Art, Imagination, and the Future in the New Empiricism

• In Event: 65.079 - Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 65.079-16 - Language and Semiotics Within "New Materialist" Research Methodologies

Abstract

Objectives
The transformation that poststructuralism worked on 20th century social science methodology can arguably be traced to its emphasis on the semiotic nature of meaning, inquiry, and representation. Drawing on the linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure, scholars such as Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Butler introduced a highly precise and influential anti-foundationalism into a wide variety of fields of social inquiry—including, of course, educational research.

Recently, however, qualitative researchers in a variety of disciplines have been expressing ambivalence about the limitations of a primarily linguistic conception of meaning. Referred to variously as the New Materialism, the New Empiricism, and an Ontological Turn, this movement seeks to account for the obduracy of material things and non-human phenomena, without collapsing into a naïve realism that obscures our responsibility for the consequences of our interpretive activity.

Refusing a simple rejection of linguistic representation, this “ontological turn” is prompting a reexamination of the relationship between language and materiality, representation and reality, description and advocacy. This paper explores the relevance of new developments in pragmatic philosophy for this methodological conversation.

Theoretical Frameworks
This paper will start with a review of contemporary scholarship on Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics includes an account of non-linguistic signs with material relations to the things they signify. Of particular interest here will be Peirce’s notion of an “iconic” sign as an indicator of qualitative possibilities for experience.

Qualitative imagination for Peirce, and other pragmatic philosophers like Dewey, Koopman (2009) Sorrell (2004) and Colapietro (2011) plays a necessary role in all inquiry. These philosophers, like poststructuralists, are thoroughly anti-foundationalist. But rather than focus on developing critical analytics to surface and problematize ontological foundations, they developed prospective analytics intended to provide guidance for navigating experience without foundational reference points. The justification for linguistic representations lies not in their correlation to an independently existing world, but as interventions in an ontologically inclusive stream of experience. This intervention requires imagining and communicating new possibilities for experience—similar to contemporary conceptions of performativity, but organized around a more substantive ontology.

Modes of Inquiry
This paper’s mode of inquiry is the comparison and contrast of the methodological implications of different theoretical frameworks. No empirical data is presented. However, implications for the practice of empirical inquiry are discussed and illustrative examples of these implications are offered.

Significance
This paper draws on contemporary pragmatic philosophy to shift methodological conversations from debates about the exclusive accuracy research representations, to debates about the plausibility and desirability of narratives about the future. This shift provides points of connection between the New Empiricist movement and Arts-Based Research methodologies. It calls for an increased role for imagination in educational inquiry and offers the reality of the future as a site of post-representational methodological warrant.

Colapietro, V. (2011). Customary reflection and innovative habits. Journal of speculative philosophy 25(2),161-173.
Koopman, C. (2009). Pragmatism as transition: Historicity and hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sorrell, K. (2004). Representative practices: Peirce, pragmatism and feminist epistemology. New York: Fordham University Press.

Author

• Jerry L. Rosiek, University of Oregon