MICHAEL COFFEY
SERIOUSLY FOLKS!!!! ... SOME WORDS, MOVES, HUSTLING & 'IMPOSTURES'
9th JULY 2006
TO CONTACT THE IMPOSTER TO CONTACT THE IMPOSTER TO CONTACT THE IMPOSTER TO CONTACT THE IMPOSTER TO CONTACT THE IMPOSTER
A Belated Doctoral assessment paper June 2006
ABSTRACT: This paper is written for my doctoral assessment. It also a literature review within the main body of the text and an extended list of material cited. What is presented in this paper is an overview of the initial journey of my exploration of youth and adult subjectivity and what this might suggest for a habitus (Bourdieu 1998) and practice of youth work. I apply BourdieuÕs habitus or feel for the game to mean:
.. having the game under the skin; it is to master in a practical sense the future of the game; it is to have a sense of the history of the game. While the bad player is always off tempo, always too early or too late, the good player is the one who anticipates, who is ahead of the game...she has the immanent tendencies of the game in her body, in an incorporated state; she embodies the game. (Bourdieu 1998, pp 80-81)
I use the term subjectivity here to describe our sense of being in the world, as a subject (both to and of) a network of a multiple relations and discourse. This text draws from an eclectic blend of theory and methodology and could be considered as part of the field of knowledge and a research strategy known as Ônew HumanitiesÕ or what I have previously described as a postmodern(ish) habitus (Coffey 2000). In his work on postgraduate pedagogy, on doing PhDÕs in the new humanities, Hodge describes an obvious epistemological tension (or what Foucault has called an epistemic rupture (ouch!) (Foucault 1970)) for such work. He warns of the implications for the processes and quality control of intellectual and textual production (Hodge 1998). In contrast with the more traditional old Humanities practice of producing a PhD mind that is doctus, safe, disciplined and doctored, he describes new Humanities approach in terms of challenging the controls on doctorates, as breeding monsters, producing monstrous knowledge and opening opportunities for being creative and original. I suggest that this is one such work. In the interests of monster management and spirit of the new humanities, as a tactic I attempt to distance this text away from the postmodern. Instead I recruit and blend ideas from individual authors and thinkers, of both the post, pre and modern variety.
In terms of methodology this study could also be described as:
- The production of monstrous knowledge (Hodge 1998)
- An analysis of the ontological politics (Mol 1999) - Nearly discourse analysis (Foucault)
- Close to genealogy (Foucault and Nietzsche)
- As a paralogy - or listening to the pagan voice (Lyotard)
- Not quite deconstruction (Derrida) - A bit like Actor Network Theory (Latour)
- Research as story telling and world making (Usher) or re authoring (White)
- Mostly subjective, postmodern(ish) or antifoundational.
- Using disciplines, tools and conventions towards the production of Michael Coffey as a Doctor of Philosophy, as a legitimate smarty -pants and an authorized knower and also as a reaffirming the discipline of the academy.
- It is interdisciplinary as it transgresses and borrows methods from cultural studies and education and to a lesser degree semiotics and rhetoric
There are many other metaphors utilised in this work that relate more to my epistemology than the subject of the study. Metaphors such as carnival, liquid/slipperiness, and mess. Throughout this study, I assume that the world is messy and cannot be tidied up with neat and convenient explanation. There is also no guarantee of clear communication or articulation as there is no guarantee of clear listening. Reality, subjectivity and meaning are also understood here according to the linguistic turn as articulated and constituted through language games and signs. Language and the relationship between the signifier / signified is understood as slippery, ambiguous, treacherous and dangerous. Foucault once playfully suggested that everything is dangerous (ouch!), perhaps he looked directly into the eyes of the monster that lies underneath our beds at night. While it is a conceptual study it is also empirical in its method, whereby the objects within the research gaze are mundane and common place social artifacts or as Michel de Certeau describes as practices of everyday life (de Certeau 1984). It also utilises intertextuality with mass/pop culture and my own biographies.
In my synthesis of ideas in how I conceptualise my method for this work I owe a great debt and thanks to the legacy of Gorgias, Fredrick Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Donna Haraway, Mikhail Bakhtin, Francois Lyotard, Zygmunt Bauman, Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, Gordon Tait and 40 years of television. However, I am faithful to none of them. I recruit their work into my study, not as a born again post-theorist or to worship the new post-dogma. Instead I apply a pragmatic thatÕs very interestingÉ but so what stance to their work.
FOR SOUL FOOD AND INSPIRATION ..:
Michel Foucault
Marc Bolan
David Bowie
Brian Eno
Sallie Saunders
Robert Fripp
Ray Bradbury
Philip Dick
Nicholas Burbules
Grumpy Old Nietzsche
the Mifilito Corporation
Ivy Dell
updated: JULY 2006
