Visual Articulations of the Self – Subjectivation in Social Networks

Author(s):

Viktoria Flasche(presenting / submitting)Juliane Engel(presenting)Benjamin Joerissen

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 06 A, Images and Narratives of the Self

Paper/Video Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

W2.06

Chair:

Alejandra Pacheco

Contribution

In the (post-)digital and (post-)factual age media and material gain not only central but constitutive importance for processes of biographization (Joerissen 2017, Miller 2005). The practice and material turns for the first time offer a paradigmatic and methodological basis for examining the full range of aesthetic practices. Since the discussion of aesthetic phenomena (e.g. visual art, dance, theatre, music) seems to be critically important for the biography of professional artists in public European discourse. The scientific examination of biographies as well as theories of aesthetics show that this is also the case in everyday life-contexts. Moreover, both discourses point towards a mutual influence of biography and aesthetics. This complex is systematically and empirically underestimated yet. The study, which is presented in this paper connects to this research gap.

Our lecture draw on findings from educationally oriented biographical research and praxeological theories of aesthetics in order to demonstrate the productive interplay between biography and aesthetics beyond high cultural contexts. It thus enquires into the everyday significance of aesthetic practices for processes of biography construction beyond, for instance, formally institutionalized careers in the so-called arts, and in this way introduces a transactional perspective (Dewey/Bentley 1989, Latour 1996, Nohl 2017) on aesthetic processes.

In distinction to educational studies concentrating on arts which often reduce aesthetic practices to a causally conclusive effects model (Rittelmeyer 2013), the presented study follows its own considerable momentum. The importance of aesthetic experience for biographies has been repeatedly emphasized from a philosophical perspective (Seel 2003), whereas the biographical research concentrates on certain events as turning points in biography without considering its aesthetic dimensions. On the basis of quantitative research studies on recreational activities of adolescents and young adults in the area of cultural education on the one hand (Keuchel 2014) and recent research on European youth scenes on the other (Krüger/Richard 2010), one can distinguish between the three fields of performative, auditive, and visual practices. In the process it can be shown empirically that aesthetic practices indeed are structurally relevant for biographical schemes and projections on the one hand as well as for cultural (aesthetic) constructions of biography on the other hand, we conceptualize the intertwinement of both moments as a biographical articulation. For this purpose we videograph biographical interview situations and transactional spaces of aesthetic practices. Therefore they are reconstructively accessible within the framework of a triangulated research design.

Contrary to the subjectivistic reading of expressive process, Taylor (1992) introduces their “expressive dimension” (ibd. 72) as a substantial relational social phenomenon. The relational moment of expressive processes does not only lie in the “between” of the expressive event. In addition to that, every expression implies a medially based form (Schwemmer 2005: 49ff.), which is only interpretable against the background of perceptions relying on the distinctive cultural history (ibd. 65). In this sense the project understands biographical narratives and performances as acts, through which aesthetic practices can be made visible as processes of subjectivation. It thus deals with a level of processes of biographization on which the analysis of biographicity can no longer be limited to verbally abstract narration but must capture their material, temporal, spatial, and corporeal articulations.

Method

The transactional methodology subsequent to the praxeological sociology of knowledge (Mannheim 1980, Bohnsack 2014) allows an empirical perspective on the constitutivity of corporal, material and spatial actors for biografizations (Nohl 2017: 1f.). Therefor it is also possible to refine insights of the symmetric anthropology (ibd., Thompson/Hoffarth 2013) as well as of the education-theoretical structural analysis. These methodological and paradigmatical developments pose a challenge for the recently educationally oriented biographical research on the connection of biography and aesthetic practices/experiences. These were always confronted with the materialities of aesthetic practice, but rarely fell back on the consequences of the practice and material turn. The “hypostatization of people as solely operating actors” (Nohl 2017: 2), which serves as an operational basis of biographical interviews (Schütze 1983, Marotzki 1999), does not focus on the spectators’ perspective alone, but also on the subjective view of the researched interview partners. Youths and adolescents place themselves in the centre of their biographic actions when they are addressed as subjects of their own biography in the interviewing situation, where a specific – medial as well as aesthetic and dramaturgic - language game is created as a communicative frame. On the other hand, the video-based research approach as well as the transactional analyses of the pilot testing serving as the basis of the project show indications on how things, practices and spaces are going to be relevant for orientation on an implicit level. Consequentially, the biographic narration (as a verbal event), the biographic-transactional enactment (including the enactment of transactionally relevant objects and spaces), and finally the structural-analytic characteristics of the material actors involved, will be systematically related to each other in the triangulative perspective of the survey. (Flick 2011, Ecarius/Miethe 2011). In order to achieve that, the videografization of biographic interviews turned out to be critically helpful to get an insight into practices of positioning of youths and adolescents towards their material world, that means to relate these practices to attachment theory or to find out about their embodied enactment of biography (e.g. dancing, singing).

Expected Outcomes

With this lecture we will presenting an empirical typology with which an aesthetic practice can be described by means of highlighting its biographical relevance. Based on that typology, we are developing a theory of biographic narrations and transactional articulations as aesthetical practices of subjectivation. Therefore, we need to develop a methodology of aesthetic practices, which can be transferred systematically to other fields of education in Europe and can be useful for research on arts education as well as biography studies. So far, no precise methodology has been developed by various sub-disciplines of European cultural education. Instead, we most often face an implicit assumption of an effects model when it comes to aesthetic experience. Hence, various causally shortened conclusions evolve which are not keeping up with up-to-date findings of topical biography studies. Our project faces this circumstances by creating multidimensional analyses of the aesthetical practices’ biographical relevance. The analyses show the way the aesthetic practice and the biographical context do mesh with each other, how they develop together and what they generate in relationship to each other.

References

Bohnsack, R. (2014): Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung. Opladen. Dewey, J./Bentley, A.F. (1989): Knowing and the Known. In: Boydston, J.A. (Ed.): John Dewey – The Later Works. Vol. XVI. Carbondale. 2-294. Ecarius, J./Miethe, I. (Ed.) (2011): Methodentriangulation in der qualitativen Bildungsforschung. Opladen. Flick, U. (2011): Triangulation. Wiesbaden. Joerissen, B. (2017): Subjektivation und „ästhetische Freiheit“ in der post-digitalen Kultur. In: Braun, T./Fuchs, M./Taube, G. (Ed.): Das starke Subjekt. München. Jung, M. (2009): Der bewusste Ausdruck. Berlin. Keuchel, S. (2014): Kulturelle Interessen der 14- bis 24-Jährigen. https://www.kubi-online.de/artikel/kulturelle-interessen-14-bis-24-jaehrigen-quo-vadis-nachhaltige-kulturvermittlung-aktuelle. [14.10.2016]. Krüger, H.-H./Richard, B. (Ed.) (2010): Intercool 3.0. Paderborn. Latour, B. (1996): Der Berliner Schlüssel. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Marotzki, W. (1999): Erziehungswissenschaftliche Biografieforschung. In: Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaften 2(3). 225-341. Mannheim, K. (1980): Strukturen des Denkens. Frankfurt a.M. Miller, D. (2005): Materiality. Durham. Nohl, A.-M. (2017): Die empirische Rekonstruktion materieller Artefakte mit der Dokumentarischen Methode. In: Tervooren, A./Kreitz, R. (Ed.): Dinge und Raum in der qualitativen Bildungs- und Biographieforschung. Opladen. Rittelmeyer, C. (2013): Transferwirkung künstlerischer Tätigkeiten. In: Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, Themenheft Kulturelle und Ästhetische Bildung. 217-231. Seel, M. (2003): Ästhetik des Erscheinens. Frankfurt a.M. Schwemmer, O. (2005): Kulturphilosophie. Paderborn. Schütze, F. (1983): Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. In: Neue Praxis 13(3). 283-293. Taylor, C. (1992): Language and Human Nature. In: Philosophical Papers I. Cambridge. 249-292. Thompson, C./Hoffarth, B. (2013): Was gehen uns die Dinge an? In: Gelhard, A./Alkemeyer, T./Ricken, N. (Ed.): Techniken der Subjektivierung. München. 259-272.

Author Information

Viktoria Flasche (presenting / submitting)

Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Pedagogy

Erlangen

Juliane Engel (presenting)

Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Benjamin Joerissen