(K)not an Impasse: Working Through Lacanian Theory as Research Methodology

Abstract

Abstract This essay illuminates key points in the development of a psychoanalytic theory–informed case study of student writing in Criticizing Television, an undergraduate, writing-intensive art education course. The discussion describes the research context, including a select group of concepts that structure the inquiry: subjectivity and desire, the Other, thick interpretation, critical consciousness, and resistance. In addition, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and methodology are briefly explicated and problematized, providing a foundation for an exploration of Ellie-Ragland Sullivan’s Lacanian Poetics and Carol Gilligan’s Listening Guide, followed by discussion of an impasse method of reflexive data analysis. The impasse, first perceived as an obstacle in the research, is linked with the concept of critical (un)consciousness, becoming the metaphorical, methodological (k)not upon which the case study and its data pivot. You tie yourself to what comes untied— to what unties you within your ties. You are a knot of correspondences. — Edmond Jabès (1990)