insight and rigourbetween theorists and practitioners, or artists and academics, and to embrace the idea
that issues of identity should be made secondary to collective research actions that
have a public dimension and involve public participation. ‘Transdisciplinary research
starts from tangible, real- world problems. solutions are devised in collaboration with
multiple stakeholders’. (Chapter 4). a psychoanalytic investigative orientation can
complement mode 2 research, by showing how not only the research problem, but
research rigour itself, can come from society, as the determinate instance, hiccup or
snag in the construction of identity that initiates a new investigation through a shift
in the position of the subject. There is no opposition between the ‘cleverness’ of the
researcher and the ‘ignorance’ of the public. The problem that has been raised by
mode 2 knowledge, and which can be addressed in a psychoanalytic orientation, is
how the rigorous, determining instance of the public or the collective prevents the
researcher from ‘being clever’ in the ways that she normally expects to be, and which
therefore demands real innovation and change. a psychoanalytic viewpoint suggests
that we should be wary of celebrating the cleverness of the academic, the artist, the
designer or the theorist – and focus instead on the collective determinations that
initiate genuine acts of research.
in conclusion, i will address two questions of usage and application that arise from
this chapter. 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.
(nobus and Quinn 2005: 209)The terms of this general statement suggest four tenets of approach for anyone
employing a Freudo- lacanian approach to arts based research:
1 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.
2 ‘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.
3 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.
4 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