Prologue to Filmic Research(ing)

Abstract

Research produces “text” (mostly written) that has an “intent” (what the author wants to make understood and/or see happen), with a claim to “significance” (i.e. the purposiveness of the research, judged politically, ethically, and/or aesthetically). This multilayeredness of research, where one level of research follows upon the other, is in this chapter called “filmic” – playing upon the definition of “film” as the addition of one layer of substance upon the other. Two exemplary “filimic” authors are discussed: edouard Louis and Annie Ernaux. Both, in their writing, are affectively powerful, while at the same time asserting a sociological social studies perspective. Their writings are normally classified as “literature” because the texts are powerfully evocative, strongly situated in concrete circumstances, and can be typified as “authentic.” I argue, here, that the layered complexity of their oeuvres is exemplary of the sort of multi-perspective research and methodology that the study of organization really requires.