally goes to sleep and dreams the following dream:
Six blind elephants were discussing what men were like. After arguing they decided to find one and determine what it was like by direct experience. The first blind elephant felt the man and declared, 'Men are flat.' After the other blind elephants felt the man, they agreed. When the Raja wakes up he clearly understands that “what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” (Heisenberg). The Raja puts himself in the position of the man in his dream and realizes how many of his own characteristics are occluded by the crushing approach of the elephants – a multi-dimensional entity reduced to a flat one-dimensional “speaking” surface. In sum, the Raja considers if he has created the elephant all along.
In the experiment, the Raja recalls, the elephant-object appears through the interpretation the blind men provided through their epistemic experience. They “read” the elephant´s distinct characteristics, as if every part would speak back or solicit a specific method or approach with which to establish a dialogue. He also comes to realize that this translation, from touch to words that create an image, is possible because “images have or produce
meaning, and that they promote such analytical activities as reading” (Bal Travelling Concepts 26). For the Raja (CA) “the advantage of speaking of ‘Visual texts’ is that it reminds the analyst that lines, motifs, colours, and surfaces like words contribute to the production of meaning, hence that form and meaning cannot be disentangled. Neither texts or images yield their meanings immediately. They are not transparent, so that images like texts require the labour of reading” (Bal Travelling Concepts 26) Our Raja understands then that he has hitherto been reading the elephant – translating its properties into a text that would yield its meanings. He also realizes that the effect of the medial translation (touch-to-words) allows him to speak of the elephant, communicate with others about it, creating intersubjectivity.
However, he acknowledges an inherited distrust in touch as a direct source of knowledge. Why, or how for example does the term “wall” give us more idea of that same experience than say, a gesture we can do with both hands, signalling at the same time extension and size, or why does the word “rough” tell us more than the direct encounter with the skin of the animal?
For a moment, the Raja shares the “fear that to speak of images as texts is to turn the image into a piece of language.” But considers that “by shunning the linguistic analogy (as in many ways we should) we also engage resistance – to meaning, to analysis, and to closed detailed engagement with the object:” (Bal Travelling Concepts 26)
The Raja realizes thus, that he is prejudiced in terms of what he considers reliable sources of knowledge, and how, in this tacit hierarchy, the rational or conceptual approaches of analytic and critical theory and their methods occupy the higher echelon as the exclusive tools to access the truth ´out there´. The Raja´s engagement, under this perspective, appears limited, almost shy. As he drifts off back into sleep, he hears what seems to be the elephant calling from a distance: “Interdisciplinarity […] could be seen as ‘a function of the
uncontainability of what, in the history of ideas, is called ‘the real’. It derives from the sense that objects (and subjects) of social and cultural life (real life, real conditions, real relations) exist beyond the constraints of analytic singularity and methodological rules. (Davidson and Goldberg 2004: 50, quoted in Moran 180) Would adopting a much more radical interdisciplinarity enrich the way the Raja engages with and understands his objects? Would this radical turn respond better to the uncountability of the real? Would this create a more ethical approach in the dialogue established with the object?
Chapter 2
Cultural Analysis meets Artistic Research 1) Speaking in tongues
In the previous chapter, we left the Raja as CA dreaming of alternative ways to engage with its object, pondering if a radical interdisciplinarity would be more ethical in face of its (the object´s) “uncountability of the real”. As it was presented, Cultural Analysis, as an epistemological practice, employs a number of linked procedures that, through the interdisciplinary engagement with its object, produce a different knowledge to that produced within mono-disciplines. Predominantly discursive, writerly, conceptual and logocentric, CA conceives the object as if it was a participant in a dialogue, a subject (or so at least in Bal´s approach) which the analyst listens to. In this sense, CA points to a dialogical ethics, which emphasizing listening and, in its commitment to always engage with the object (i.e. bestowing agency on the object) allows it to answer, thus setting limits to the interpretations that are made of it. However, this vison of a dialogical ethics is troubled by questions such as: ‘What sort of dialogue is established?’ ‘How ethical and ‘horizontal’ or equal is this dialogue?’ ‘Is it a dialogue or a hermeneutic imposition?’ Can we establish a dialogue with the object which is fair?
In his epistemic exercise, the Raja realizes that the acts of analysing and exposing or exhibiting can be considered forceful acts performed upon the object – and the dialogue, consequently can seem to be a forced dialogue from the vantage point or perspective of the “liberal subject” (Früchtl) who chooses the object that is worthy of appearing or becoming visible, and the languages through which it will do so. In this respect, Cultural Analysis is a creative practice that produces its object, typically manifested through a medial translation
(images, sounds, movements, gestures – is sum the sensuous) into written language. The apparition or presentation of the object thus, is conditioned by an academic expectation and a form of dialogue that is concept and word-based, i.e. appealing to the discursive means of communication. These tacit expectations inevitably circumscribe to such means the possible ways of contacting, engaging and dialoguing with the object, reducing to certain extent its multiple nature and complexity.
In contrast to CA, Artistic Research (AR henceforth) engages with its object through practical, material means (artworks typically manifesting through media where the units to communicate or signify are not only words but for example shapes, colour, movement, sound and the material aspects such as density, weight, texture, in other words, not abstractions or representations but presentations) that engage the objects differently or, as in the parable´s case, through other languages. This difference in knowledge is ontological, or as Scholar Henk Borgdorff states “the knowledge embodied in art, which has been variously analysed as tacit, practical knowledge, as ‘knowing-how’, and as sensory knowledge, is cognitive, though non-conceptual; and it is rational, though non-discursive.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 49)
Despite or perhaps due to this this onto-epistemic difference, AR insists upon the need of a medium or a para-text8, which will eventually translate and disseminate the findings of the research to a research community. Paul Smith states in conversation with Andrew Ross that “[w]e have to be able to convince, or at least speak to, other academics and other departments about our procedures and protocols, the way we do our research, and to be able to cast all that in terms that are familiar to other people around us.” (Smith and Ross, 249). The need for a textual intermediary in AR seems to respond precisely to a recognition of the
open and ambiguous nature of its non-conceptual, non-discursive knowledge and its emphasis on a practical engagement. It also reveals a desire to create intersubjective relations by speaking a common tongue which could provide a collective insight, just as the blind men do in the parable. CA and AR in brief, are not so different and thus could be potentially made to work together.
Drawing from several sources such as Henk Borgdorff´s book on Artistic Research The Conflict of the Faculties, the Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, the SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education, and some articles from the online “Journal of Artistic Research” (JAR), it will be argued that by integrating this practical engagement, where the material asks, talks back to the practitioner through the practice and the materials, the common language with which dialogue can take place with the object in CA could be enriched.
The issue then has to do less with the medium chosen to transmit the knowledge produced (a para-text is always helpful as an aide to the reader) than with the methods and procedures that produce that knowledge. Thus, one of the ideas that push this work further is the desire to think a hybrid between CA and AR, to form an “artistic cultural analysis” or a “practical cultural analysis” where the two systems can come together and enrich each other in practice. It is in this sense that CA could assert its creative side, recognizing the object as the result of the analyst´s work whilst allowing material practices, not as examples or illustrations, but means through which other reflections, questions and hence, dialogues can be established with the object.
Dialogues without words, or dialogues with words enhanced and complemented with non-rational or non-conceptual embodied knowledge that stems from thinking with and through the development of material practices such as drawing or painting, but even in more
general terms, transforming matter and being open to what it has to tell us, what it suggests, open to the clues and the intrinsic nature of the material´s limits and metaphorical possibilities. Adopting these other ways of thinking and doing could shift the ethics implied in CA – on the way the objects are chosen, engaged with and analysed, and furthermore, how the practice transforms the analyst in the process. Take the example of visual analysis and analogue photography. It is not the same experience to study and write about photography and images from a theoretical distance, and to do so in tandem with practical exercises that take place in the studio and darkroom. There, the materiality of photography brings the analyst closer to the processes and issues regarding the creation of images and raises questions that, by insisting on the mechanical and chemical processes, prevent the reification of both the concept of image and photography alike. By insisting in its materiality and inherent logic, the idea of photography, and the idea of image held by the practitioner are enhanced or transformed as it is challenged by other non-conceptual issues and problems that emerge from the cold, dark magic of the darkroom and the surprise, frustration, joy of witnessing the gradual, almost magical appearance (or not) of the image on the photographic paper.
It is not about cultural analysts becoming artists or vice versa, but about both fields making use of each other´s strategies, methods, experiences and research perspectives to reflect upon and produce that “different knowledge”. The material practices then appear as alternative thinking platforms from where other aspects can be considered, other positions, feelings, thoughts and intuitions that may not arrive necessarily or directly through analysis and conceptual thinking. Here Borgdorff’s observation seems important when he states that
enrich our conception of what academic or scientific research truly is. […] In terms of both methodology and knowledge dynamics, the focus on the creative process that is characteristic of research in the arts, as well as the characteristic linkage and interpenetration of artistic practice and theoretical reflection, of doing and thinking, would be a valuable asset to universities. (Borgdorff The Conflict 60-61)
It is from this optimistic perspective, this hypothesis, that AR and CA will be placed side by side in what follows.
2) The practice(s) of Artistic Research
To begin with the comparison, a definition of Artistic Research, its constitutive elements and its problems is required. What is Artistic Research? What makes Artistic Research different from artistic practice?
Research in this context will be understood thus:
The word [research] is used in an inclusive way to accommodate the range of activities that support original and innovative work in the whole range of academic, professional and technological fields, including the humanities, and traditional, performing, and other creative arts. It is not used in any limited or restricted sense, or relating solely to a traditional ‘scientific method’. (Borgdorff The Conflict 121)
Formulated thus, this description of research could apply to either CA or AR. They both “accommodate a range of activities that support original and innovative work.” This could be said almost of any inter- or trans-disciplinary research practice, even those which exist beyond or within the “traditional scientific method”. The interest in this definition then
resides in the notion of a non-restricted practice that is open to alternative ways of research – an openness that would allow for non-conceptual, non-discursive methods to be implemented in CA´s research methodologies. Borgdorff continues:
In the case of artistic research, it is important to stress that the object of research, the context of the research, the method of research, and the way the research results are presented and documented are inextricably bound up with the practice of making and playing. Indeed, artistic practice is central to the research itself. The subject of research is the artist’s creative or performative practice. (Borgdorff The Conflict 121) This second definition evidences the rift between AR and CA, by emphasizing that the subject, context and methods of the research are radically different between them, as the former takes “the artist´s creative or performative practice” as its subject, whilst for the latter, it seems, the subject of research – the analyst doing the research and the process it undergoes - are not necessary elements in the formulae, at least none that have to show up or be present in the work itself. It is interesting to note the place the analyst holds in the practice of CA, as it appears through the positioning of the analysis in a specific time and place and is revealed indirectly through the choice of object, concepts, theories and the final interpretation that is done articulating the constitutive elements of the object, in other words, it appears through CA´s self-reflectivity. The analyst seems thus to “hover” or underlie his or her own creation, occluded at the same time by its content and form.
For the time being, it is necessary to note that not all Artistic Research is the same. Borgdorff, building on the work done by Christopher Frayling in his 1993 essay, Research in Art and Design, distinguishes three types of Artistic research: “(a) research on the arts, (b) research for the arts, and (c) research in the arts.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 37) The distinction
among these types of research depends partly on the objective of the research and partly on the practice itself, that is, how it goes about producing the knowledge or reflection, but most importantly, the relationship that the researcher establishes with its object of study. Research on the arts (a) is “[…] research that has art practice in the broadest sense of the word as its object. It refers to investigations aimed at drawing valid conclusions about art practice from a theoretical distance.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 38) Examples of this approach are art history and musicology. The second type, b) research for the arts, “can be described as applied research in a narrow sense. In this type, art is not so much the object of investigation, but its objective. The research provides insights and instruments that may find their way into concrete practices in some way or other.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 38) In other words, “The research delivers, as it were, the tools and the knowledge of materials that are needed during the creative process or in the artistic product.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 38) examples would be research into the use and conservation of synthetic latex for sculpture or the use of bamboo to build sustainable housing. Finally, the last type of research– Research in the arts, is described by Borgdorff as
the most controversial of the three ideal types. […]. It concerns research that does not assume the separation of subject and object, and does not observe a distance between the researcher and the practice of art. Instead, the artistic practice itself is an essential component of both the research process and the research results. […] Concepts and theories, experiences and understandings are interwoven with art practices; and, partly for this reason, art is always reflexive. Research in the arts hence seeks to articulate some of this embodied knowledge throughout the creative process and in the art object. (Borgdorff The Conflict 38)
This is what Borgdorff understands by a “constructivist perspective” that is, the perspective that “holds that objects and events actually become constituted in and through artworks and artistic actions. […] Here lies the performative and critical power of art. It does not represent things; it presents them, thereby making the world into what it is or could be.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 171) Important in this sense is that both CA and AR happen and are in practice. Insofar as Cultural Analysis produces its objet by way of framing, the research question, the concepts applied to “reveal” or “expose” the object, and CA´s emphasis on “intersubjectivity”, interpretation, and being-through-practice, research in the arts, comprises thus the most promising model to encounter CA. Of special interest, then, to this enterprise are the ideas of blurring the boundary between object and subject and the closeness of the researcher and the practice (of art) in the research, even if in CA, the playful and creative process is not generally fully acknowledged or materialized within the work itself, that is, it doesn´t constitute an essential part of the work as it finally materializes in a text that points at, paradoxically, a “medial closure” where the process and the possibilities are left behind so to speak, on the road to a finished, recognizable product.
The performative aspect of CA is demonstrated by Mieke Bal in the Früchtl/Bal debate, as we have seen, by choosing a “partner in the debate” that is, reaffirming that CA happens through and around the analysis of the object as it constitutes the raison d ´etre of the practice as much as in AR: “Concepts and theories, experiences and understandings are interwoven with art practices.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 49) that is, AR is inseparable from the process of production and reflection that happens through the materials that constitute the objects (artworks).
create it through the practice- and this is capital to both – they emphasise the performative even though their objects and methods are completely different from those studied and implemented by other disciplines. In the case of AR, it is the emphasis on the object and the practice of the arts (in whatever medium the artist or researcher is performing its work) whilst in CA it is the emphasis on the object and the practice of analysis and interpretation in most cases, through the written word.
Seen from this perspective, the researcher in the arts and the cultural analyst share the “constructivist perspective”, in other words, the presentation of an object that comes forth through practical and hermeneutical practices, understanding the latter as: “[…] a vehicle for accessing what is at work in art. The fundamental ambiguity of artworks renders interpretation an unfinished process in which the interpreter and the interpreted temporarily melt together in ever-receding interpretative horizons.” (Borgdorff The Conflict 49) However, the big difference resides in the fact that CA – due to it predominant use of word-based media – seems to deliver a closed or finished interpretation we can agree with or not, whilst art works seem to establish an open sign through which different interpretations can happen (and thus the “temporary melting of interpreter and interpreted) even if the work allows or not certain interpretations to be correct. This could explain to certain extent CA´s resistance to the “solace of closure” (Hall) and its preference for objects that manage to reject the reduction imposed by discursive conceptual means. The restlessness of the cultural analyst then appears as a promise of difference, of possibility.
3) “Boundary practices”: Artistic research and Cultural Analysis
AR and the practice of CA are structurally close homologous epistemic enterprises in so far as they reside in the margins or interstices of the other disciplines and, as such, share an inter-
or trans-disciplinary ontology. They perform and work with what Borgdorff terms “boundary practices” or “boundary objects” by this meaning: “an object that changes its ontological and epistemological nature depending on the context in which it is used. This is especially interesting along the borderlines between different disciplines, within academia, for instance. The term ‘Boundary object’ means that an object “has some meaning in a certain research environment and another meaning in another research environment” (Borgdorff The Conflict 177) Think, for example, of the concept and the practice of “performance” which signifies a different thing in the art world, (meaning a specific genre or medium of expression) and “performance” in gender studies where it is used as a descriptor or constitutive process of gender identity formation – as in Judith Butler´s concept of “gender performativity”.
The previous definition allows us to think the practice of CA as a “boundary practice” itself, as it is characterised by an interdisciplinary nature that stems or reacts to a complex object that resides beyond the boundaries of the disciplines – “an object that belongs to no one” (Bal) and thus requires multiple “languages” with which to speak to, an object that changes according to where it´s been seen from.
A general, or common view is that the arts and the sciences are in great measure completely different fields of human action which produce different relationships (of judgement) with reality and thus, different knowledge. Opposing rational, conceptual knowledge, to an affective, embodied one is the result of the Enlightenment´s logic to organize knowledge into hierarchies in terms of its usefulness or universality – what Borgdorff would call “propositional knowledge”. Mark Johnson, in his essay “Embodied Knowing through Art” relates that
at least as far as Immanuel Kant’s taxonomy of types of judgment – theoretical, technical, moral, aesthetic, and so on. Kant inherited an Enlightenment faculty psychology that posited separate and distinct powers of mind, such as perception, imagination, understanding, reason, feeling, and will. The central idea was to explain the different types of judgments as the result of different relations of these faculties. Since Kant perpetuated the dominant Enlightenment conception of aesthetics as the science of feelings, he denied any cognitive content (hence, any knowledge potential) to aesthetic judgments concerning beauty in nature and art. (Johnson 143)
This view is emphasised or echoed by the institutional division that structures the academy, where the diverse fields of knowledge are clearly separated and catalogued into disciplines, each with its own histories, methods, objects and systems of validation and whose institutional support is still distributed or assigned under the same logic of usefulness and applicability (reflected in the budgets and budget cuts, for example, in the Humanities). As Borgdorff notes, it is this categorical division that produces a notion of research which is grounded in the idea of scientific knowledge “I often encounter people who have a caricature of what research is, mostly this is the natural science picture of what research should be” 9 - a notion of knowledge and hence research that is shared by CA in its emphasis on analysis and well-informed, selective interpretation.
However, as the disciplines change over time and develop, the clear-cut division among disciplines becomes blurred, allowing for other research methods, objects and knowledge to emerge and challenge the division whilst enriching their possibilities of epistemic production – think of the parable of the blind men where the trunkist and the tailist
develop “trunk-tailism”- Another example of this is bio-art, which exists in the middle ground between technology art and biology. Which field of research could contain bio-artist Eduardo Kac’s “GFP Bunny” (2000), a genetic engineered bio-luminescent bunny called “Alba”? What disciplinary expertise is competent to answer the questions it raises regarding the ethics involved in the use and hybridisation of technology, biology and the arts? Cultural Analysis and Artistic Research, which as we have seen, represent such intermediate spaces, or “boundary work”, offer precisely such competencies.
The traditional disciplines seem to, prima facie, resist and reject these boundary practices as their presence questions not only the limits the disciplines have set in order to organize and be more efficient in the quest for knowledge, but the very foundation that ensures reliable and accurate knowledge is produced through their practice (methods). Take for example the Früchtl/Bal debate discussed above, where Joseph Früchtl derides Cultural Analysis as “floundering”, and lacking in (philosophical) rigour, that eventually leads to academic “sloppiness” and the exacerbation of the “liberal subject” (Früchtl, 2008, 56). What seems to be at play is precisely the flexibility, capacity (and willingness) of the disciplines to accept and integrate new epistemic methodologies that diverge from their usual notion of research practice, extending thus their limits beyond their own self-description.
Artistic Research has also been a site of debate and discussion, particularly with respect to how it transmits and validates the knowledge it produces, how it resides and moves among the boundaries of different disciplines and how it structures its practice through the creation/presentation of its objects (artworks). As a relatively newly institutionalized field, AR still ponders on and questions its own practice, reflecting upon the systems that would
eventually allow it to be formally recognized by the academic institutions.10
One of the great differences between these two epistemic systems is that AR acknowledges and focuses on the creative action of producing an object through the practice, whilst CA seems to occlude - or disavow - this creative aspect under the guise of working with objects that, even though they belong to no one, are already there as “cultural memory in the present” (Bal) that is, objects which already exist and form part of Culture, even though they hadn´t been recognized as such. Artistic Research acknowledges and centres the importance in the creative/productive aspect of the practice whilst CA considers it, but defers the creative responsibility of the analyst by way of a rhetorical anthropomorphizing of the object that temporarily “speaks back”, that is already there, as part of culture and which the analyst encounters through dialogue and interpretation.
To put this another way, the objective distance required by CA in order to engage with an object analytically is proportional to the importance bestowed upon the creative act and the production of the object in AR. This distinction could be the result of a conception of “epistemic processes” and academic validation of knowledge through established validation systems like peer review and referential procedures of “truth” or “propositional knowledge” (Borgdorff) that have to do more with a notion of discipline and what these can bring to the fore through accepted and proven methods which tacitly entails a textual or writerly medium (re presentation) versus (presentation) and a scientific method that produced facts and “propositional knowledge” (i.e. facts and figures and a conception of knowledge as stable and
10In this sense, most of the work consulted for this essay that deals with AR includes a section or essay on the
struggles that AR practitioners have encountered to validate AR as a PhD degree, by this meaning that there are still problems in translating the findings and knowledge produced in AR into an institutional system that provides an equivalence between AR and older or more established disciplines.Some countries already recognize artistic research as a PHD, such as Finland, the UK and Sweden.
