Making Meaning in Context: The Puzzling Relationship Between Image and Metaphor

A Place for Theoretical Inconsistency

“…(p. 19) Dogmatic insistence on theoretical loyalty might have precluded such insights and would, in turn, have compromised the potential contribution of the research in which we were engaged. As it turned out, I believe the learning we ultimately shared from this study better reflects a social constructionist orientation than did our initial 'findings' (see Newbury & Hoskins, 2010a, 2010b, and 2010c. The fact remains, however, that had we not been at least willing to re-engage with our own assumptions (theoretical or otherwise), this would have been a less rigorous inquiry process.…”

Altered Inquiry: Discovering Arts-Based Research through an Altered Book

“…As an art therapy researcher, I am interested in art as a route to the interiorities of people (Hogan & Pink, 2010), our artistic intersubjectivity (Skaife, 2001), our relational knowings, and the emotional knowledge between us. Newbury and Hoskins (2010a, 2010b) used a relational, arts-based approach in which images and metaphors awakened explication of context and complexity. Images allow access to nuanced and less conscious aspects of experience; metaphors help link the personal to the social, cultural, and environmental (Newbury & Hoskins, 2010a).…”

“…Hoskins (2010a, 2010b) used a relational, artsbased approach in which images and metaphors awakened explication of context and complexity. Images allow access to nuanced and less conscious aspects of experience; metaphors help link the personal to the social, cultural, and environmental (Newbury & Hoskins, 2010a). Their work inspired me, as did Clover's (2011) use of feminist arts-based participatory methodologies where issues of trust, building community, identity as an artist, and collective empowerment arose.…”

“…And while I am empowered to make informed choices in this project, what of more vulnerable participants who might consent to similar research? I found ethics in ABR, like my work as an art therapist, complex and fraught with quandaries, calling for deeply situated, contextualized approaches (Gerber et al, 2012;Newbury & Hoskins, 2010a). Yet the possibility of hearing research participants' voices more directly creates exciting opportunities to expand our emphatic sense of each other.…”

“…Art "enables direct experiential understanding" (Freedberg & Gallese, 2007, p. 202), as mirror neuron research is beginning to reveal, empathic, emotional, and felt in the body. Imaginative thought can access the interiority of experience through the subversive, revealing, emergent communicative power of artistic knowing involving image and metaphor (Hogan & Pink, 2010;Leavy, 2009;Newbury & Hoskins, 2010a, 2010bPink, 2009Pink, , 2011Pink, Hogan, & Bird, 2011). ABR evokes a philosophy rooted in an imaginative, aesthetic epistemology.…”