This entry is inspired by a segment on the ABC’s Radio National Program, entitled “God Forbid” (9 April 2023). The panel was asked to consider how one’s writing affected one’s life. On this particularly reflective morning I found myself considering if the amount of time and effort I put into developing and “refining” WPR was justified. How did the work affect my life? How does it affect the lives of other researchers? How does it or can it affect the lives of “research subjects”?

Thinking about this topic put me in mind of Annemarie Mol’s work on research methods as “interferences”. According to Mol (2002: 155, emphasis in original), “[M]ethods are not a way of opening a window on the world, but a way of interfering with it. They act, they mediate between an object and its representations”. The argument captured in these evocative words is that research practices create realities, that, as researchers, we are unavoidably involved in “ontological politics” (Mol 1999; Research Hub entry 20 Dec. 2017). 

If WPR, as a research “method”, creates realities, it surely is involved in changing lives. But what does it mean to say that one’s research creates (or performs or enacts) realities? What kind of claim is being made here? Moreover, what kind of a responsibility does this proposition impose on researchers? Fraser (2020) has written about the possibility of delivering “ontologically-oriented research”. She provides guidelines for how this research can be done. Dennis (2019) raises the concern that “if we take enacting or inventing the social to its end point, are we in danger of overstating the creative potential of our methods?”

“By highlighting the role of method in making reality, are we at risk of once again granting too much responsibility and power to researchers and their intentions, practices, and technologies (as raised in debates over the crisis of representation; Clifford & Marcus, 1986) and not enough to the world as it makes itself known (Barad, 2007; Savransky, 2018; Stengers, 1997)?”

Performing realities

These questions are central to contemporary theoretical debates about what is commonly described as a “performative” theoretical perspective. In previous Research Hub entries (29 Sept. 2022; 26 Oct. 2022) I show how the performative argument links to claims about producing realities. I distinguish between two meanings of performativity: first, to refer to the effects of a subject’s “utterances”; second, to refer to the effects of a broad range of practices, including research practices.

The first meaning, which refers to the effects of a subject’s “utterances”, is linked to Austin (1962; discussed further below). In this tradition Jackson (2004: 2; emphasis in original) claims “that linguistic acts don’t simply reflect a world but that speech actually has the power to make a world”. In the second, broader meaning, “performativity” is connected to “every kind of act, that, when being committed, changes the existing order to a certain degree” (Breljak & Kersting 2017: 435). To prefigure the argument, I suggest that WPR is best approached through this second, broader, meaning, marking a significant distance from linguistics and “utterances”.

The mention of “acts” in these two meanings indicates that the target of analysis, in both cases, is practices (see Research Hub entries 30 Nov. 2019; 31 Dec. 2019). Connections can be drawn with aspects of Deleuzian assemblage theory. As with a performative perspective, assemblages, or rather assemblings, draw attention to ongoing processes “in which there can be no single stable reality but only specific realities made and unmade in practice” (Farrugia 2016: 39; emphasis added). In such practice accounts, “performativity” can be seen to counter a certain sort of positivism and essentialism. It invokes “the diverse materials involved in the putting together of various categories, objects, and persons” (du Gay 2010: 171). Reality becomes a product or effect of (repeated) acts (Breljak & Kersting 2017: 435). 

Questioning performativity

The speculative pragmatist Martin Savransky (2018: 226) expresses qualms about the meaning and legitimacy of these claims. He declares there is “much that I find unconvincing – and on occasion misleading” about the performative perspective. He examines the arguments of some of the leading theorists associated with this theoretical stance (Osborne and Rose 1999; Law and Urry 2004; Callon 1986) and finds their explanations wanting: 

“Indeed, it is often unclear what is meant by the process whereby reality is said to be ‘produced’, ‘enacted’, ‘constructed’, ‘brought into being’, and so on by the social sciences”. (Savransky 2016: 129) 

Going further, Savransky (2018: 228) is scathing in his suggestion that the claim that research methods produce realities displays “hubris”. 

Savransky’s concerns need to be taken seriously. It is not enough simply to claim that methods produce realities without clarifying what is intended in this claim. My understanding is that theorists aligned with a “performative” analytic are primarily concerned with alerting researchers to the possible negative consequences of some of their “interferences” (research methods). In other words, I have always associated this perspective with a self-critical and cautionary stance rather than with a “boastful” claim about making realities. In a 2012 chapter on the politics of research practices, I concluded: 

“The whole point of a turn to ontological politics, as presented in this chapter, is to insist that researchers examine the realities they create and to assess the political fallout accompanying those realities.” (Bacchi 2012: 152; emphasis added)

Still, Savransky is correct that the claim that research practices produce realities has been interpreted to mean that research practices can and should produce (certain kinds of) realities. In that same chapter in 2012 I turned to Deleuze and Guattari (1988: xii) to herald the possibility of marshalling concepts to challenge established practices. Pointedly, Deleuze and Guattari (1988: xii) compare a concept to a brick: it can be used to build a wall, or it can be thrown through a window. The latter signalled an ability by researchers to disrupt established practices.

In addition, above, I mentioned the work of Suzanne Fraser on the possibility of designing “ontologically-oriented research”. Fraser (2020) describes her innovative research projects in these terms: 

“As I will argue, the projects and their outcomes were fundamentally inspired by the insight that research not only explores and describes realities, it actively constitutes the realities it explores, playing a direct role in reconstituting realities through its conduct, outcomes and communications.” (Fraser 2020: Abstract) 

Fraser is sensitive to the power issues raised by Dennis above, emphasizing the need to “design and conduct research in response to this inescapable power to constitute objects and shape outcomes” (Fraser 2020: 3; emphasis in original). Acknowledging the “risky” dimensions of taking up such research, she makes the case that it is possible to “intentionally” set out “to leverage these insights about research to produce novel objects, materials and discourses to enact better outcomes” (Fraser 2020: 3; emphasis in original). In my reading, this stance would mean that any research approach, including WPR, could aim at creating reality “differently” and hence at changing lives (Fraser discusses the elements that make up ontopolitically-oriented research in her Conclusion). The reference to “better outcomes” signals the necessarily normative dimension of this argument (see Research Hub 30 April 2019). 

Performing Austin: the dangers of metaphors and analogies 

According to Savransky (2018: 226), the performative turn has been animated by “a particular interpretation of John Austin’s theory of the illocutionary force of performative utterances”. He notes that Austin first developed the term “performatives”. Austin’s particular usage is reflected in the first meaning of performativity identified at the outset of this entry, to refer to the effects of a “subject’s” utterances. The proposition most commonly associated with Austin is that language is not purely descriptive of “reality”; rather, language does things (with links to “speech act” theory; Searle 1979). To quote Austin (1962: 12), “the issuing of an utterance is the performing of an action”. For example, when I say, “I promise to finish my work”, I am doing something – I am making a promise. Savransky argues that Austin’s description of perlocutionary effects, the alteration of on-going situations, better captures what the “performative” scholars are describing: 

“In contrast to illocutionary effects, the notion of a perlocutionary effect requires that we conceive of the relationship between an invention and a milieu as something other than a unilateral creation of the latter by the former.” (Savransky 2016: 131)

I have previously described the “performative” perspective as analogous to Austin’s illocutionary effects ( KEYNOTE ADDRESS – CAROL BACCHI – 18 August 2022). Öjehag-Pettersson (2020; 627; emphasis added) similarly, references Austin and treats “speech acts” as a simile in his analysis of the role played by numerical devices in governing sub-national regions in Sweden: 

“recognizing the performative capacity of numbers is a way of pointing to the fact that numerical devices, like ‘speech acts’ (Austin, 1976), do something to the context in which they are articulated. They are not exact representations of reality, nor neutral ways of classifying and grouping social phenomena. Rather, they are a part of the iterative practices that brings objects and subjects into being in what we call ‘the real’ (Butler, 1993).” 

I now believe that drawing analogies with “speech acts” and “illocutionary effects” and even “perlocutionary effects” ends up confusing the socio-political analysis intended by “performative” scholars with linguistic theory. WPR is not associated with language theory. The claim that proposals in policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems has nothing to do with illocutionary effects. The example I offer of how training programs for women produce the “problem” as women’s lack of training has nothing to do with “speech acts”. Rather, the claim that the proposal produces women’s lack of training as real, forming part of an analytic strategy targeting governing mechanisms. It is a political, not a linguistic, intervention. 

It may be appropriate therefore to stop referring to “performatives” in relation to WPR. Law and Mol abandon the language of performativity because of the way in which, in Austin, the focus is on conventional subject-actors as the originators of practices. Mol suggests using the terms enacted and enactment instead of performed and performance because enactment suggests that “activities take place but leaves the actors vague” (Mol 2002: 33; see also Law 2004: 159). Another option that works well is “constitutive”. Poststructural Policy Analysis(Bacchi and Goodwin 2016) builds its analysis around the term “constitutive”. Policies are described as constitutive of “problems”, “subjects”, “objects” and “places”. The term “constitutive” signifies that things are brought into being – or, in other words, that realities are created. But does this change in terminology bring us any closer to clarifying just what this claim entails? 

What realities are created? 

As mentioned above, I agree with Savransky that the claim that research methods produce realities needs greater specification. 

What does it mean to say that one’s research creates (or performs or enacts) realities? What political visions and assessments are these statements and key terms intended to convey? WPR traces how policies and other practices embrace or incorporate a specific approach and meaning that translate into and play a part in shaping people’s lives. It shows how these practices give substance and credibility to certain “objects” and “subjects”. It puts in question “real” “places” by highlighting their emergence in practices (see Walters 2009 on the creation of “Europe”). By tracing these effects, it allows the “real” to be thought differently and can impact directly on people’s lives.

Consider this example. Kiepec et al. (2023) piloted a photo elicitation methodology to examine the perspectives of health providers and “participants who use substances” on substance use. They report that health providers were influenced by a “medicalization” view that identifies “aspects of lives experienced as constituting a ‘problem’ treatable, primarily though medical interventions”. To counter this view, the authors integrated “non-problem-focused theoretical perspectives (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016), considering contextual factors that extend beyond individual, often pathologized factors”. The authors conclude that their findings “may contribute to nuanced understandings to destigmatise and mitigate Othering” (Kiepec et al. 2023; Abstract).

This example illustrates how questioning problem representations (e.g., “medicalization”) can lead to alternative problematizations. It also shows the importance of focussing on how “problems” are conceptualized in research approaches. Kiepec et al. (2023) are able to produce more nuanced understandings because they adopted a critical relationship to the conventional problem status attributed to drug use. Challenging “problems” and how they are represented opens space for creating the world otherwise. 

In contrast, critics of the performative position tend to work with a version of problems as entities. I specify “a version” because it is important to recognize the nuance of the argument. As part of his critique of the “performative” position (see above), Savransky (2018: 227) questions “methods of inquiry” that presume to “enact” the social, to “frame” or “make” problems, “as if problems were yet another product of our omnipotent performativities”. Displaying a pragmatist ethic and a “pluralistic realism” (Savransky 2021), he (2020, p. 6) endorses the need for an “ongoing, risky experimentation with the proposition that problems might have a certain amount of being of their own”. This need for problems in pragmatism curtails the opportunities to challenge problem representations that can harm specific individuals and groups. 

A few additional examples of how practices produce “objects” illustrate the constitutive position – that things come to be through practices. Nielsen and Bonham (2015: 234) describe the plethora of relations which operated, in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, to “forge ‘traffic’ as an object for thought out of a multitude of street activities”. Referring to the production of the “object” of “addiction”, Keane et al. (2011: 876) explain that “all diagnostic instruments and practices construct their objects rather than describe a pre-existing ‘reality’”. In a constitutive analysis, the focus shifts from ostensibly stable entities to the multitudes of factors involved in their emergence. 

What is accomplished by challenging the simple existence of “things” and drawing attention to the plural and diverse practices involved in their emergence and co-constitution? If you do this, says Shapiro (1992: 12), you can “lessen the grip of their present facticity” and imagine the world otherwise. For example, questioning the fixity of “nation-states” provides a step towards problematizing sovereignty in world politics (Rowse 2009: 45).

Going further, since the plurality of factors at work produces multiple realities, we are impelled to ask why some realities become “the real” and how they come to appear so natural (Rose 2000: 58). Instead of taking the “real” for granted as how things must be, the analytic task becomes exposing the means of its creation, making it possible to question its authority and influence. 

None of this analysis involves illocutionary or perlocutionary effects. The claim that research practices produce realities relies, not on linguistic theory, but on political vision. Knowledge is no longer treated primarily as referential, as a set of statements about reality, but as a practice that interferes with other practices to create realities. 

Conclusion

Is the argument that WPR can change lives a display of hubris (Savransky 2018: 228)? Is there a need to ensure that we don’t overstate “the creative potential of our methods” (Dennis 2019)? Ought we to cultivate “humbler sensibilities with regards to the question of what a ‘method’ may be capable of” (Savransky 2018: 226)? Or, is more to be gained through examining “methods” in terms of the lives they make possible? I tend towards the latter position.To this end researchers have a responsibility to examine critically the premises, or taken-for-granted knowledges, that underpin their analyses. For this reason, the WPR approach includes an undertaking for policy workers/analysts and researchers to engage in “self”-problematization, seeking out possible forms of domination in their ownproposals and problematizations (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 40). Whether this position is described as “humble” or not is a moot point. 

I would welcome hearing from you on this topic. Perhaps you could share your views about whether you believe your WPR research opens up the possibility to change lives “for the better” (see above), or if you think this question is misguided in some way. 

REFERENCES

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