Painting pictures of embodied experience: the use of nonverbal data production for the study of embodiment

Abstract

This paper is based upon the work of an ongoing, collective research project that is concerned with embodiment. The co-researchers have used a variety of methods, including memory work and the analysis of discourse, in order to trace the ways in which meanings are constructed and lived, with and through the body. These methods have relied solely on transcripts of text as data. Growing awareness of the limitations this imposed on the research, particularly for topics that focus on bodily experience, led the group to experiment with nonlinguistic forms of data production. Here, the group produced paintings in response to the trigger ‘ageing’. These, together with tape-recorded discussions of one another's paintings, constitute our data. The analysis generated a number of themes, focused within the concepts of boundaries, time and transformation. These are discussed in terms of methodological, epistemological and theoretical issues that inform our understanding of subjectivity and embodiment.