MALCOLM QUINN, ‘INSIGHT AND RIGOUR: A FREUDO-LACANIAN APPROACH’ IN MICHAEL BIGGS AND HENRIK KARLSSON (EDS.) THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO RESEARCH IN THE ARTS, LONDON: ROUTLEDGE 2010
this book is a wonderful volume of high quality contributions which make this obligatory reading for all researchers and PhD supervisors active in the domain of artistic research.
, vice-dean FAK, Review of The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, ed. Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson, London: Routledge 2010.
If the determining truths of psychoanalysis can arise from anywhere within a collective field of language, how is the notion of ‘applied psychoanalysis’ to be understood? If psychoanalysis cannot be applied as a distinct and separate body of knowledge to a research problem in the art and design field, what use is it? Dany Nobus has suggested an answer to these questions, with reference to research activity in any discipline:
Psychoanalysis cannot be employed as a fully finished doctrine, either within or outside the treatment. And if the psychoanalyst needs to learn that ‘his knowledge is but a symptom of his own ignorance’ . . . other disciplines may use their confrontation with psychoanalysis to adopt a similar stance vis-à-vis their own knowledge and methodologies. (Dany Nobus ‘Coda’ in Quinn and Nobus 2005: 209)
The terms of this general statement suggest four tenets of approach for anyone employing a Freudo-Lacanian approach to arts based research:
One: The research problem appears as a gap, break or inconsistency within an existing practice, discipline or body of knowledge, for example in the dilemma of finishing or not finishing a painting.
Two: ‘The problem teaches’ and is thus placed in a dominant position in relation to an existing practice, discipline or body of knowledge. This is more crucial than whether the investigation takes place in a clinical situation or elsewhere.
Three: The task is to discover how the problem functions. This cannot be encountered using what one already knows about how an art or design practice functions.
Four: For the purposes of research, an existing practice, discipline or body of knowledge must be reconstructed using the terms of the problem. This is demonstrated in Jacques Prévert’s matchboxes, a work in which the dilemma of finishing or not finishing a work of art, is transformed by Prévert into the logic of the work of art itself.
, ‘Insight and Rigour: A Freudo- Lacanian Approach
