Curating a dissertation

Graeme Sullivan's framing of a meta-analytic reflexive methodology approach as a curatorial practice has become a metaphor/anthem for my continuing dissertation work. Though I have never curated a visual art exhibition, I have had experience in curating performance series. When I selected seasons of youth performances for a performing arts center, it was always my dream to be able to consciously curate the season: develop a theme or in the vocabulary of education, an essential understanding, that each show would somehow address. But the selection process had too many moving parts, too many stakeholders, to be able to curate from the front end. Instead, I "backed into" a curatorial process. After all of the shows were booked, I would take a look at the shows, try to find some common themes, and then use those themes in our marketing and resource materials, and in our fundraising activities. It was pseudo-curating.

I have the opportunity now to curate from the front end with my dissertation. Through my literature review I have established three lenses of interpretation through which to approach the "lived life" in Maxine Greene's texts: situatedness, embodiment, and aesthetics. These lenses also shaped my methodology helping me to arrive at a practice that is curatorial in nature and uses reflexive writing in an existential hermeneutic tradition.

When thinking about curating a dissertation, I am reminded of a wonderful exhibition I attended at the Walker Art Center nearly 30 years ago. It was "Hockney Paints the Stage." This was in the early 1980s and I was just then coming into contact with the avant-garde and performance art as an undergrad at NYU. The wonder of the Hockney exhibition was that it was multi-dimensional. The galleries embodied the sets designed by David Hockney. The sensation was to walk into an environment that was wholly distinct from the one you just exited. There were backdrops and set pieces, there was lighting and music; it was fully sensual. The viewer entered Hockney's world.

I want to be able to achieve something similar in my dissertation, but with the limitations of two dimensions. And the primary means of expression is language/text. I am not sure what this will look like. But it is important for the reader/viewer to be able to enter the world of Greene's texts through the interpretation of Shawn's lived life.

A side note. I once traveled to Paris on my own following my cousin's wedding in Zurich. I took the train up to France and spent about four or five days on my own. I met up with friends from time to time, but was on my own for most of the trip. I made sure to visit many of the museums that Paris has to offer, though I avoided the Louvre as it was too big to try attempt in a single day or trip (and I had visited it earlier in my life). In the end, I suffered from a bout of Stendahl's syndrome. I became overwhelmed by the amount of art I was encountering. The bout of Stendahl's syndrome was exacerbated by the fact that I had no one nearby to share in these encounters, a means of processing the aesthetic.

On my final day in Paris I was visiting the Pompidou Centre, one of my favorite institutions in Paris. As I was feeling anxious among the two-dimensional canvases on an upper floor, I remembered the Walker exhibition from ten years earlier. I descended onto another floor that was comprised of sculpture and installations. The works were three-dimensional and I could move around them and through them. The anxiety passed. I found my breath again.

I need many dimensions in my dissertation. I want my readers to be able to move through and around the text.

Knocking on the text

I have been trying to get my head around the methodology I will be using in my dissertation. I have been reading and researching for months now. I've been through books and too many articles on arts-based educational research; I had a foray into ethnography; I spent a lot of time contemplating reflexive methodologies (how reflexive of me!); and now, hermeneutics. At some point, this research has got to conclude. It must come to an end.

I think I know where I'm headed. I believe that what I'm doing with Greene's texts is, at the first level, a curatorial process that Graeme Sullivan mentions in Art Practice as Research (2010). Like a curator, I'm attempting a new perspective on her works of art/texts. The curatorial practice should start from a place of resonance and wonder (Stephen Greenblatt in Exhibiting Cultures, 1991) for the curator/dissertation writer in regarding these works that hopefully inspires the same in the viewer/reader. Within the hermeneutic tradition promoted by Alvesson and Skoldberg in Reflexive Methodology (2000), this resonance and wonder represents what they call "primary interpretation" (p. 261). This is a recognition that "interpretation precedes data in all research" (p. 261). My choice of pursuing the idea of the "lived life" in Greene's writings is my primary interpretation. The "lived life" presents a sense of resonance for me and wonder that triggers my inquiry.

Alvesson and Skoldberg recommend a thorough practice of reflexive methodology where the inquiry undergoes four levels of interpretation. This is to ensure validity of the research product  and, I think, validity of the practice within the research field. There is not enough time for me to enter into these four levels: interaction with empirical material; interpretation; critical interpretation; and reflection on text production and language use. I think I will only get as far interpretation, or second-level reflexivity. The secondary interpretation I have been envisioning is a discursive inquiry into the text that resembles a "horizontal fusion between researcher and text" (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000, p. 264). This fusion is how the authors view the existential hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer.

Yet what precedes all of this is a discussion of the postmodern, poststructural viewpoint of the relationship between subject and object. It's an understanding that reality is always subjective and by extension, there is no such thing as pure objectivity. This is why I view it to be disingenuous to limit the narrative voice in research to a distant third-person viewpoint. The researcher is always present.

Another facet of this reflexive practice is the use of writing as inquiry. Writing as a way of coming to know and a way of becoming, as in this blog. This is what Laurel Richardson (2005) refers to as "creative analytical processes" or CAP.

In the end, my dissertation is only a slight digging below the hermeneutical surface of the "lived life" in Greene's texts. To achieve the exhaustive four levels of interpretation of Alvesson and Skoldberg is to enter the domain of post-doctoral work. Nevertheless, I am excited about this fusion of practices. What has become very apparent to me in this arduous journey is how the "lived life" is playing through the methodology. These reflexive methods all take the situatedness of the researcher into consideration through honoring the researcher's lived life in its impact on the research.