methodology 1

A while ago I presented my research to a group of people from different disciplines, and the first question I was asked after I had finished speaking was to describe my methodology. I have to admit that at that point I wasn't even sure what a methodology was, especially in theh umanities; I was familiar with methodology in science and social science research, but I wasn't sure exactly what that could mean in terms of what was essentially a literary project like mine.

In that case, the question was primarily to do with my justification for including works across a range of genres--a film, a novel, a short story, a book of theory, and a book of poems--in my dissertation as my case studies. I wanted to show that the phenomenon I'm looking at--the representation of the space between people who love one another as a charged and generative space--was a general enough occurence to merit (or require) expression across genres.

But as I've continued thinking and reading, the question of methodology has surfaced over and over. My research has led me to texts like What Do Pictures Want? by W.J.T. Mitchell and Pictures and Tears by James Elkins, as well as like The Transmission of Affect by Teresa Brennan, and more traditional texts of the critical theory canon, like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project and Baudrillard's The System of Objects. And then, reading The Way of Love by Luce Irigaray and The Erotic Phenomenon by Jean-Luc Marion, I noticed an interesting parallel: both theorists identify a lack in Western philosophy--and not only that, they identify it as philosophy's reluctance, or even unwillingness, to deal with love. And to me, what that meant was that I could not approach my own thesis from a viewpoint that came exclusively from a tradition of critique that did not acknowledge my subject.

(part two tomorrow)