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6 Research as Performative Inquiry
Mary M. Gergen
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which social science research practices have conjoined with the arts, and the place of social construction in these emerging explorations. In my view this conjoining brings to light the potentials of seeing research as a form of performance, and thus an attempt to evoke a responsive action. However, given the rapid acceleration of interest in allying the arts with research practice, performative inquiry is virtually synonymous with ‘arts-based research’. Patricia Leavy, a well-known advocate of arts-based research, defines the field as ‘any social research … that adapts the tenets of the creative arts as a part of the methodology. So, the arts may be used during data collection, analysis, interpretation and/or dissemination’ (Jones and Leavy, 2014, pp. 1–2).
Compendiums emphasizing performative inquiry include Playing with purpose: Adventures in performative social science (Gergen and Gergen, 2012), Creative research methods in the social sciences: A practical guide (Kara, 2015) and many chapters in various editions of The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, 2005, 2011, 2018). The Handbook of arts-based research is a major resource for performative inquiry (Leavy, 2019) and extends its reach into the health sciences, natural sciences, business, and education. Early performative handbooks include The SAGE handbook of performance studies (Madison and Hamera, 2006), and the Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (Knowles and Cole, 2008). Other important contributions include Arts-based research (Barone and Eisner, 2012) and Qualitative inquiry at a crossroads (Denzin and Giardina, 2019). Journals especially receptive to performative work include Qualitative Inquiry, International Review of Qualitative Research, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, and two online journals, Forum: Qualitative Social Research and Qualitative Research. In what follows I shall first provide a brief account of the development of performative inquiry. Now a powerful catalyst in the social sciences, performative work is of relatively recent origin. How, one might ask, did such flowering occur, and how has its development bolstered by social constructionist ideas? We may then take a more focused look at developments in several areas of inquiry, including those relying on textual, embodied and visual arts. Finally, I will touch on some salient achievement and aspirations.
Performative Inquiry: Emergence and Development
One might legitimately trace the origins of performative studies to the publication in 1632 of Galileo's Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems. In this volume, Galileo effectively justifies his Copernican view of the universe, that the earth revolves around the sun. In this account, however, he draws from the full range of rhetorical devices available at the time: formal scientific articulation, irony, drama, comedy, sarcasm, and poetry among them. By rolling his manifesto into this rich mix of genres, and the like, Galileo was able to give voice to his view of the cosmos, while simultaneously protecting himself from the ire of the Pope and the Catholic Church, for which his views would be anathema.
Over the next three centuries, Galileo's research
