Working the Ruins of Metaphor: Relationality and Provocation in Becoming

• In Event: Relationality and Methodology in A/r/tography

Abstract

1. Objectives
This paper will discuss recent and ongoing research that explores methodological tensions between the Deleuze and Guattari (1987) conception of identity as becoming and the use of visual representations and metaphor to engage in relational ways of knowing and studying fluid, temporal, and contingent meanings. What emerged from the study, explored in this paper, was the ways in which visual metaphors added to the complexity of teacher candidates’ perception of practice during the research process which helped to create conditions for elaboration of meaning.
2. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework draws on the Deleuzian-post-structural notion of becoming as the guiding perspective of identity as fluid, temporal, and relational. Becoming is understood as process, as experienced in relation to another, in a constant state of flux. Identity assembled and reassembled through a continuous process of relationality.
3. Methods
Five secondary visual art teacher candidates agreed to participate in this study. Each candidate, as part of their course work developed three visual metaphors for their perception of teacher practice: one at the beginning of their program, one at the end of practicum, and during their first year as a teacher. Each participant met with researchers for formal and informal interviews that at the beginning and middle of their program and during their first year as a teacher. These interviews focused on their perceptions of practice, their narratives of experience and eventually explored the shifts in their perception of practice.
4. Data
Data sources included: Visual Metaphors, visual journal pages, interview transcripts, and field notes.
5. Results
By engaging first in the work of constructing the visual metaphor and then by entering dialogue facilitated by both the visual metaphor and visual journal, participants became involved in examining their practice through a dialogic account of their teacher education program and their teaching practice. In this process, the visual metaphor and journal entered the narrative process, drawing participants in and out of their memory of teacher education, their beliefs about practice, and their current conceptions of practice. As such, this study is not that of the metaphor as product, but of the contingent meaning of the visual metaphor as part of the relational processes engaged in during research and as a process of becoming.
6. Significance
The methodological implications drawn from this research emphasizes research as a pedagogical act, affirming research as provocation versus representation of knowledge. This work suggests that dialogic processes extending from visual representations serve to deterritorialize teacher candidates’ conceptions of teaching and offer possibilities for both the form and function of arts-based qualitative inquiry.

Authors

• Adrienne Boulton-Funke, The University of British Columbia

• Kit M. Grauer, The University of British Columbia