Page 91 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

80 NOTES ON METHOD

of a method which respects evidence, seeks corroboration and minimizes
distortion, but which is without rationalist natural-science-like pretence.
Though we can only know it through our own concepts, there is nevertheless a
real subject for our inquiry, which is not entirely spirited away by our admission
of its relativized position. If our purpose is a fuller understanding and knowledge
of this subject, then we must have some concern for the reliability of the data we
use. Furthermore, if our focus is not on isolated, subjective meanings but on their
associated symbolic systems and cultural forms, then we are concerned also with
real material elements. It is perfectly justifiable to use rigorous techniques to gain
the fullest knowledge of these things. This is, therefore, to go partly down the
road of traditional ‘objectivity’: many of the techniques used will be the same.
The parting of the ways comes at the end of this process. The conventional process
takes its ‘objective’ data-gathering as far as possible and then consigns the rest
(what it cannot know, measure or understand) to Art or ‘the problem of
subjectivity’ Having constituted its object truly as an ‘object’, and having gained
all possible knowledge about this ‘object’, the process must stop; it has come up
to the ‘inevitable limitations of a quantitative methodology’. But it is precisely at
this point that a reflexive, ‘qualitative’ methodology comes into its own. Never
having constituted the subject of its study as an ‘object’, it is not surprised that
there is a limit to factual knowledge. What finally remains is the relationship
between subjective/cultural systems.
The rigorous stage of the analysis, the elimination of distortion, the
crosschecking of evidence and so on have served to focus points of divergence
and convergence between systems. Reducing the confusion of the research
situation, providing a more precise orientation for analysis, allows a closer
reading of separate realities. By reading moments of contact and divergence it
becomes possible to delineate other worlds, demonstrating their inner symbolic
qualities. And when the conventional techniques retire, when they cannot follow
the subjects of subjects themselves—this is the moment of reflexivity. Why are
these things happening? Why has the subject behaved in this way? Why do
certain areas remain obscure to the researcher? What differences in orientation
lie behind the failure to communicate?
It is here, in this interlocking of human meanings, of cultural codes and of
forms, that there is the possibility of ‘being surprised’. And in terms of the
generation of ‘new’ knowledge, we know what it is precisely not because we
have shared it—the usual notion of empathy—but because we have not shared it.
It is here that the classical canons are overturned. It is time to ask and explore, to
discover the differences between subjective positions, between cultural forms. It
is time to initiate actions or to break expectations in order to probe different
angles in different lights. Of course, this is a time of maximum disturbance to
researchers, whose own meanings are being thoroughly contested. It is precisely
at this point that the researcher must assume an unrestrained and hazardous self-
reflexivity. And it is the turning away from a full commitment, at this point,
which finally limits the methods of traditional sociology.