How can one be reflexive when examining something from inside the object of research?

In 2010, I finished a project researching seduction. The road to completion was tortuous, as I found that in studying seduction, I was being seduced that is, led astray. I was, simultaneously, subject and object of the research. I was in a trance, obsessed and possessed by the object of study. Rather than compromise, I turned this problem into an asset, devising a methodology to study wicked phenomena from within. I called this the self-reflexive methodology. It has three steps: recognition, capture and reflection, which can be enacted in a variety of fields, as well as methods or media. For this project, I chose writing, psychoanalytic practice and performative photography. Following a presentation of the methodology and the works produced as part of the seduction project, my aim is to see whether this methodology can be applied to the pedagogical practices I have developed at Transart, and in particular to PhD supervision.

In 2010, I thought that a PhD program was beyond me. I would occasionally have flashes that this body of work might be leading to larger questions, but I was always sidetracked by Desire. Taking Desire as a theme, I would lose my navigational star over and over, as Desire’s etymology suggested, and I let myself be seduced into the possibility of going in the wrong direction consciously, in conscious repetitions. Following the constraints of being as unrestrained as possible, my navigational star’s replica brought me into a PhD program anyway, where I would recognize that a self-reflexive methodology might open doors, or keep open doors still open, or capture my attention, and that this would need further reflection. It was not midnight. It was not raining. It was not Transart. It was not a PhD program.