Visual Psychologies Conference

Yesterday I attended The 'Visual Psychologies' conference at the Leicester school of management. It was an erudite display of, not only, the diverse work that is being conducted in that department, but a wonderful representation of the growing argument for a purely discursive explanation of behaviour. The conference began with a talk by Paula Reavey entitled 'Back to Experience: Material subjectivites and the visual'. In this talk Dr Reavey grounded the visual in how people experience their social world through a illuminating use of empirical research. This presented data that embodied the subject as an expressive individual who is bound up with a material setting. This first talk set the scene for a strong inquiry into the visual that was only furthered by the second speaker, Carey Jewitt, who commented on 'Educational Research: A social semiotic multimodal approach'. This talk was mostly based on the visual stimuli that children come in contact with in a school setting. I particularly enjoyed the reference to the body position of the teacher in relation to the working model of the body and the blackboard. This showed how the body was reconfigured as visual plane that constructed knowledge through the layers of communication in the body.

Alan Bryman (who is head of the school of management) then had the difficult task of summarising the two talks that went before. He did an excellent job and reflected on three main points of the 1) participatory aspects of the visual 2) reflexivity of the researcher and 3) The role of the visual in the world and related this to the wider debate between conversation analysis and that which is outside the discursive. At the break this left a lingering question of what others forms of the visual should we be using. Thankfully, the answer to this question shone through in the second half of the proceeding. Firstly, Maggie O'Neils excellent display of 'Ethno-mimesis as performance praxis' showed how the complexity of lived experiences could be conveyed through art projects of particularly sensitive social groups: Of most striking was the collection of self images made by a group of prostitutes. The produced an 'alternative voice' for the subject involved and made clear how, in unlocking the visual, Maggie was able to tap into something much deeper. This was then followed by Janice Haaken short film about life behind the mental health system in Oregon named 'Insanity Defence'. This film used conversation with patients and staff to represent a number of wider issues within the system of mental health including the authoritarian role of the psychologist and certain class issues. The end of the day was wrapped up some open discussion that focused on the difference between a 'good' and 'bad' image. It was felt that an image doesn't need to be particularly artists to form good data on the embodied life-world of a participant. Steve Brown led the discussion towards a definitive version of what we mean by visual methods and showed how this has a myriad of meanings from the diverse range of the research. Needless to say the debate ran on late into the evening at the pub. I am now looking forward to travelling to the International Graduate Conference tomorrow hopefully that will be as thought-provoking as yesterday.