Theorectical Framework
Theoretical Perspectives and Framework
My work is grounded in a constructionist theoretical framework with a dynamic and parallaxic approach to analysis and interpretation. Constructionist epistemology rejects objective truth and takes the position that all meaningful reality is socially constructed (Crotty, 1998). In other words knowledge and meaning making is ongoing, ontological, incomplete and generated from an interaction between people, their experiences, ideas, and contexts. The rise or“becoming” of phenomena, knowledge, and meaning making is inherently affected by time, space, context, movement, and position. The following theorists and perspectives are used in my research and artwork.
Dewey
Dewey describes knowledge and meaning making as ongoing, ontological, incomplete and generated from an interaction between people, their experiences, ideas, and contexts (Dewey, 1934/2005, 1958). The writings of Dewey (1934/2005; 1958) that focus on artful transactional experience serve as the primary theoretical framework for analysis and understanding. Throughout Dewey’s work the elements of experience are a major theme. Dewey (1934/2005, 1958) was concerned with the significance of experience and its pragmatic role in philosophy, culture, scientific method, psychology, ethics, education, and learning (Hickman & Alexander, 1998). In Art as Experience, Dewey (1934/2005) systematically considered the interrelationship between experience and art. His main concern was to explain aesthetic experience, as generated by works of art and emergent from the prosaic rudiments of everyday experience (Mandoki, 2007). Artful works give rise to an intensified opportunity for ethical and moral reflection–even interruptions in thinking–about democracy and education, dominant cultural discourses on privilege and power, as well as simply stated subject-object binaries (Jackson, 1998; Jones, 2009a; Mattern, 1999). Deweyan pragmatism is relevant to contemporary inquiry through a broad and overlapping emphasis on the experiences of agency, activism, art, reflection, and cultural and civic identity.
Mouffe
Mouffe (2007, 2008, 2013) methodically and pragmatically builds a unified analysis of communication, art, education, and democratic practice in public spaces. And, like Bakhtin (1984, 1919/1990), she acknowledges the ongoing existence of and need for agonism and responsible answerability in human relations and communal living. In challenging democratic theory and practice Chantal Mouffe (1999, 2005, 2013) rejects a deliberative democratic model and espouses the development of agonistic pluralism, through the need to acknowledge the limits of rational consensus. Agonism, “a struggle between adversaries” (Mouffe, 2013, p. 7), requires the provision of a means through which all members of the community have ways to ardently express themselves. The prime task of agonistic pluralism is not to exclude passionate and discordant voices from public spheres in the name of rational consensus, but to mobilize those energies toward democratic aims through conflictual consensus (Mouffe, 1999, 2005, 2013). Essentially, agonism addresses the inherent societal configurations of power and political relations that cannot be eliminated and cannot be reconciled through technical and rational dialogue alone.
Mouffe (2007, 2008, 2013) applies these ideas to art as an agonist intervention in public space—beyond the modernist idea of the avant-garde and the remote privileged artist—to movement, displacement, and negotiation practices that widen the field of artistic intervention by directly intervening in a multiplicity of public and social spaces, in order to oppose ongoing and overlapping dominant and hegemonic practices. Art, democratic practice, and politics or power relations are constituted on one non-violent and discursive field toward the possible formation of critical art or artful practices that foment “dissensus that makes visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and obliterate” (2007, p. 4), giving a platform and voice to those muted by dominant discourse.
Bakhtin
My work is influenced by three of the most influential of Bakhtin’s ideas: utterance, heteroglossia, and carnival (Morris, 1994; Stallybrass & White, 1986; Zappan, 2000). Bakhtin was concerned with the nature of dialogue – or “double-voiced discourse” - through utterances, a basic unit of speech, as the actualized meaning of words in language (Zappan, 2000, p. 2). Utterances are a fundamental aspect of language in “its active creative capacity and the always evaluative nature of meaning” (Morris, 1994, p.4). Speech genres are a form of utterance that is identified with a particular sphere of communication (the Clothesline Project), has developed into stable thematic content (the experience of violence), as well as style and compositional structure. The nature of utterance is such that it is part of a whole chain of utterances and is always expressive and evaluative, through intonation and the anticipated response of the audience (Morris, 1994, p. 81). While an utterance is specifically defined or bounded within a sphere of communication, it is also inherently interactive and interrelational between speaker(s) and addressee (Zappan, 2000).
The idea of heteroglossia is a complex mixture of languages and refers to the conflict between official/unofficial, centrifugal/centripetal or dominant/non-dominant discourses (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000). More specifically, heteroglossia focuses on the phenomena of antagonistic socio-cultural forces and the inclusion of conflicting voices as making meaning and having value. As well, heteroglossia is related to, but goes beyond, the concept of polyphony or multi-voiced texts (Zappan, 2000). It is the “struggle with another’s word that a new word is generated” and this dialogic relationship within heteroglossia establishes the ever unfolding process of utterances (Morris, 1994, p. 74).
For Bakhtin, the notion carnival is derived from the way folk culture - as seen in festivals, celebrations, seasonal rituals, pageants, public speech and performance, and market-place spectacles –attenuates official hegemony or dominant culture (Stallybrass & White, 1986). Carnival offers a rhythmic, spatial, and temporal vision of life and human interaction; however, Bakhtin emphasizes the sensuous, corporeal form of carnival gesture and ritual. In this, a physical and performative materiality of the body takes the form of “grotesque realism”, which simultaneously parodies and celebrates, elevates and mocks, crowns and condemns, laughs and bleeds (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000). This serio-comic display of grandeur and spectacle signifies the basic ambivalence and duality of all carnivalesque meaning making. This communal expression, through costume and mask, brings about the productive process of re-generation or re-presentation, which frees human consciousness from dominant and hierarchical perceptions of the world and opens up the possibility for new awareness, understanding, and change (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000).
Heidegger
In an effort to broadly examine complex phenomenon and interpretation of meaning through text and context, a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, as described by Heidegger (1933-34/2010) and Gadamer (1975/2004), is utilized as a philosophical foundation (Laverty, 2003; Sameshima, 2009). Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology pertains to the “life world and human experience as it is lived”and focuses on Dasein, which means “the situated meaning of a human in the world” (Laverty, 2003, p. 24). Human consciousness is not separate from the world but is an ever unfolding construction of lived experienced and historical as well as socio-cultural contexts. In essence, meaning is made as humans construct the world and, in turn, are constructed by the world. Heidegger emphasizes the importance of interpretation in the process of meaning making. Specifically, hermeneutics is the study of socio-cultural experiences as texts, with the engagement in interpretation as way to find expressed or cloaked meanings. Texts are noted to be language or dialog in the form of written or verbal communication, the visual arts and music. Consequently, language and understanding are seen to be indivisible and foundational aspects of human ‘being-in-the-world’ (Laverty, 2003).
Gadamer
Gadamer (1975/2004) builds upon Heidegger’s (1933-34/2010) concepts through his view of interpretation as a fusion of horizons. “A horizon is a range of vision that includes everything seen from a particular vantage point. . . to ‘have a horizon’ means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it” (p. 301). The concept of fusion of horizons takes on multiple interrelated meanings. The first meaning addresses the ability to transpose ourselves into a situation and become aware of otherness: “the indissoluble individuality of the other person –by putting ourselves into his position’ (p.304). Second, this concept includes not only empathy but involves rising to a “higher universality” of understanding and meaning making that looks beyond one’s own understanding and perspective to the larger whole, fully embracing context and proportion (p. 304). And third, the praxis of fusion of horizons provides the foundation for the process of interpretation, understanding, and meaning making through historical consciousness, questioning, and the “perpetual motion” of seeking answers (p. 368). Gadamer maintained that the interrelated process of understanding and interpretation are an ontological and dialogic process: “the way understanding occurs . . . is the coming-into-language of the thing [text or dialog] itself” (p. 371). In sum, dialog - the constitutive basis of question and interpretation - is the medium of the emergent hermeneutic experience.
My work is grounded in a constructionist theoretical framework with a dynamic and parallaxic approach to analysis and interpretation. Constructionist epistemology rejects objective truth and takes the position that all meaningful reality is socially constructed (Crotty, 1998). In other words knowledge and meaning making is ongoing, ontological, incomplete and generated from an interaction between people, their experiences, ideas, and contexts. The rise or“becoming” of phenomena, knowledge, and meaning making is inherently affected by time, space, context, movement, and position. The following theorists and perspectives are used in my research and artwork.
Dewey
Dewey describes knowledge and meaning making as ongoing, ontological, incomplete and generated from an interaction between people, their experiences, ideas, and contexts (Dewey, 1934/2005, 1958). The writings of Dewey (1934/2005; 1958) that focus on artful transactional experience serve as the primary theoretical framework for analysis and understanding. Throughout Dewey’s work the elements of experience are a major theme. Dewey (1934/2005, 1958) was concerned with the significance of experience and its pragmatic role in philosophy, culture, scientific method, psychology, ethics, education, and learning (Hickman & Alexander, 1998). In Art as Experience, Dewey (1934/2005) systematically considered the interrelationship between experience and art. His main concern was to explain aesthetic experience, as generated by works of art and emergent from the prosaic rudiments of everyday experience (Mandoki, 2007). Artful works give rise to an intensified opportunity for ethical and moral reflection–even interruptions in thinking–about democracy and education, dominant cultural discourses on privilege and power, as well as simply stated subject-object binaries (Jackson, 1998; Jones, 2009a; Mattern, 1999). Deweyan pragmatism is relevant to contemporary inquiry through a broad and overlapping emphasis on the experiences of agency, activism, art, reflection, and cultural and civic identity.
Mouffe
Mouffe (2007, 2008, 2013) methodically and pragmatically builds a unified analysis of communication, art, education, and democratic practice in public spaces. And, like Bakhtin (1984, 1919/1990), she acknowledges the ongoing existence of and need for agonism and responsible answerability in human relations and communal living. In challenging democratic theory and practice Chantal Mouffe (1999, 2005, 2013) rejects a deliberative democratic model and espouses the development of agonistic pluralism, through the need to acknowledge the limits of rational consensus. Agonism, “a struggle between adversaries” (Mouffe, 2013, p. 7), requires the provision of a means through which all members of the community have ways to ardently express themselves. The prime task of agonistic pluralism is not to exclude passionate and discordant voices from public spheres in the name of rational consensus, but to mobilize those energies toward democratic aims through conflictual consensus (Mouffe, 1999, 2005, 2013). Essentially, agonism addresses the inherent societal configurations of power and political relations that cannot be eliminated and cannot be reconciled through technical and rational dialogue alone.
Mouffe (2007, 2008, 2013) applies these ideas to art as an agonist intervention in public space—beyond the modernist idea of the avant-garde and the remote privileged artist—to movement, displacement, and negotiation practices that widen the field of artistic intervention by directly intervening in a multiplicity of public and social spaces, in order to oppose ongoing and overlapping dominant and hegemonic practices. Art, democratic practice, and politics or power relations are constituted on one non-violent and discursive field toward the possible formation of critical art or artful practices that foment “dissensus that makes visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and obliterate” (2007, p. 4), giving a platform and voice to those muted by dominant discourse.
Bakhtin
My work is influenced by three of the most influential of Bakhtin’s ideas: utterance, heteroglossia, and carnival (Morris, 1994; Stallybrass & White, 1986; Zappan, 2000). Bakhtin was concerned with the nature of dialogue – or “double-voiced discourse” - through utterances, a basic unit of speech, as the actualized meaning of words in language (Zappan, 2000, p. 2). Utterances are a fundamental aspect of language in “its active creative capacity and the always evaluative nature of meaning” (Morris, 1994, p.4). Speech genres are a form of utterance that is identified with a particular sphere of communication (the Clothesline Project), has developed into stable thematic content (the experience of violence), as well as style and compositional structure. The nature of utterance is such that it is part of a whole chain of utterances and is always expressive and evaluative, through intonation and the anticipated response of the audience (Morris, 1994, p. 81). While an utterance is specifically defined or bounded within a sphere of communication, it is also inherently interactive and interrelational between speaker(s) and addressee (Zappan, 2000).
The idea of heteroglossia is a complex mixture of languages and refers to the conflict between official/unofficial, centrifugal/centripetal or dominant/non-dominant discourses (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000). More specifically, heteroglossia focuses on the phenomena of antagonistic socio-cultural forces and the inclusion of conflicting voices as making meaning and having value. As well, heteroglossia is related to, but goes beyond, the concept of polyphony or multi-voiced texts (Zappan, 2000). It is the “struggle with another’s word that a new word is generated” and this dialogic relationship within heteroglossia establishes the ever unfolding process of utterances (Morris, 1994, p. 74).
For Bakhtin, the notion carnival is derived from the way folk culture - as seen in festivals, celebrations, seasonal rituals, pageants, public speech and performance, and market-place spectacles –attenuates official hegemony or dominant culture (Stallybrass & White, 1986). Carnival offers a rhythmic, spatial, and temporal vision of life and human interaction; however, Bakhtin emphasizes the sensuous, corporeal form of carnival gesture and ritual. In this, a physical and performative materiality of the body takes the form of “grotesque realism”, which simultaneously parodies and celebrates, elevates and mocks, crowns and condemns, laughs and bleeds (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000). This serio-comic display of grandeur and spectacle signifies the basic ambivalence and duality of all carnivalesque meaning making. This communal expression, through costume and mask, brings about the productive process of re-generation or re-presentation, which frees human consciousness from dominant and hierarchical perceptions of the world and opens up the possibility for new awareness, understanding, and change (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000).
Heidegger
In an effort to broadly examine complex phenomenon and interpretation of meaning through text and context, a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, as described by Heidegger (1933-34/2010) and Gadamer (1975/2004), is utilized as a philosophical foundation (Laverty, 2003; Sameshima, 2009). Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology pertains to the “life world and human experience as it is lived”and focuses on Dasein, which means “the situated meaning of a human in the world” (Laverty, 2003, p. 24). Human consciousness is not separate from the world but is an ever unfolding construction of lived experienced and historical as well as socio-cultural contexts. In essence, meaning is made as humans construct the world and, in turn, are constructed by the world. Heidegger emphasizes the importance of interpretation in the process of meaning making. Specifically, hermeneutics is the study of socio-cultural experiences as texts, with the engagement in interpretation as way to find expressed or cloaked meanings. Texts are noted to be language or dialog in the form of written or verbal communication, the visual arts and music. Consequently, language and understanding are seen to be indivisible and foundational aspects of human ‘being-in-the-world’ (Laverty, 2003).
Gadamer
Gadamer (1975/2004) builds upon Heidegger’s (1933-34/2010) concepts through his view of interpretation as a fusion of horizons. “A horizon is a range of vision that includes everything seen from a particular vantage point. . . to ‘have a horizon’ means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it” (p. 301). The concept of fusion of horizons takes on multiple interrelated meanings. The first meaning addresses the ability to transpose ourselves into a situation and become aware of otherness: “the indissoluble individuality of the other person –by putting ourselves into his position’ (p.304). Second, this concept includes not only empathy but involves rising to a “higher universality” of understanding and meaning making that looks beyond one’s own understanding and perspective to the larger whole, fully embracing context and proportion (p. 304). And third, the praxis of fusion of horizons provides the foundation for the process of interpretation, understanding, and meaning making through historical consciousness, questioning, and the “perpetual motion” of seeking answers (p. 368). Gadamer maintained that the interrelated process of understanding and interpretation are an ontological and dialogic process: “the way understanding occurs . . . is the coming-into-language of the thing [text or dialog] itself” (p. 371). In sum, dialog - the constitutive basis of question and interpretation - is the medium of the emergent hermeneutic experience.
