Abstract
In this chapter we introduce our research approach as dialogic research art through comparing and contrasting two paradigms of scientific research: the conventional positivist method and dialogic research art. Using Aristotle’s terminology, we claim that the idea of the predefined scientific method, a series of correct steps and procedures that would guarantee arriving at the truth, can be defined as poïesis. Poïesis is such an activity where its goal, value, form, and the definition of what constitutes its quality preexist the activity itself. Thus, poïesis focuses on the given and objective, excluding any subjectivity, that is, subjectivity itself becomes objectified. Poïesis does not know personal authorship and personal responsibility—rather it knows impersonal method/technique and person-free objectivity. In contrast, dialogic research epistemology is very different, as it rejects the notion of a research method in favor of dialogic research art. The concept of research art is based on the phronêsis way of knowing (Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Carr, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40, 421–435, 2006), which can be loosely defined as practical wisdom situated in a unique context, and the notion of praxis, defined by Aristotle as an activity where its goal, value, form, and the definition of what constitutes its quality emerge in the activity itself. The definition of the success of dialogic research art in each unique context does not preexist the art-making itself but emerges from it. This new definition of success in the art-making and its new underlying value has to be recognized and defended in the act of taking responsibility—literally an accepted duty to reply to challenging questions about the new artwork.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Gert Biesta (2017)—Robi Kroflič’s reply (2018-04-25).
- 2.
In Latin, the word “positive,” from which the term “positivism” originates, means “given.” Bakhtin (Bakhtin, 1990, 1993) in his early writing often distinguished being “the given” (dan, дан, in Russian) and “the assigned/created” (zadan, задан). The latter expresses the essence of ethical subjectivity, “the ethical subiectum is present to itself as a task—the task of actualizing itself as a value, and it is in principle incapable of being given, of being present-on-hand, of being contemplated: it is I-for-myself” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 100, italics in original).
- 3.
Our term “dialogic research art” or “art of dialogic research making” is akin to “art of war making” or “culinary art.”
- 4.
Since the responsibility-based justification of artwork is a part of art itself, there is no such term as “artology,” which could have been parallel to “methodology”—justification of a scientific method of research.
- 5.
Actually, two stories: “Rashomon” and “In a Grove” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon).
- 6.
- 7.
Using Latour’s sociological dualistic theory of science practice, it is possible to say that Einstein’s positivist epistemology represents “ready-made science,” while Bohr’s relational epistemology represents “science-in-action” (Latour, 1987).
- 8.
Often “biased” in research epistemology has a negative connotation. In our view, it can have both positive and negative connotations.
- 9.
See a Soviet animation version of this story in English here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I7HVyTzUZc
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Matusov, E., Marjanovic-Shane, A., Gradovski, M. (2019). Chapter 3.1: Introducing Dialogic Research Art. In: Dialogic Pedagogy and Polyphonic Research Art. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58057-3_9
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