Fiction as research method
‘Our wilful creation of events is driven by energies of our own psychic and social history.’
(Peter Clough, 2002, page 84)
Seeing as an act is not passive.
This is like Stone and Heen talking about separating interpretation from information in ‘Thanks for the Feedback’.
Stories containing knowledge, example given of boy in desert surviving based on stories from childhood
Fictionalisation is a way to explore own attitudes intentionally
Looking at meaning
Ellis and Bochner – Auto Ethnography
Roots in psychotherapy:
Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person
Irvin Yalom, Love’s Executioner
Susie Orbach
Subject: Disillusionment in the University
Activity: Had conversations with people at different levels
Development: Formed conversational nodes -themes
Outcome: Thesis of composite characters having one conversation
Repeated questions made the nodes possible
Lindsay said when showing student conversations to others they formed different opinion on situations than she did.
What gives rise to this difference? Behaviour and other information gathered from the experience of a conversation.
Is this what could be communicated through image? Could images be good at capturing information that is tacit, non-traditional or complex? Why would an image be better than multiple formats? It is interactive, you can occupy it in a way other formats cannot, a still image is dialogic in itself?
Could it be combined with layers of reflexivity too? And your own thinking on what you are being told?
I have been interested in what illustration could do with oral narrative? Traditional illustrative skills in new contexts. Could I bring together information from different conversations in this way?
Bell Hooks talking about creating theory from experience. Is this what illustration could do with oral narrative?
Could exploring oral narratives be a way of accessing knowledge that hasn’t/isn’t being valued, shown or seen?
Also, thinking of:
David Sedaris
Edward St Aubyn
Interpreting your own story?
Edmund de Waal’s novels
The Crown – other things based on reality?
Interpreting other peoples?
What are your motives?
What are your responsibilities?
What is your relationship to your subjects?