Dewsbury, J-D. (2009) Performative, Non-representational, and Affect-Based Research: Seven Injunctions. In: DeLyser, D., Atkin, S., Crang, M., Herbert, S. & McDowell, L. (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography. London: Sage. Ch. 18

This is a very welcome paper to find in a handbook of research methods within human geography, advocating resolute experimentalism through the series of seven bold injunctions. Striking in its opening, the chapter is built around four key qualifications that are outlined early on. Firstly, there are few references to qualitative research in geography. Secondly, the emphasis is on the generation of problems rather than solutions. Thirdly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given Dewsbury’s other publications, there is an emphasis on the non-representational. Lastly, the paper attempts to stage the danger of scientism, the view that natural sciences have authority over all interpretations of life. As part of this ethos of disrupting, Dewsbury calls for us to strive to think the unthought and contends that this must take place at every step of the research because “[m]ethodology is far from dull: it is extremely political” (p. 323).

Following a lengthy (though necessary) introduction, the chapter opens out to explore some key agendas within performative research: thinking, sensing and presenting. Arguing that methodologies have always been somewhat improvised, Dewsbury suggests that approaches which fall broadly under the banner of the performative question why only some ways of knowing count. Put differently, performative research embraces the failures as much as the successes of research. This of course raises the thorny question of what might be considered a failure, and who might be able to decide whether or not something is a failure, an issue which is perhaps not adequately addressed. Running throughout the piece is the aforementioned series of injunctions, which are compared to proscriptions rather than prescriptions; proscriptions do not “suggest a formula or a known or better way to proceed to in performative methodological endeavour” (p. 322). This term reminded me of Whitehead’s (and more recently Isabelle Stengers’ and Erin Manning’s) use of propositions. Neither judgements nor necessarily true, propositions are theories-in-the-making, generative constraints for the opening of a relational process (Manning, 2009). Dewsbury’s injunctions-proscriptions-propositions encourage the reader to: embrace experimentation (rather than fret about the risks), have conviction in your experiments, not fear the judgement that tethers social science to scientific values (such as efficacy and rigour), remember you are producing an understanding of the world because it is not given, concentrate on experience, and to be more acute and cute in the research stories told.

The chapter is sharp, witty and eminently readable. It might even be described as a manifesto for doing non-representational geography. Witness:

“The idea is to get embroiled in the site and allow ourselves to be infected by the effort, investment, and craze of the particular practice or experience being investigated. Some might call this participation, but it is a mode of participation that is more artistic and, as with most artistic practices, it comes with the side-effect of making us more vulnerable and self-reflexive. It is not however an argument for losing ourselves in the activity and deterritorializing ourselves completely from our academic remit, but nor does it mean sitting on the sidelines and judging. Rather the move, in immersing ourselves in the space, is to gather a portfolio of ethnographic ‘exposures’ that can act as lightening rods for thought. It is then in those key ‘times out’ as we set upon generating inventive ways of addressing and intervening in that which is happening, and has happened, as an academic, that such a method produces its data: a series of testimonies to practice. This is of course the flipping over of ‘participant observation’ to ‘observant participation’ that Thrift made (2000) to emphasise the serious empirical involvement involved in non-representational theory’s engagement with practices, embodiment and materiality.” (p. 326-327)

It is not however, Dewsbury reminds us, a question of ‘anything goes’. Embracing uncertainty through experimentation and employing an extended notion of the empirical – where encounters might include readings of philosophy, material sites or even research problematics – might allow for alternative methodological strategies (see also Adkins & Lury, 2009). Therefore, alongside an ethos of disrupting, there is also an “ethos of stretching the means by which research is done and striving to continue as experiments fail or always come short in the attempt” (p. 323). Here, research is treated as an ongoing process, where data – or rather materials (see Whatmore, 2003) – could, and perhaps should, include “the feelings, the codes, the awkward intensities, the architected space, the architecture of time, to name but a few” (p. 326). The attempt at the articulation of these empirical experiences or events is more important than its success; indeed, the very attempt to articulate is part of a project which takes materials seriously, allowing them to work-with, and against, initial research questions. Approaches need to be adapted to each singular situation; there is no one-size-fits-all methodology which can be used and re-used again and again. To combat this methodological conservatism we are encouraged to engage with resolute experimentalism, at once productive, proliferative and interfering.

References

Adkins, L. & Lury, C. (2009) Introduction: What Is the Empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 5-20

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Whatmore, S. (2003) Generating materials. In: Pryke, M., Rose, G. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. London: Sage